14 DAY TRIAL // Young British beautician Gemma Worrall has become an unlikely Twitter star after misspelling the name of the U.S. President in a hilarious post.
The 20-year-old beautician from Blackpool just wanted to express her opinion about the unfolding crisis in Ukraine, but almost started a war of words when she posted a hilarious tweet saying, “If BARRACO BARNER is our president why is he getting involved with Russia, scary.”
Who is Barraco Barner, you may ask. Well, thousands of people who read Gemma's tweet wondered the same thing.
Within the next hours, the Twittersphere exploded and Gemma's comment was retweeted almost 7,000 times. Her unfortunate gaffe has become viral and she received messages from people all over the world, many of them not very polite.
Maybe her comment would have been a thoughtful tweet if she hadn't misspelled Obama's name and hadn't confused the American president with UK's leader. First of all, Britain doesn't have a president, so Barack Obama is certainly not “her president.”
By the time the young woman realized her mistakes and deleted the post, it had already been retweeted thousands of times and even shown on television.
When she published the comment, she couldn't imagine it would cause such a storm. Soon after the tweet went viral, the hashtag #barracobarner was trending around the world, and new spoof accounts like @BarracoBarner and @Michelleo Barner were set up.
According to Daily Mail, Gemma tried to correct the situation writing other tweets saying: “I hope I haven't offended the real @Barack Obama with my tweet but it was just a question I was curious about #sorry,” and “Right, I get it, I'm no good with politics I'll just shh now.”
This incident proves once more that exposing yourself to ridicule on social networks may turn into a recipe for becoming an Internet star. In less than 140 characters, the beautician managed to distort the name of the American president, confuse him with Great Britain's leader, and become an Internet sensation along the way.
Well, after all the buzz around John Travolta's flub at the Oscars, some may think that this was just a fake account set up by the actor himself to make fun of the incident that put him at the center of global attention.
Or maybe Gemma Worrall used that special widget that was created after the actor's memorable gaffe to Travoltify Barack Obama's name and the result was Barraco Barner. Either way, Travolta's flub seems contagious.