Oops: Virginia congressional candidate leaves porn tabs open on Facebook post
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Reminder to politicians everywhere: Always check your browser tabs before posting a screenshot.
A Virginia congressional candidate learned the hard way, after posting a screengrab on Facebook that happened to display his earlier X-rated browser searches in the upper-left corner of the screen.
Mike Webb, a Republican running as an independent in Virginia’s 8th district, has since deleted the screenshot after the porn mishap went viral. Webb posted another screenshot on Facebook Monday night, saying “THANKS FOR THE TAB CHECK RANGER BUDDIES.” He made reference to the gaffe and said “today’s notorious post reached almost 200,000 people.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Webb originally had posted the screengrab of a Google search after claiming he received a prank call about a job offer, which he hinted may have come from a local Republican official.
However, the screengrab also showed other, more risqué browser tabs that were open at the time. Those tabs read “LAYLA RIVERA TIGHT BO” (media sleuths concluded the unfinished word is “BOOTY”) and “IVONE SEXY AMATEUR.” Layla Rivera is a pornographic actress, and both searches bring up pornographic results.
The post was up for a number of hours, despite swiftly going viral on social media and among media outlets. It has now been removed.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Hill reported that Webb tried to explain away the post by saying he was testing a conspiracy theory.
"Curious by nature, I wanted to test the suggestion that somehow, lurking out in the pornographic world there is some evil operator waiting for the one in a gazillion chance that a candidate for federal office would go to that particular website and thereby be infected with a virus that would cause his or her FEC data file to crash the FEC file application each time that it was loaded on the day of the filing deadline, as well as impact other critical campaign systems,” Webb wrote.
That post was also later removed from Facebook.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}In his latest post, Webb told followers that he was taking a positive message from the media firestorm.
“But, the truly amazing thing about today was that 'I saw also the Lord, high and lifted up,' and I was very much moved by the love and support of those who expressed their encouragement and support, even some in the national and local press,” he wrote.