social media

Closing the Sale on WhatsApp

In December 2025, Expansión reported on a study by the design platform Canva of 1,000 Mexican entrepreneurs aged 18 to 65 whose businesses sell or advertise online. According to the study, between 74 and 80 percent sell directly through social networks. About 70 percent use WhatsApp to close the sale.

Expansión reported the study as a story about the nenis, beginner entrepreneurs who sell online. For them, it wrote, “el contacto y la confianza –antes construidos cara a cara– ahora se afianzan en mensajes, fotografías y videos” (contact and trust, once built face to face, are now secured through messages, photos and videos).

Lord None of Your Business

In the early hours of August 27, 2025, an employee of the legal department of Guadalajara’s police was arrested for driving drunk. During the arrest he shouted: “No me toquen, no saben con quién están hablando” (Don’t touch me, you don’t know who you are talking to).

Social media named him “Lord Qué Te Importa,” Lord None of Your Business. The police department announced: “El servidor público fue separado de su cargo y se abrió un procedimiento en su contra” (The public servant was removed from his post and proceedings were opened against him).

I Am Tired

On Friday, November 7, 2014, Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam gave a press conference on the missing students of Ayotzinapa. As he closed it, he said: “Muchas gracias. Ya me cansé” (Thank you very much. I am tired).

Within a week, Expansión called #YaMeCansé the hashtag that gathered the public anger over Ayotzinapa. Protests were also held in the United States, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands. On November 10, Murillo Karam explained: “Soy tan humano como cualquiera, y también me canso” (I am as human as anyone, and I also get tired).

Lady Polanco

In July 2025, the journalist Claudia Mollinedo posted a video from the restaurant Bagatelle in Polanco, Mexico City. She complained that her group had been asked to leave after closing time, and she filmed an employee without consent. The employee says: “Aquí se cierra a la una, no es cuando quieran” (Here we close at one, not whenever people want). Social media named her Lady Polanco.

On July 28, the outlet to which she contributed weekly announced: “Nuestro medio no comparte su punto de vista, por lo que suspenderá su colaboración semanal hasta que se aclaren los sucesos” (Our outlet does not share her point of view, so it will suspend her weekly collaboration until the events are clarified).

Verified 19S

After the earthquake of September 19, 2017, more than a hundred volunteers met at the Centro Cultural Horizontal, in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. They built a platform called #Verificado19S to verify and organize information for citizen relief. One volunteer told El Financiero: “Todo esto nació como una forma de organización civil” (All of this was born as a form of civil organization).

Reports arrived through forms and WhatsApp groups. Networks of volunteers checked them by telephone and on site. Urgent needs were posted on Twitter.

It Was Not a Penalty

On June 29, 2014, Mexico played the Netherlands in the round of 16 of the World Cup in Brazil. In the 94th minute, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar scored a penalty after a play between Rafael Márquez and Arjen Robben. The Netherlands won 2-1. Thousands of Mexican fans answered with the hashtag #NoEraPenal, “it was not a penalty.”

Robben later said: “Es deporte, es futbol, y creo que era penalti” (It is sport, it is football, and I think it was a penalty). In 2020, Márquez said in an interview: “Yo acepto el error porque al final fue penal porque lo marcaron” (I accept the mistake, because in the end it was a penalty, because they called it).

Lady Profeco

In late April 2013, according to press reports, Andrea Benítez did not get the table she wanted at Máximo Bistrot, a restaurant in Mexico City. Soon after, the reports said, inspectors from Profeco, the federal consumer protection agency, came to the restaurant. Its head was her father, Humberto Benítez Treviño. Profeco never formally closed the restaurant, but the owners kept it shut. The story spread on social media, and she became known as #LadyProfeco.

In mid-May 2013, by order of President Enrique Peña Nieto, her father was removed from his post.

Here the public exposure was aimed upward, at a powerful family, and it produced a result within weeks.

Work and Private Life Apart

In August 2023, the company Tōshō Bōeki surveyed 1,441 people in their twenties online. Of them, 76.4 percent said they did not tell people at work about their private social media accounts. Among the main reasons for not going out privately with colleagues was Puraibēto to shigoto wa waketai. I want to keep private life and work apart.

In a survey by the company Shikigaku of 300 office workers aged 20 to 59, reported in August 2023, 59.7 percent thought friends at work were necessary. Of those who did not, 68.7 percent gave this reason: Shigoto to puraibēto wa wakete iru kara. Because I keep work and private life apart.

The Toshiba Recording

In 1999, a Toshiba customer put an audio file on his website. It recorded what a Toshiba employee had said to him on the phone.

Toshiba’s vice president apologized fully. He said he had felt from the moment he heard the audio file that the company had to apologize for its employee’s words. On July 19, 1999, Toshiba said it would withdraw its legal petition against the site.

Secret Accounts

An ura-aka (裏アカ), a back account, is a social media account that a person does not tell their real acquaintances about. In an online survey of 300 people aged 15 to 29 in November 2021, 62.66 percent of women and 40.67 percent of men said they had one. Many use it as an outlet for complaints.

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