[imagesource: Mike Theiss / Nat Geo Collection]

You want potential tourists to your city to see positive, glowing reviews from those who visit.

What you really don’t want to do, under any circumstance, is share a snapshot of an Instagram Story that decries how unsafe your city is, and how someone felt afraid of leaving their apartment.

Enter Brazil’s national tourism agency, which clearly wasn’t paying attention when it reposted a critical Instagram story to their official Instagram account.

Here’s the post, first shared by travel influencer @withlai, who has in excess of 320 00 followers:

Like so many people on social media these days, the admin probably read the opening six words, and then decided that was good enough to barrel on.

It’s like people who comment on news articles on Facebook based on reading the headline. You do know that if you click on the story, there are a whole bunch of other words that greet you, which more than likely explain the exact thing you’re about to write?

Once alerted to their error, the tourism board removed the shared Instagram Story from their account, but screenshots last forever.

The incident also drew attention to @withlai, who then followed up with this post:

Fair enough.

@withlai is now travelling around Madagascar (it looks lovely), and the Brazilian tourist board is back to sharing positive things about Rio:

Just like that, everybody moved on with their lives.

[source:reuters]