5 Awful Ways Companies Commemorated 9/11 on Twitter

As we've previously noted, companies have zero scruples commandeering national catastrophes to shill random bullshit on Twitter. Also, some folks inexplicably carry on conversations with corporate Twitter accounts as if they're distant cousins.

And on September 11, these two impulses dovetail, so you end up with faceless fast food monoliths like Chick-fil-A and the Cheesecake Factory wanting to deliciously solemnize the day. Such gestures are sort of like attending your grandmother's funeral, only to have Pizza the Hutt from Spaceballs barge in and delivery the eulogy.

She'd have preferred the dancing alien.

But some companies ratchet up the tastelessness even more so -- namely AT&T, which used the deaths of almost 3,000 people as a framing device to remind its followers that their wireless service allows you to upload photos to Instagram.

Was this the work of an excruciatingly naive college intern who wanted to bedazzle the telecom industry on his first day on the job? Did AT&T's Twitterbot become sentient and make a clumsy attempt to display genuine human emotion? We'll never know, as AT&T deleted that shit pronto.

When readers pointed out this ghastly juxtaposition, Esquire's not-quite-contrite Twitter account apologized for the gaffe, but not before asking everyone to "relax" about the "stupid technical glitch."

Unsurprisingly, this laid-back plea had the opposite effect. Remember, anonymous apologies rarely work if everyone ends up imagining Michelangelo from the Ninja Turtles saying them.

Furthermore, you probably shouldn't slap such solemn sentiments atop a background depicting a happy couple en route to totally bone in a Gaugin painting. Speaking of somebody's idea of fun in the sun ...