6 Famous Companies That Went Totally Insane When Criticized

6

Ashley Madison Is Now Offering Crappy Masks

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When your whole niche as a dating site is to facilitate discreet extramarital affairs, basically the worst thing that could happen would be for your user data to get hacked and for the names and details of your 39 million clients to hit the Internet. That's what happened to cheaters' haven Ashley Madison last year. So how, after such a terrible betrayal, can they regain the trust of the ball-and-chained horndogs (and thousands of lady robots) who populate the site?

They went with masks.

And not even cool ones, like Batman or Zorro. These look more like what you'd wear for 10 minutes at a Mardi Gras party before you realized you looked like a douche. And be careful that you're not wearing an eyeball-print shirt, because they use facial recognition software to place the masks. We're sure nothing could ever go wrong with that.

Ashley Madison

If masks aren't your thing, you could go with a black bar across your eyes, to better reflect the color of your soul, or four different degrees of blurring. Because if there is one thing people are looking for in their potential dates, it is how sexy they look when they are moving back and forth really quickly.

5

After Blackfish, SeaWorld Recruits Spies To Infiltrate Protest Groups

Gerardo Mora/Getty Images News/Getty Images

After Blackfish -- a documentary about how SeaWorld is just the worst thing ever -- came out, attendance at the parks plummeted. So SeaWorld decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Literally.

In recent years, one of PETA's most vocal activists against SeaWorld was actually an undercover park employee. While most animal rights activists are fine with just protesting or making people sit down and watch sad documentaries because it is important, dammit, Thomas Jones was more of the pitchforks-and-torches variety. Like, he actually said people should get pitchforks and torches and "take down SeaWorld." He also told his followers on Twitter to "get a little aggressive" and to drain the tanks at a new park they were building.

4

Whole Foods Considers Adding Tattoo Parlors To Attract The Youths

Spencer Platt/Getty Images News/Getty Images

3

Hotel Threatens Guests With $500 Fine For Bad Reviews

Lauren Craig

With the rise of online review sites like Yelp, any disappointed customer can fulfill their dream of being a restaurant critic or travel connoisseur. And one hotel in upstate New York was so afraid of how this could affect their business that they promised to charge an extra $500 for "every negative review of [Union Street Guest House] placed on any Internet site by anyone in your party and/or attending your wedding or event."

So basically, a bride and groom could plan their special day on a tight budget, but get it in just under the wire, and then a couple of their guests could, totally unbeknownst to them, leave bad reviews somewhere online, and they could find themselves out thousands of dollars.

2

VW Screws Consumers And The Environment, Offers A Gift Card

Back in September we learned that Volkswagen had taken another step in bringing on the robot apocalypse and taught its cars to cheat at emissions tests. That meant that they would pass all the U.S. tests and seem environmentally friendly, but as soon as the test was over they went back to killing baby polar bears.

When VW got caught, they immediately fixed the cars and issued a profuse apology. Ha, no. Half a million Americans are still stuck with cars that won't pass their next emissions test. And a lot of those people spent an extra $5,000 on the diesel engine specifically because they wanted to help the environment.

1

Thai Airways Pretends A Crashed Plane Doesn't Exist (With Paint)

Scott Barbour/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Back in September of 2013, a Thai Airways plane experienced a landing gear malfunction, sending it skidding off the runway and inflicting 13 people with minor injuries. In the aftermath of the crash, a crew came along and painted over the logos on the plane. Thai Airways claimed that by obscuring their logo, they were saving the face of the airline. Their logic was that if people couldn't tell what carrier had crashed, they wouldn't be afraid of flying with them in the future. This is like a baby dropping your cellphone and then assuming they won't get in trouble if they cover their eyes. And also the cellphone is the size of a plane and is bright purple and gold.

CNN

This whole process is ridiculous for two reasons. First of all, there was the fact that they were saying these things officially, so everyone knew which company it was anyway, even if they got David Blaine in to somehow make the plane invisible. Second, when people started pointing out on Twitter how stupid painting over the logo was, Thai Airways said they had no choice since it was a policy of their airline alliance, who turned around and basically said Thai Airways pulled this policy out of their butts. Hey, at least they didn't resort to a plane-sized camo-print quilt.

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For more companies that are just really bad at this stuff, check out 4 Tiny Mistakes That Turned Into Corporate PR Disasters and The 5 Most Disastrous Marketing Failures Of All Time.

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