I mean, I had to click through “See more replies” in order to find that tweet. So it sure feels like you cherry-picked the sole genuinely argumentative reply.
There is no way to stop pedantic know-it-alls from replying on Twitter, and theme park hyper fans ARE pedantic know-it-alls. You’re social media strategy concerns are focused on mitigating the response from a small portion of Universal’s fan-base whose response refuses to be mitigated. You can not like tone or style of Universal’s social media presence, but it has been successful for years while differentiating itself from the safer, intentionally inoffensive Disney voice.
Until Universal’s social media team actually steps in it or changes what they’re doing, I’m pretty certain they’re satisfied with what they’re doing. If a tweet is seen by 1,000 people, putting in the effort to change 2 negative replies to 1 negative reply is flat unnecessary.
If I was trying to argue this tweet was receiving
only argumentative responses, and I went and fished that out as proof positive while ignoring the majority non-argumentative responses, then
that would be cherry-picking, but that's not what I did nor is it what I'm doing here, in general. I'm illustrating the type of angry response you can get when you joke around with people -- when you
troll people -- in this way.
You're not wrong about anything else you said. My key point is you can maintain the Universal tone and style (which I don't dislike, btw; it's not even remotely unique in the year 2021, but it's perfectly fine) while also not wading into troll territory. You're absolutely right that it's one response among many, and it was the most extreme. It's anomalous in this instance. (It's also been deleted, lol. They must lurk . . .)
Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter how "small" a certain audience segment is when they're the most vocal, which these hyper-fans tend to be. USH doesn't have a ton of reach; Disneyland and its inoffensive social voice enjoy about 3x as many followers. All it would take is a dozen idle cranks to flood the mentions and every user USH reaches is looking at toxic negativity beneath a silly tweet, which is not what you want. There's a difference between being "safe/inoffensive" and CYA -- which, for what it's worth, is not mutually exclusive with being sarcastic and "unsafe." Nobody is making that choice.
My reaction to this whole thing is just mild surprise because it's very easy to avoid these kind of audience pain-points. Like, you mention "putting in the effort to change 2 negative replies to 1 negative," but it took
zero effort for me to pitch those alternates and I don't even work in creative. Remove any reference of a ride (even a joking reference), and those two negative response don't happen. And, btw, there are more than 2 negative replies to that tweet -- not all of them ring as melodramatic, but it's not a strict binary of "positive" or "negative" with engagement. Again, it's all very easy and I just found it weird that USH would make the choice.