A gym that was tagged on Twitter in what appears to be a sarcastic joke gone awry apologized after responding.
The video was of Taliban militants exercising in a deserted gym.
PureGym, the gym that was tagged, said it had made an innocent mistake when user @Curlygaz1 tagged them asking the time of spin class over the fateful video of the militants pumping iron.
You can see the joke post here:
PureGym's response read:
"You can get a full list of the classes and the times they commence at on the homepage of your gym! If you are unable to find this then please drop us a DM with the gym you are interested in can advise you further on this!"
The tweet was deleted soon after, presumably when the person who was answering the tag on autopilot realized what they were actually responding to.
PureGym also doesn't have a branch in Afghanistan.
The closest PureGym location is in Poland—2700 miles (4345 km) away.
The PureGym team released a statement in regards to their marketing misstep:
"PureGym receives thousands of enquiries from members and the general public on Twitter each week. In this instance a member of the PureHelp team replied to a video unrelated to PureGym having mistaken it as a question about class timetables."
"As soon as the error was identified the tweet was deleted."
Concerns PureGym was actively ignoring the problem, or worse, humanizing the Taliban, seem to be untrue. However, the mistake may be another blow to the gym's brand reputation.
PureGym made headlines previously over an ill-advised "12 Years of Slave" workout promotion.
And on the internet, even when a tweet is deleted, the internet knows how to keep it alive forever.
