As far as mess-ups go, Steve Harvey had a pretty epic one on Sunday night during the 2015 Miss Universe pageant. Instead of crowning Miss Philippines (Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach) the winner, Harvey accidentally announced Miss Colombia (Ariadna Gutierrez) as the victor. And what followed was super awkward.
After Gutierrez was given the crown (and the flowers and the cheers), the former Miss Universe (Paulina Vega) had to remove it from Gutierrez’s head and then give it to Wurtzbach. Not exactly sure how Harvey, who hosted the show, managed to make the mistake, but two things are for certain: It was a serious bummer for Gutierrez, and it seriously angered fans.
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After Harvey’s gaffe, Twitter erupted with a host of negative messages to and about the comedian. And then, of course, came the memes. Before we get into the comments and creations by people of the Internet, who clearly have a lot of time on their hands, here’s a quick clip of the video, in case you missed it.
After Harvey realized what had happened, he announced that he had messed up and that Wurtzbach, who was already sitting with the other contestants, was in fact the winner. Harvey then held up card he had read off of for cameras to see, showing that next to Miss Colombia’s name, it said, “first runner-up.” He told reporters that once he noticed that he might have messed up, he asked producers if he made a mistake. To which, obviously, they said yes.
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Unfortunately for Harvey, though, things managed to get only more awkward from there. After apologizing profusely to the cameras and reporters, Harvey took to Twitter to reiterate how bad he felt. The only problem? He spelled both “Colombia” and “Philippines” incorrectly. Harvey has since deleted the tweets and reissued them with the countries spelled correctly, but naturally, not before the good people of Twitter managed to screen-shot his tweet.
Did a Twitter storm follow, making fun of Harvey for both his spelling mistakes and his announcing the wrong winner? Of course it did!
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And then there were the memes, which the Internet — and apparently Justin Bieber — loves so hard.
It was all kind of fun and games until things started getting weird. And by “weird” I mean “racist.” A few wildly ignorant people decided to use the opportunity to post incredibly inappropriate messages to Harvey. Yahoo! managed to get a screen grab of some of the more offensive tweets at Harvey. Here are a few.
Warning! They are very offensive.
Pretty disgusting, right? It’s actually kind of amazing that Twitter allows tweets like this. Clearly, these people are incredibly unintelligent if this is how they go through life. You almost have to feel sorry for people so dumb. Wow.
It goes without saying that Harvey is getting absolutely killed on the Internet today. From the memes to the tweets to the blog posts, everyone seems to be seriously upset with his mistake. But it was a mistake, remember? Sure, it sucks that it was at someone else’s expense (as mistakes often are), but Harvey is a good guy who immediately owned up and took accountability for what he did. It wouldn’t have killed him to Google how to spell Colombia and Philippines before tweeting about them. But sheesh, the man didn’t kill someone.
The Internet is always so quick to crucify someone when they make a mistake. Sometimes, the backlash is warranted — in the case of, say, the Giudices — but other times, like this, when it was an honest mistake that was owned up to afterwards, it’s OK to let it slide. But letting things slide isn’t really what the Internet does.
In a few days, the backlash against Harvey will likely die down and be replaced with some other gossip du jour. But until then, Miss Universe ought to be thankful to Harvey. If it weren’t for him, would anyone even really care about the pageant?
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