Bill Cosby’s management team decided to have a website to give people the ability to make cheeky memes of Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby had rape allegations against him back in 2006 which ended up being the main focus of the memes people created. This specific instance is an example of what happens when consumer generated content goes wrong.

There were no memes created with cheeky one-liners that Bill Cosby said. The majority of the memes that people created were focused around implying that Bill Cosby engaged in sexual assault.

Consumer generated content can quickly spread like wildfire, but in this instance the content generated was not the result Cosby’s management team intended.

This just shows that consumer generated content is not always the best way to go. The management team had no control of what people decided to do with the meme creator nor could they have foreseen the rape allegations resurfacing. Not only did the meme creator go horribly wrong, Cosby had to cancel a scheduled interview due to all the media attention directed towards his past allegations.

Photo taken from Google Images.

Relinquishing the control to the Internet is something to be thought out thoroughly because the possible outcome can have strong consequences. The management team definitely did not consider every possible outcome before deciding to release this meme creator, which has greatly hurt Cosby’s image and brand.