If you missed it yesterday, Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Twitter account was hacked, with the hacker tweeting some absolutely horrible things that we won’t be linking to here.
Immediately, it was clear what had happened. There was no way Antetokounmpo was the man behind the Tweets.
Which is important.
Because it shows us all, should we ever tweet something we immediately regret, a roadmap to get out of the bad situation.
Step One: Tweet Something Terrible
Ok, you’ve made a bad tweet. Something you’d like to take back. You could delete it, but the haters already have screenshots. You need to act fast. Here’s what you do: Think of the worst thing you could possibly tweet. Tweet that thing.
Step Two: Repeat Step One Fourteen Times
One terrible tweet isn’t enough, though. You need a tweetstorm. You need to say things no one would ever suspect you of saying. You need to say things that would cause an international incident were you to say them in an airport. The most outrageous things you can imagine, but worse. Darker.
Step Three: Call a Friend
Now, the response. By all appearances, your account has been hacked, and the hacker is up to no good. Find a friend—a representative if you have one (agent, manager, media organization, etc.)—and get on the phone with them. Tell them you’ve been hacked. Write a statement in the notes app on your iPhone, text it to them, and ask them to tweet it out.
Step Four: Deactivate Your Account
Before Twitter itself has time to investigate (which is where things could get messy—you don’t want anyone snooping over IP addresses), deactivate your account. By all appearances, Twitter’s identified the situation and snuffed it out. You’re in the process of recovering your account. Everyone’s relieved. No one can see the tweets except in screenshots.
Step Five: Wait Six Hours
This feels like a reasonable amount of time.
Step Six: Reactive Your Account and Clean Things Up
Six hours later, the coast is clear. You can log back in, change your password (always a good idea to do this anyway—you don’t actually want to get hacked), delete all the bad tweets, including the initial one you were trying to cover up, unfollow all those ISIS accounts you followed, unlike the tweet of a cartoon of a dolphin getting roasted like a pig, and issue a statement, this time from your own account, condemning the alleged hacker and apologizing for the situation (though clearly, you have nothing to apologize for—*wink*).
Step Seven: Breathe a Sigh of Relief
Another crisis averted.
