Crisis PR for Dummies

You too can avoid being cancelled!

Hey there! It looks like you’re a celebrity facing a public relations scandal! Did you wear an ethnically troubling Halloween costume? Perhaps you did some light sexual harassment? Did you get inappropriately drunk and crash your car into a school for photogenically disabled orphans? Or worse, send those photogenic orphans a series of very spicy, sensual DMs?

Here at Infinite Scroll, we can help. You’ll just need to follow our patented guidelines for managing your public image in a time of crisis:

• If your PR team tells you to shut up, shut up. You are paying them for a reason. They know better than you. Listen to them.

• If your PR team tells you not to say anything, you cannot use a loophole to sing your apology. Air Bud rules do not apply here. Dogs cannot play basketball and singing counts as saying. Don’t get cute.

• If you must release a statement, keep it short and bland. A good statement is something like “These allegations are completely false. I look forward to the full truth coming out, I thank you for your patience, and I will not be making any further comments at this time.” Your goal is not to score points against your enemies, it’s to be boring and thus forgotten as a scandal.

• If you must release a statement, use text instead of video. Text is easy to double-check. It’s less likely to get you in trouble because your facial expressions or tone of voice seem weird. Text is also boring and thus more likely to result in the scandal losing steam. Videos go viral, text does not.

• If you must release a statement, under no circumstances should you to use your statement as an opportunity to work through your feelings, discuss controversial issues, or ‘get creative’. You are not here to win a debate.

“But wait!” you cry. “My situation is unique! Surely the advice to be boring doesn’t apply to everyone?”

Every celebrity and every influencer thinks this. Surely their fans will understand! Surely people will side with them when the full truth is out there! My primary job here is to tell you no, your situation is not special. You do not just need to ‘get the truth out there’. You do not need to make an hour long video explaining your point of view. You do not need to express your inner emotions. What you need is to be boring.

Still not convinced? Here are a few people who violated these rules. I’ll let you decide whether or not any of them made good decisions:

• Do not use your apology as a chance to express yourself through the power of dance.

• Especially - and I cannot emphasize this enough - do not play a ukulele during your apology video.

• Do not ever utter the words “I’m not a groomer, I’m just a loser”.

• Do not turn your grooming apology video into a makeup tutorial.

• If the public suspects you are missing or dead due to a lack of public appearances, do not release obviously photoshopped pictures as proof of life.

• If your fanbase is primarily teen girls, do not lead smear campaigns against actresses those teen girls love.

• If you are a prominent Muslim streamer, do not plan a ‘Recreate 9/11’ stream. Not even if your friends assure you it’s a very funny joke.

• Do not monetize your apology video.

• Do not repeatedly mention your sponsors and/or your merch store in your apology video.

• If you make a controversial statement that requires a clarifying video, and then that clarifying video is so bad you have to release a second video clarifying the first clarifying video, it’s time to log out.

• If your fans are mad at an unethical business tactic you’re using, do not make an ‘apology’ video where you explain that your fans are very stupid and the idea is going to make you a lot of money.

• If you are facing allegations you groomed children then do not, in the middle of your statement, admit that all of the core points of the allegations are true.

You’d think that most of these would be self explanatory! But every person here is an extremely famous, successful celebrity and/or influencer and they’re still making the stupidest possible mistakes. You will end up doing the same thing. Cancel your creative idea, delete your long rambling video, and stick to the boring script.

With some luck, next week a Real Housewife will shout some extremely creative slurs at Inuit people and everyone will move on from your tiny little mistake with those orphans. They probably had it coming anyways. That’ll be $50,000 dollars, payable to Infinite Scroll Enterprises.