I'm a pretty avid baseball fan, and have been following playoff's very closely. I happened to be watching the Met's vs. Dodgers game this past weekend when what's going to be known as the "Chase Utley" incident happened.  For some background, Chase Utley, a player for the Dodgers, slid into shortstop Ruben Tejada while attempting to break up a double play and broke Tejada's leg.  

Warning the video shows Tejada breaking his leg

Following this incident, twitter exploded with backlash against Utley, calling him and the play all sorts of dirty negative things.  Its absolutely astounding how fast the response was.

I think this is an example of paying attention to the groundswell, and just how fast things can turn once people begin to have a negative image of you or your brand. Anger is a powerful tool and whether it be a sports play resulting in a player being seriously injured, or an inappropriate or offensive social media post, the negative things bring out the quickest reactions.  

For a couple business examples, let's look at U.S. Airways, and Home Depot.  

U.S. Airways

In 2014, U.S. Airways was apparently in the process of flagging a highly pornographic tweet sent to them when they accidentally tweeted out the image themselves prompting a quick and immediate backlash and infamy.  

Home Depot

In 2013 Home Depot tweeted out a highly racist picture of three drummers, two of whom were African American and the middle drummer was in a gorilla costume while the Home Depot logo was everywhere in the picture.  The racist tweet was taken down shortly after, but the damage had been done.