Did you hear the one about the plane full of social media influencers that left Montréal headed for a party in Cancun? No? Then you obviously haven’t been in Canada, because we have been hanging our heads in shame about it ever since the videos started to go viral.

This Plane of Shame left La Belle Province on December 30. It was a Sunwings chartered flight, packed with partiers hand-picked by entrepreneur and social influencer James William Awad, who chartered the flight as part of his 111 Private Club. It was always intended to be a select event for just the “right type” of people, meaning those who showed well on social media. In that, this excursion brought back troubling memories of the infamous Fyre Festival.

The antics of this group and the inability to “read the room” amongst skyrocketing COVID numbers has left many slack-jawed in stunned disbelief. The breathtaking entitlement of these partiers relied solely on how attractive, young and digitally well-connected they were. For most of them, their number of followers seemed to give them carte blanche to be complete assholes.

And behind it all was Awad, who was pulling the strings like a social engineer from hell. According to him, these jerks were the type of people we should all aspire to be. It’s exactly this type of person he wants for his “exclusive” club. In fact, in an interview with the so appropriately named Narcity blog, they are screened for “the personality, the energy, the vibe , make sure they understand the rules, know their age, their background, and their general status in society”.

I suspect Awad is more concerned with their “vibe” and “status” then their “understanding of the rules.”

The sad thing is that this social media stunt seems to be working. In fact, James Awad is currently laughing all the way to his cryptocurrency bank.  After showing the barest sliver of remorse when the media piled on, he quickly backtracked and doubled down on his support of abominable behavior, saying in a tweet on January 9, “Reality of the story, sheeps (sic) are mad because people partied on a private chartered plane where partying was allowed. Wake up!!“

And the stunt has brought a flood of interest to his 111 Private Club. In an interview, Awad said he had hundreds of people on his waiting list, desperate to join his club. It shows that when it comes to social media influence marketing, at least when it comes to boorish behavior, there truly is no such thing as bad press.

I’ve made no bones about the fact that I’m not a fan of influencer marketing. And I realize that I am light years removed from being in the target market for this particular campaign. So, is this just a question of targeting, or does it go deeper than that? If marketers are using social media to spread messages through influencers, is there a social and ethical responsibility for those messages to not be harmful or conducive to anti-social behaviors? After all, by their very name, these people influence the behavior of others. Should the behavior they’re encouraging be scraped from the lowest dregs of our culture? Jerks will be jerks, but when exactly the thing makes them jerks has the hell amplified out of it thanks to the knock-on effects of social media, should we start putting our foot down?

Like almost everything to do with marketing and media now a days, this falls into a grey area roughly the size of the Atlantic Ocean. Even the old rules of engagement that used to govern advertising – as flimsy as they were – no longer apply. Essentially, social influencers seem to be able to do whatever they want, flaunting the guidelines of common decency that govern the rest of us. Not only are there no consequences for this, but they’re rewarded handsomely for behaving badly.

Influencer marketing is governed (in the United States) by the First Amendment ensuring Freedom of Speech. But there is an exception for messaging that is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action.” This example wouldn’t quite meet the requirements for that exception, but perhaps this is a case of our industry establishing its own boundaries. When it comes to social media influencers, we should aspire to be a little less shitty.

The thing I like the least about influencer marketing is that it reduces social complexity to a level most of us haven’t seen since high school. The sum of your self-worth is determined by the parties you did (or didn’t) get invited to and the brand of jeans you wear. I don’t know about you, but I’m glad I left this all behind when I turned 18. In my experience, those that hit the peak of their popularity in high school have had a long, downwards slide ever since. We can only hope the same will be true of the social influencers that were on board that plane from Montréal to Cancun.

When it comes to these social media influencers, even our own Prime Minister Trudeau (who I suspect might have been invited to all the right parties and wore the right jeans in high school) had had enough:

“I think like all Canadians who have seen those videos, I’m extremely frustrated. We know how hard people have worked to keep themselves safe, to limit their family gatherings at Christmas time, to wear masks, to get vaccinated, to do all the right things, and it’s slap in the face to see people putting themselves, putting their fellow citizens, putting airline workers at risk by being completely irresponsible.”

And just to show them how disappointed we Canadians are, Sunwing pulled the plug on the return flight, stranding the group at their resort in Cancun. Two other airlines followed suit. As Jimmy Fallon joked, there’s no better way to discipline a bunch of Canadians in the middle of winter than to strand them at a luxury resort in Mexico.

That’ll show ‘em!