Best Buy's tweet about the popular "Serial" podcast caused a stir Thursday afternoon, with many condemning the joke as insensitive.
The joke made light of the real-life murder of 17-year-old Maryland student Hae Min Lee in 1999. The tweet was taken down not long after being posted, but many captured screenshots and responded with outrage.
Before long, Best Buy had issued two apologies.
"We posted a tweet earlier that was clearly in poor taste," Best Buy spokesman Jeff Shelman wrote in a statement
obtained by MarketWatch. "We deeply apologize for the tweet about Serial. It lacked good judgment and doesn’t reflect the values of our company. We have tweeted an apology and taken down the offensive tweet."
An accompanying apology Tweet said as much.
National Post noted that the official "Serial" Twitter profile was among more than a thousand accounts that retweeted the joke. The publication also questioned why there was outrage over Best Buy's joke but not another joke make by Sesame Street just a day earlier.
The joke itself riffs on contentious questions surrounding the murder, who did it, and whether the suspect, the girl's boyfriend — who was eventually convicted for the murder — did or did not use a payphone at Best Buy in Maryland shortly after killing her in the parking lot. The host of "Serial" has called into question whether such a payphone ever existed.
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