A blooper is usually a mistake, misspoken words or technical errors. When shared with others, a blooper usually provides a moment of comic relief or pause for thought about a moment of incredible stupidity or just plain bad luck.
#1: Is this man insane?
Vishal Garg made a huge blooper most recently. It falls into the incredible stupidity category.
Founder and CEO of Better.com, a Fast Company Magazine Fast 50 and BusinessWeek’s Under 30, On the Cutting Edge entrepreneur. A highly successful online mortgage company on the surface, with apparently lots of dirty laundry when you dig deeper.
Here are a few examples of Mr. Garg’s communication style that have been revealed:
“You are TOO DAMN SLOW. You are a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS and…DUMB DOLPHINS get caught in nets and eaten by sharks. SO STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME.” (Vishal Garg)
“HELLO – WAKE UP BETTER TEAM.” (Vishal Garg)
“You need to press your [partner] to the point of breaking, then break them. Break them. Punish them. Punish them like they just stole candy from your little sister.” (Vishal Garg)
And the “pièce de résistance“, which earns Mr. Garg top bill in our list of the Biggest Bloopers of 2021:
Who, in their right mind, would collectively fire 900 employees on a Zoom call? And expect this behavior to remain within company walls?
#2: Money to buy almost anything, except good manners
Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, Elon Musk is quite an extraordinary man. Can’t beat his quirky personality, his eclectic pursuits and regular flaunting of the Powers That Be.
However, I do feel that it was incredibly rude to taunt 80 year old Bernie Saunders by saying:
Derogatory, rude or offensive language is unacceptable professional behavior. It’s that simple. I am only forgiving you because Twitter didn’t exist when your parents were teaching you good manners.
Mr. Musk, please consider this:
“How beautiful it is to stay silent when someone expects you to be enraged.”
“Just because someone invites you to drama does not mean you need to RSVP.”
#3: Brand is everything
It’s bad enough that HBO’s Sex and the City reboot showed contempt for the intelligence of its audience with such an overwhelming deluge of overt product placement, but how could Peloton, a multi-billion dollar company, give a blank product placement check to Sex and the City without establishing a clear agreement about how Peloton could be used in the Series? Okay, the plot was top secret … but have you both not heard of a non-disclosure agreement?
Who, in their wildest dreams, would ever have thought that a script would show the death of Mr. Big after a Peloton workout? Well, that’s exactly what happened, followed by an 11% drop in the value of the already struggling Peloton stock.
Dara Treseder, SVP, Head of Global Marketing and Communications, this was on your watch. You took a big risk. Unfortunately, this outcome is on you.
Yes, Ms. Treseder, you attempted to quickly recover by producing an ad with Ryan Reynolds’ firm, Maximum Effort, which, through association the celeb, turbo-charged your counterplay after Mr. Big’s post-workout death … but, the fact of the matter is, this was a huge brand screw-up. The situation was further exacerbated when Chris Noth was recently accused of sexual assault.
It remains ironic that Peloton’s stock market value went into free-fall … based on nothing more than a fictitious scene in a popular HBO series. I thought investing required know-how. Trevor Noah provides some comic relief below.
Now challenge yourself and your friends to our Biggest Bloopers of 2021 Quiz of the Day, by downloading Quizefy from the app store if you haven’t already done so, then see how much you know and Strut Your Smart. Our Biggest Bloopers of 2021 Quiz is only available today, then it disappears. We’ll be back again every Tuesday with a special blog posted at www.quizefy.com, along with a new trivia quiz on the same topic as the blog. Don’t forget to follow Quizefy on social media, so we can remind you of the upcoming blog and quiz content.
