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This man’s terrible tweets about the Manchester bombing set the internet aflame
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This man’s terrible tweets about the Manchester bombing set the internet aflame

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Photo via Emma/Flickr (CC-BY-SA)

This is beyond bad.

It’s perfectly naturally to want to use gallows humor to cope with what seems like a world spiraling out of control, but that’s a thing that’s best done in private. Especially in the midst of unfolding news about a terrorist attack that targets teenagers at a concert.

One man, David Leavitt, a freelancer for CBS and Yahoo, according to his Twitter bio, ignored both those axioms and tweeted this terrible, terrible joke in response to the Ariana Grande concert bombing. 

david leavitt ariana grande joke Screengrab via David Leavitt/Twitter

When it became clear—basically from the onset, but also as details emerged about the attack—that Leavitt had made light of an awful incident in an unfunny and patently bad way, he did not apologize.

Instead, he continued joking.

ariana grande joke twitter david leavitt Screengrab via David Leavitt/Twitter

ariana grande joke twitter david leavitt Screengrab via David Leavitt/Twitter

At one point, over 30,000 people had replied to his tweet, all to let him know the different ways in which he was being insensitive.

Eventually, he deleted the tweet and apologized, saying, hey, I make these jokes all the time, it’s cool.

But then he decided to take a weird dig at the Twitter swarm against him, in the form of trying to guilt them into donating to a cause he had just mocked.

Then he compared himself to President Donald Trump.

Not … not at all.

David Covucci

David Covucci

David Covucci is the Layer 8 editor at the Daily Dot, covering the intersection of politics and the web. His work has appeared in Vice, the Huffington Post, Jezebel, Gothamist, and other publications. He is particularly interested in hearing any tips you have. Reach out at [email protected]

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