A Tory MP exposed himself to ridicule on Twitter over the weekend by forgetting the one golden rule of social networking:
Think before you Tweet.
The MP for Croydon Central, Gavin Barwell, attempted to mock an online Labour press release for including an advert with the text "date Arab girls" on their page - before it was revealed the ad was targeted based on individual users' web history.
The gaffe was quickly picked up by Twitter users, who mocked Barwell's mistake - though there is no evidence that the ad he saw was anything other than an unlucky fluke.
Barwell tweeted at the party's press office and shadow schools minister Kevin Brennan:
But the press team replied with a pretty good excuse - the ad was dynamically served based on the browser's "interests".
Replying simply "oh dear" and with a link to an explanation of Google Adsense, the team pointed out that not everyone saw the "date Arab girls" link.
The AdSense page says:
"You may come across such ads when you're viewing a website, video, or app on Google's display network.
"In addition to seeing ads based on your interests, you may also see ads based on the types of sites you visit, whether you +1 something, and more."
According to the LabourList website, which published screengrabs of the Tweets, others accessing the same page saw an advert for a Samsung S3 Mini mobile phone.
Fortunately the MP has seen the funny side - at least so far.
After tweeting a link to his column in the Croydon Advertiser, a Twitter user replied:
To which the MP said:
Below are some of the other funniest tweets of the week, courtesy of HuffPost UK Comedy.