​If your brand is still on X, maybe it’s time to get real nasty to customers

There are 30 examples of witty Ryanair ‘clapbacks’ on this here made-for-advertising site that paint a different picture, reading more like an arts graduate comedian doing good-natured crowd work than a coked-up, canceled comic venting anger.

For Ryanair, the reason this deviation of tone is so noticeable is because it was so good at sticking to said tone. Plus, it’d be quite petty to criticize a team for a minor tone of voice slip-up. And it would be disingenuous to pretend I was offended.

I just want to tell you how I felt when I saw a brand put a customer’s appearance on blast on X. And I felt that it was very 2025. I saw the future. It wasn’t very nice to shame a man complaining about a cheap seat on a cheap airline just for being bald to a supposed reach of 48.5m on X (take that with a pinch of salt).

But just check the response: a lot of accounts looked to have liked that the brand was being an asshole. And the post has performed accordingly. This works.

This isn’t me encouraging you to adopt the tactic; I’m wondering if its effectiveness should make you perhaps consider the platform you are on.

The new tone of voice feels inevitable to me.

Brands have been pretending to be our friends on social for a while now.

That has run its course.

So, what’s next?

The high school bully’s TOV?

It’d be a particularly useful approach in dealing with climate protestors, for example. Let me play this out.

Protestor: “How can you claim to be net-zero when you do all of [bad thing] in [bad place]?”

Brand: “Shut up, nerd, you’ve got ugly glasses.”

That conversation is over. You can’t hold the brand accountable because hundreds of accounts are now attacking the protester’s eyesight.

Rules of engagement

I’m getting ahead of myself. This was one post from one airline. And the target of the ridicule seemed to take it very well. “Good craic” he called it. Give that man an actual ticket to Turkey, Ryanair.

I hit up Michael Corcoran, managing partner at Frankly but, most pertinent to this story, a former Ryanair head of social. Michael has done a lot to legitimize the social trade. What could look like shitposting is clearly effective marketing... when the rules are followed.

When asked if he would personally have signed the post off, he said he doesn’t believe in “making it personal.” The team should focus on behaviors, not appearances.

The concern is that one innocent comment, even initially taken well, could devolve into a pile-on or bullying. It’s not a risk if a post is reaching 2,000 people. It is a risk when it reaches 50 million. It can naturally be unpleasant for the person it is aimed at but also for the team that signed it off. It’s no one’s intention to cause harm, after all. Laughter is the goal.

“X cultivates hate more, and faster, now,” Corcoran said.

He shared a rough framework of relevant rules; the goal is to be “calculated in comedy”:

• “Always directly or indirectly link back to the context of flying low-cost or decreasing friction around how they operate.”

• “Never aim to make it personal or direct to someone who may feel like a bully – gender, appearance, etc. We tried to keep it close to the topic and its behavior.”

• “When we engage directly, we focus on the behavior, not the person, in most, if not all, cases.”

• “We could sometimes go hard directly with politicians and public figures. Less so celebs, and it is so crafted so close to the line – ie, comparing one from the past about the same topic and the difference.”

Rules or not, many brands have left X over politics, policy changes or user/brand safety. And as Michael said, hate is traveling fast on there. I can only trust what I see, how I feel after using it, and what the professionals using the app tell me. Or the research that repeatedly tells us the volume of hate speech is spiking. What is a little bald joke when consumed in this wider context?

So, it stands to reason that any brands that are still on X have the choice of going with the flow or swimming against it. It would be a pleasant surprise if social marketers took the high ground and didn’t engage in a nasty tactic they know would probably work in the short term. Or maybe it’s nothing to do with ethics and the right thing to do.

As sellers of products and services, trust is important. You’re not going to buy cheese, home insurance or, hell, even a hair transplant from the school bully, are you? But then you could argue, were you buying goods and services from infantile accounts that write in lower case, without punctuation and desperately want to be liked?

I feel like I’ve seen the future of brand accounts on social and I’m worried I’m too ugly to complain about goods or services ever again.

Read more opinion on The Drum.