Note to pageant contestants: screw up big time
If there’s one thing to take out of the Miss South Carolina / Miss Teen USA screwup, it’s screw-up — big time, and hilariously.
Questions for you:
1) Did you know the Miss Teen USA pageant was being held?
2) Do you know the name of the person who won, and why she won?
3) Do you know who won last year?
Exactly. But you know the girl who screwed up, who now has name recognition up the wazoo.
Of course, it’s not good name recognition. No one wants people to think they’re an idiot. But it’s how you finish — and she can easily make fun of herself like Jessica Simpson does in countless of commercials, and parlay the experience into some sort of push for better education (seriously).
And that’s the grand lesson of all this: in the age of YouTube, where mistakes are preserved and passed around, don’t treat mistakes as mistakes — rather, treat them as opportunities.