Social media is the face of the modern corporation. Businesses use it to connect with their target audience, build brand awareness, drive customer engagement, and ultimately generate revenue. In an effort to set themselves apart and resonate with their target audiences, companies have been hiring clever, quick-witted, and modish social media managers, often marketers hired as independent contractors. The absolutely brutal and anonymous Wendy’s social media persona stands out as a great example:

At some point several years ago, a similarly zesty social media handler took over Heckler & Koch’s Twitter and Instagram accounts. She became known as the “H&K Social Media Girl.” (Hereafter, “H&K SMG”) H&K SMG was a savage. Most of us don’t know how it was determined that she was a woman, if she actually was a woman, or if “she” was even one person – I’m pretty sure I knew the H&K Social Media Guy in the very midst of the gun industry’s crush on the clever H&K SMG. But either way, H&K did not deny it – they wisely owned the H&K SMG perception. And it worked.

In fact, when there was an apparent H&K SMG hiatus (gunternity leave?), the internet was in an uproar. M4C vented “HK social media girl apparently fired and I am annoyed”. HKPro asked “Anyone know what happened to HK Social Media girl?” and the Military Times even wrote up a story about H&K’s “disgruntled fans.”

But now H&K fans are disgruntled for a new reason – and how they’ve been handling it is perhaps one of the most beta, smoothbrain reactions I’ve seen in some time; unbecoming of a client base often analogized to Porsche owners and associated with Hans Gruber.

At some point this past week, H&K SMG – or should I say an H&K SMG, as she did claim to be a woman – took it upon herself to get into current socio-political events on H&K’s Twitter account. To be clear, she made a post espousing her personal viewpoint on the so-called “woke” Miller Lite ad… but on the H&K Twitter account and without H&K’s authorization to make such a post.

According to FOX News, this was the content of the SMG tweet:

Wow- woke? Allow me to translate: objectifying women was never a good marketing strategy. In the firearms industry, that was a prominent strategy up until recently. Many industries have done that (including beer corps),” the manufacturer’s verified Twitter wrote. “As an actual woman typing this, I’ll use more words for you to comprehend: using bunnies to sell products is trash marketing. Supporting women by not doing that is good.

The online gun community is quick to turn on their own if they feel like something is out of line with core community beliefs, and apparently, this was one of those instances. There was collective outrage.

H&K’s response was virtually perfect. Swift, unequivocal, and concise. This particular H&K SMG – an independent contractor – was summarily terminated by H&K. Right away. Seething social media users were apparently satisfied for the most part (although ironically buttressing a negative stereotype of women, this one demanded a formal apology.)

H&K probably thought the worst was behind them. As a company, they were right. However, for one of them, personally, the worst was yet to come.

Angela Harrell is one of the most respected and liked gun industry professionals. She has been with H&K for 18 years, and I’ve been privileged to know her for several of them. Angela is one of the guys. I interviewed her in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. She’s friends with my wife and I’ve been impressed (and slightly frightened) witnessing Angela and Lindsay crush buckets at legendary New Orleans dive bar, Fat Harry’s. I’ve shot with Angela, I’ve trained with Angela. While Angela works in H&K’s marketing department, she was not and has not been the person generating the “H&K Social Media Girl” content on H&K’s accounts. And she certainly had nothing to do with a rogue independent marketing contractor making her personal beliefs known on H&K’s social pages.

But she was “identified” as the Social Media Girl. Incorrectly.

This is probably because Angela was a publicly identifiable employee of H&K. And because Angela’s a babe, too, as a former successful physical fitness competitor which, of course, usually entails bikinis. The coincidence between her being a woman working for H&K and the perceived irony of a “woke” feminist social media agent being seen as a former bikini model was too much to resist. It became a misinformation contagion overnight. Like a disease can rapidly propagate through a population, misinformation can quickly proliferate on social media platforms, leading to its acceptance as truth by a large number of people. Overnight, Angela – again, who had nothing whatsoever to do with this – became a target for more selective outrage. She has since been harassed and attacked merely because of the coincidence that she is a woman working for a gun company. Angela had to go totally dark on social media as a result.

I would love to call out the social media personalities and outlets who spread this misinformation, but unfortunately, that would be unproductive self-gratification and would ultimately lead to more exposure for them. I do have to reference one particularly egregious example. This article says “a lot of people think the social media girl was Angela Harrell. We acknowledge that no one’s proven that, but we are going to basically doxx her anyways because it’s clickworthy.” That’s tabloid-level journalism.

Those who knew better, or should have known better, didn’t stop themselves. A woman spokesperson who called out women bikini-wearing spokespersons was too appealing of a target for due diligence, and the views and clicks were too good to pass up. If anyone cared to actually investigate, they might discover that Angela (and H&K) had no involvement with the offending tweet, but why to bother to investigate something when you want it so badly to be true? As an attorney, I can tell you I’ve seen defamation defendants sued for less. Angela likely wouldn’t do such a thing, but if I was representing one of the people who falsely associated her with this post, I would be nervous.

Even the real H&K social media girl who made this tweet probably doesn’t deserve the treatment Angela Harrell is getting, but when you put yourself out like that, you should be prepared for these types of consequences. So it goes. However, there’s no excuse for any reasonable person to attack an innocent bystander just because we’re trying to find someone to be angry at. We should do better, especially for one of the most accomplished and respected professionals in this business who is exceptional not just because of her track record at H&K but because she does what she does in a male-dominated industry. It’s unfortunate that she just happened to be a woman at an inconvenient time.