A TRAVEL blog sparked a Boxing Day social media stooshie with a post stating Edinburgh is in England.
The Magical Places on Earth blog, which has a huge audience on Twitter and Instagram with more than 150,000 followers between the two apps, posted a photograph of Victoria Street in Edinburgh with the caption “Edinburgh, England” followed by a Union flag emoji.
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The tweet caused both outrage and entertainment on Twitter with some users quick to get a laugh out of it and others critical of the blog. The post drew in hundreds of comments and replies.
“Seriously? You aren’t qualified to run this account clearly,” said one user.
Others used the format to make their own jokes with one account sharing a picture of the Eiffel Tower in Paris with the caption: “Edinburgh, England. I visited on my way to Dublin.”
Hannah Smethurst added: “One thing Covid has robbed me of is my visit to Cardiff, England.”
Magical Places later added a correction to say it was Scotland before deleting it altogether.
Last night the account posted to Twitter: “We deeply apologize for our earlier tweet about Edinburgh. We just fired our social media internee. We are sorry.”
We deeply apologize for our earlier tweet about Edinburgh. We just fired our social media internee. We are sorry.
— Magical Places On Earth (@magicalplaces4) December 26, 2020
The blog’s apology did little to satisfy social media users. “I lived in Edinburgh, you made way more Scottish enemies by firing the intern than the intern did by making a geography blunder,” one person replied.
“You fired an intern over a tweet. I think that makes it worse,” wrote another.
The account holder, who said English was not their first language and did not want to be identified, responded to The National's request for comment.
They said they were based in Pakistan and started the blog alone but got more people involved over time.
"I'm a student so I'm not getting enough time for this," they said. "So I hired someone from my university who contacted me first telling me he is interested in managing my accounts as an intern.
"Last night when he posted that tweet I got too many reports on my Twitter accounts.
"One of the reasons behind firing him was obviously the backlash by the crowd which was beyond hysteric."
The blogger said they were concerned Twitter could suspend the account which they "worked very hard on".
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