Justine Sacco was, until Friday, the top PR person for InterActiveCorp, the New York media conglomerate run by Barry Diller. IAC owns the Daily Beast, Vimeo, About.com, Match.com and Ask.com, among many others. On her now-deactivated Twitter account, Sacco called herself a "troublemaker on the side" known for her "loud laugh." Perhaps it was inevitable that this self-image would clash with her high-rolling position. 
 
 Because Sacco has made a world of trouble for herself, and as I wrote this, she didn't even know it. Before she got on a plane Friday, a tweet emerged from Sacco's account, a joke of such monumental stupidity that it was hard for many people to believe her account wasn't hacked: 
 
 Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white! — Justine Sacco (@JustineSacco) December 20, 2013 
 
 Point of fact, nobody knew if Justine Sacco's account was hacked, or if she left her phone when she boarded her plane in London. But that didn't stop IAC from issuing a preemptive press statement: “This is an outrageous, offensive comment that does not reflect the views and values of IAC,” the company said. “This is a very serious matter and we are taking appropriate action.” 
 
 If that were all there was to the story, it would have briefly lit up Twitter like a Christmas tree and burned itself out with Sacco's firing. But then there was the other part of the IAC statement: "Unfortunately, the employee in question is unreachable on an international flight." You can't fire someone this senior for anything without talking to them first, and Sacco was on a very long, wi-fi-free plane journey — 11 hours, 20 minutes on British Airways. 
 
 That occasioned a tremendous schadenfreude, as users waited for 20th century transport to catch up with 21st century communications. 
 
 Here's a representative sample of the conversation, via the trending hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet: 
 
 #HasJustineLandedYet is NORAD Santa Tracker for adults. — jane davis (@janedavis) December 21, 2013 
 
 If only @LOLJustineSacco had Whoopi Goldberg on flight, bc I'm pretty sure this would occur: #HasJustineLandedYet pic.twitter.com/1ZNIziJyct — John Jdol (@JohnJdol) December 21, 2013 
 
 LAST Friday: "Surprise, heffas!" - Beyonce to the world 
 
 THIS Friday: "Surprise, heffa!" - the world to Justine 
 
 #HasJustineLandedYet — Bee (@BeeSince83) December 21, 2013 
 
 Right, is there no one in Cape Town going to the airport to tweet her arrival? Come on, twitter! I'd like pictures #HasJustineLandedYet — Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo) December 21, 2013 
 
 Man, things are going to get so awkward for #JustineSacco once she realizes Africans have twitter, too. #hasjustinelandedyet — Laila Alawa (@lulainlife) December 21, 2013 
 
 It is kinda wild to see someone self-destruct without them even being aware of it. #hasJustineLandedYet — David Flor (@BrainClouds) December 21, 2013 
 
 Sacco is nearly impossible to defend. It seems she has left a trail of casual racism across social media on her various travels, making the hacking scenario unlikely, and explaining why her company rushed to denounce her — they knew it was most likely the genuine article. She certainly did herself no favors with this writer by sliming the British in a tweet during her pit stop in London earlier Friday. 
 
 Still, it was hard to ignore a disturbing feeling in the mob's response, and something creepy in the trial by social media that was going on in her absence. You could argue she did it to herself — all those pictures in the album "Too Much Swagger for White Girls (Miami '10)" are in the public part of her Facebook Timeline, after all. 
 
 Then you could also read the hateful comments recently placed all over her Instagram feed, including on pictures of her child. That's when you might realize this whole thing has gone too far. 
 
 There's a fine line between slamming Sacco for her blatant what-guys-I-was-just-kidding buffoonery, and taking an unconscionable delight in the misfortune of others while playing Big Brother on their lives. Quite apart from anything else, that sort of attention may play into the worst tendencies of someone who would write that. It grants her notoriety, maybe even a career in news channel punditry. She can pour out an apology to Barbara Walters. 
 
 When her plane lands in Cape Town, I hope not a soul tweets her picture. I hope they show a far older social response, and turn their back on her. And as for the rest of us, I hope we take the suggestion of several good souls on Twitter — if you are (rightfully) offended by what she said, channel your rage into donating to an AIDS charity. 
 
 Awesome. @AidforAfrica registered the domain name http://t.co/8ty73MJoCZ and has it redirect you to their donate page. #HasJustineLandedYet — Diane Alston (@dianelyssa) December 21, 2013 
 
 An earlier version of this story made reference to a screenshot of a Google search for Sacco's name that included her flight details; this turned out to be fake. We regret the error. 
 
 Image: Justine Sacco, Facebook ||||| The Tweet heard round the world 
 
 As she embarked upon a long flight to Africa, PR staffer Justine Sacco issued this tweet. At best a darkly ironic self-deprecation that could never fit into 140 characters, it resulted, within bare minutes, in an internet-wide scandal. Even as the plane is still in the air--Sacco presumably oblivious--there is a hashtag, #HasJustineLandedYet, a parody account, @LOLJustineSacco, a fake movie poster, and, God help her, a whole entire New York Times article, replete with a stunned disavowal from her corporate employers. 
 
 “This is an outrageous, offensive comment that does not reflect the views and values of IAC,” the company said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the employee in question is unreachable on an international flight, but this is a very serious matter and we are taking appropriate action.” 
 
 "Ms. Sacco," added The Times' Ashley Southall, "could not be reached for comment." 
 
