It’s hard to figure out who had a tougher night than the Boston Red Sox admin.
The Red Sox beat the Kansas City Royals 6-5 Tuesday night, thanks to a 3-run sixth inning that put them ahead for good. Boston challenged a tag play at the plate after Royals pitcher Seth Lugo’s wild pitch. A review showed that Dominic Smith got in ahead of the tag, and the call on the field was overturned. 4-3, Red Sox.
VROOM VROOM, HERE COMES THE DOMINATOR pic.twitter.com/9N4zw5mQtt
— Garrett Mashburn (@G_Mashburn) August 7, 2024
Whichever social media staffer runs the official Red Sox account on X (formerly Twitter) had a clever one cooking up for a while. In the aftermath of Smith coming home to score his second run on Tuesday’s game — neither ball leaving the infield at Fenway Park — the Red Sox account tweeted about “Big Dom Smith Moments,” though it was done in a way that was a bit too clever for its own good.
The now-deleted post read, “Anyone who loves BDSM (Big Dom Smith Moments) is our friend without introduction.”
An all-time deleted tweet pic.twitter.com/j86nYlQCJN
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) August 7, 2024
The meaning behind the acronym was obvious, but the attempt to leverage such a suggestive term for a baseball highlight was undeniably awkward, if not unintentionally funny. It’s not that X is a friends and family program; it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to find out that porn bots run rampant on Elon Musk’s app. In fact, there’s a good chance there’ll be a porn bot in the replies to the tweet of this article.
But that’s beside the point. It’s not that the Red Sox tweeted about BDSM; there are far worse instances of team accounts tweeting much worse stuff in the history of deleted tweets. It’s the fact that they thought they were being clever, and it’s even funnier because it was deleted.
I think we all know what the Red Sox’s social media team was going for. There were good intentions behind a playful, sort-of inside joke reference. I’m not sure we can say that the gamble backfired spectacularly just because those like Jomboy Media have screenshotted the since-deleted post and made light of it, but that may be the case if someone loses their job over it.
In the age of AI, it’s hard to believe this wasn’t a bot-generated nightmare. Someone actually thought this was a good idea. To think that a real person actually pressed send and thought it would be a good idea to say that anyone who loves BDSM is our friend without introduction is undoubtedly insane.
Maybe next time, the Red Sox social media team ought to stick to celebrating Big Dom Smith Moments without invoking bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, or masochism. The internet never forgets, especially a good—or hilariously bad—tweet, especially if it reads, “This post has been deleted.”
