‘Lake America’ and CEO Jane Smith: Have we gone too far?

Jane Smith, then CEO of Michigan’s Family First Credit Union, went on vacation to Halifax with her family. Before the trip, she created an AI image of them wearing sweatshirts that said “Lake America.” Maybe a poke at Trump. Maybe just a bit of family fun with AI.
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She posted it to her private Facebook page, where it was identified as AI-generated. Then her sister took a screenshot and posted it publicly, without the AI indicator.

It went viral. The reaction was furious. Smith received death threats. Her family cut their vacation short. Family First publicly condemned the post. Days later, the credit union announced she was no longer employed.

For the record, I’m Canadian eh and I’m asking: Seriously?

Whether we think the joke was funny, stupid, political or in poor taste isn’t really the issue. That’s actually the point.

The point is, when did being offended by someone’s personal post become grounds for demanding consequences from someone’s employer?

We’ve all become judge and jury

Social media has given us extraordinary power over complete strangers. Someone says something we don’t like and, instead of rolling our eyes and moving on, we hunt them. Who are they? Where do they work? Who employs them? Then comes the public trial.

Tag the employer. Demand a statement. Demand that someone lose their job.

We run anti-bullying campaigns in schools. We have workplace bullying and harassment policies. Yet somehow, when the target is a stranger online and enough people agree with us, we feel completely justified in publicly shaming, targeting and trying to punish them.

And the consequences can be far more serious. Death threats, derailed careers, loss of income. Reputations can follow someone forever. Families and relationships can be permanently altered by a few hours of public outrage, long after the crowd has moved on.

Being offended doesn’t automatically mean someone else did something wrong. And it certainly doesn’t mean they deserve punishment. Sometimes being offended is simply ours to manage.

Tomorrow, it could be our turn

Here’s the thing with policing what people say and do in their own private lives.

The rules aren’t just changing. They’re getting narrower, and they’re changing fast.

The boundaries of what’s acceptable are increasingly drawn in real time by whichever social-media crowd has appointed itself the moral authority that day. Something we post today can be perfectly unremarkable. Tomorrow, the line moves and suddenly we’re expected to explain ourselves.

The same people enthusiastically demanding consequences for someone else today may eventually discover that their own perfectly acceptable post from yesterday has become tomorrow’s unacceptable one.

It’s a game where the rules keep changing after we’ve played. And somehow, we’re still expected to have known them.

And employers need to grow a pair

Maybe the strangest part is how often employers are applauded for giving the mob exactly what it wants. I see something different.

Companies plaster words like integrity, courage, loyalty and respect across their websites and lunchrooms. They tell employees their people are their greatest asset. Family First’s own member-facing website, quite possibly speaking to Jane too, reads like a Hallmark card about family, community, unwavering support and being there “through thick and thin.”

Then one of those people becomes unpopular on the internet and suddenly the opinion of thousands of strangers, who know one screenshot, can outweigh everything the employer actually knows about the human who works for them.

Was this a good employee? A decent person? Someone who contributed for years? Someone the business trusted yesterday? Shouldn’t any of that count?

Instead, too often the calculation seems to be: How quickly can we make this problem go away? The playbook becomes: Sacrifice the employee. Issue the statement. Weather the news cycle. Collect some applause for “taking action.”

That’s not courage. It’s caving.

Standing behind an employee doesn’t mean blindly defending anything they do. Investigate it. Look at the facts. Decide whether what happened genuinely warrants publicly turning on your own employee and lending your credibility to the pile-on.

And if it doesn’t, have the nerve to say: We know this person. You don’t. We’ve looked at what happened, and we’re standing behind them.

That’s courage. Not something you print on a wall. It’s something you practice when it would be easier not to.

Of course there are limits. Threats, harassment, discrimination, criminal behaviour or conduct that genuinely damages an employer’s business can legitimately cross the line between someone’s private life and their employment.

But where was the business harm here? Family First is a Michigan credit union. Exactly how many of its members were realistically harmed by a private joke about Canada that it felt it owed them and their Michigan community an apology?

Before we join the pile-on.

Before we reach for someone’s employer, maybe we should ask ourselves what we’re actually asking for.

Does this really justify derailing someone’s career, reputation and family life, potentially forever? Death threats? Or are we, at best, simply offended? If so, we move on.

If the real draw is the drama, the pile-on and the thrill of a good old-fashioned village stoning, maybe we reconsider and put the rock down. The next target could be us.