 UPDATE: It looks like Sacco landed, deleted the tweet, and subsequently the entire account. I wonder if anyone managed to get a screen grab! 
 
 UPDATE 2:Here's a timely reminder from Michele Catalano about the dangers of Twitter. 
 
 We're all 140 characters away from being vilified. — Michele Catalano (@inthefade) December 21, 2013 
 
 UPDATE 3: Sacco was fired over the tweet, and apologized for it. ||||| Story highlights PR executive no longer works for IAC 
 
 Corporate communications head was on 12-hour flight when tweet went viral 
 
 Justine Sacco's Twitter account was deleted Saturday 
 
 IAC says, "There is no excuse for the hateful statements that have been made" 
 
 The "tweet heard round the world" was followed by the sound of a slamming door Saturday. 
 
 Media company IAC has "parted ways" with company PR executive Justine Sacco over her tweet: "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" 
 
 "The offensive comment does not reflect the views and values of IAC. We take this issue very seriously, and we have parted ways with the employee in question," an IAC spokesman said in a statement. 
 
 "There is no excuse for the hateful statements that have been made and we condemn them unequivocally," he said. "We hope, however, that time and action, and the forgiving human spirit, will not result in the wholesale condemnation of an individual who we have otherwise known to be a decent person at core." 
 
 Sacco did not immediately respond to messages left by CNN. 
 
 Justine Sacco's tweet went viral while she was en route to South Africa. 
 
 The tweet Sacco sent before she left Friday for Cape Town, South Africa, went viral and created a social media firestorm. 
 
 The incident -- Boing Boing called it " the tweet heard round the world " -- was a glaring reminder that every word uttered on the Internet can be heard by seemingly everyone on the Internet, sometimes with serious consequences. 
 
 Sacco was the head of corporate communications for IAC, the media company chaired by Barry Diller that operates websites such as The Daily Beast, About.com, CollegeHumor and Match.com. Her whole job revolved around communicating with reporters -- which made her Twitter comment about Africa all the more shocking. 
 
 Sacco was in London and about to begin a long vacation in South Africa when she wrote the message. Her Twitter account was relatively obscure when she posted it -- fewer than 500 people were following it. But the message went viral on Friday, unbeknownst to Sacco, who apparently did not have Internet access on her flight. 
 
 Websites such as Valleywag and Buzzfeed highlighted Sacco's account, and soon it had thousands of followers -- and thousands of harsh replies directed at it. Some were downright hateful. Others said they felt sorry for Sacco, regardless of how offensive her Twitter message was, because she hadn't had a chance to defend herself during the 12-hour flight. 
 
 As Twitter observers parsed through her public posts, many were disturbed by her previous messages. ("I had a sex dream about an autistic kid last night," she once wrote.) 
 
 Her account was a laundry list of banal complaints about poor customer service and other apparent indignities. 
 
 "It seems she has left a trail of casual racism across social media on her various travels," Chris Taylor, a writer for Mashable, opined 
 
 Still, Taylor wrote, "it was hard to ignore a disturbing feeling in the mob's response" to the Twitter messages "and something creepy in the trial by social media that was going on in her absence." 
 
 On Friday afternoon, with hours to go before she landed, another corporate communications representative for IAC issued a statement that tried to address the online controversy. 
 
 "This is an outrageous, offensive comment that does not reflect the views and values of IAC," the company said. "Unfortunately, the employee in question is unreachable on an international flight, but this is a very serious matter and we are taking appropriate action." 
 
 The statement led many to believe that Sacco would be reprimanded or even terminated when she landed in South Africa. 
 
 Parody accounts started to appear on Twitter and Facebook that portrayed Sacco as a mean, bitter person. On Friday evening a Twitter hashtag, #HasJustineLandedYet, became a running commentary about Sacco; some people observed that she'd have to put her crisis communications expertise to the test to save her own career. 
 
 Meanwhile, other Twitter users started scoping out Sacco's past messages and flagged other questionable comments she'd made before, like this one: "I can't be fired for things I say while intoxicated right?" 
 
 All of those messages disappeared, though, early on Saturday, when someone -- presumably Sacco -- deleted her Twitter account. IAC had no immediate comment about how or why her account was removed. 
 
 Some good does seem to have come out of the incident, at least.
– A PR exec who became an instant Internet villain yesterday appears to have lost her job following fury over an AIDS-related tweet. Media firm IAC says it has "parted ways" with Justine Sacco, CNN reports. She won't be tweeting again anytime soon, either—at least not from the @JustineSacco account, which has been deleted. If you missed the fuss yesterday, Sacco tweeted the following from Heathrow Airport just before getting on a long flight to South Africa for a vacation: "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" Sacco works as head of communications for IAC, which only seemed to amplify the outrage that immediately ensued. In fact, much of it played out while Sacco was incommunicado during the flight, notes Boing Boing, which calls it the "tweet heard round the world." Even before she landed, her employer issued a statement: "This is an outrageous, offensive comment that does not reflect the views and values of IAC." The company noted that "we hope, however, that time and action, and the forgiving human spirit, will not result in the wholesale condemnation of an individual who we have otherwise known to be a decent person at core," the New York Times reports. Reaction has ranged disbelief at the line (see the HasJustineLandedYet hashtag, of course) to disbelief over how vitriolic the "mob response" has been. On that note, the Times notes that it appears someone tracked down Sacco at the Cape Town airport and took photos.