What's the only thing capable of making a horrendous lapse in judgment even worse? The entire world recognizing that mistake and threatening to inflict bodily harm on you for making it.
As reported by the New York Daily News, Michigan native Alicia Ann Lynch tweeted and Instagrammed a photo of herself in her Halloween costume last week.
Lynch's big gaffe: This year the 22-year-old decided to dress up as a Boston Marathon bombing victim with a costume that was complete in detail right down to the runner's number on her T-shirt and fake blood trickling down her legs.
By her own admission, Lynch made a mistake and took to Twitter to admit making that mistake. At which point the Internet proceeded to give it to her with both barrels.
The Twitter response to Lynch's costume was vociferous and immediate.
On Halloween night, Kimberly Roslund tweeted: "You are an absolutely disgusting human being." From Jaeleen Mejia (@JMej27): "Just saw the Boston Marathon costume…insensitive, low, heartless. 140 characters is not enough for such disrespect."
The list of enraged respondents also included Sydney Corcoran, who was injured along with her mother Celeste when two pressure-cooker bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon last April, killing three and injuring nearly 300.
Tweeted Corcoran: "You should be ashamed, my mother lost both her legs and I almost died in the marathon. You need a filter."
Thousands of others followed suit and Lynch claims she received death threats. "I've had voicemails where they want to slit my throat and want to hang me and tear off my face," Lynch told a reporter. "I don't even know how to respond to this right now."
A good percentage of the hate mail sent Lynch's way warned of vigilante justice and some even threatened rape, which hit close to home since she claims to have been raped last November.
"When people bring up the rape stuff it kind of hits a spot, but I don't show it. I'm over it, but it's something that I would never, ever wish upon someone no matter what they had done."
Along with expressing rage, web users discovered that Lynch had once posted a picture of her driver's license with her personal information. Some people actually used the information to track down her parents. Lynch said strangers reached out to parents and told her best friend "they're going to blow up her house and hang her child."
"How is that even right?" Lynch asked the reporter. "She didn't know what I was doing. My family didn't know what I was doing. I don't live with them and they're all getting dragged into this for something I did."
On Friday morning, Lynch went back to Twitter to beseech the public to leave her family alone with the plaintive tweet, "Please stop spreading my parents number, and my home address. THEY DID NOTHING WRONG."
And then soon after came the inevitable tweet from Lynch: "I have been fired from my job. I am paying for what I thought was a simple joke. I know it was wrong now. I wasn't thinking."
You can say that again.