Teen Safiyyah Nawaz's stupid Twitter comment becomes NY day hit

SAFIYYAH Nawaz says it was a harmless joke. On January 1 she tweeted about planet Earth and Twitter almost combusted.

Safiyyah Nawaz. Picture: Twitter

SAFIYYAH Nawaz says it was a harmless joke. On January 1 she tweeted "This beautiful earth is now officially 2014 years old, amazing".

this beautiful earth is now officially 2014 years old, amazing

— $afiyyah nawaz (@safiyyahn) January 1, 2014

What came next was a Twitter tirade of epic proportions. Countless tweet and retweets followed Nawaz's incorrect observation about the age of the planet. Some just wanted to inform her it was much, much older - closer to four billion years old.

But others quickly changed the history lesson into a barrage of insults and comments about race.

Nawaz managed to maintain her composure, tweeting back even as people insisted she was the biggest moron of 2014.

But Twitter being Twitter, the remarks didn't end with simple chastisements about history or her intelligence.

The tweets soon took on hashtags like #stopblackgirls2014.

" @safiyyahn: this beautiful earth is now officially 2014 years old, amazing" #stopblackgirls2014

— Brent Raymond (@Brent_raymond17) January 1, 2014

She admitted she was "kinda scared" as her original tweet was retwetted more than 14,000 times. And within a few hours in people were suggesting she should kill herself.

so far i have seen stop mexican girls, stop black girls, and stop indian girls hahahah YOURE ALL WRONG #RACIALLYAMBIGUOUS

— $afiyyah nawaz (@safiyyahn) January 1, 2014

@safiyyahn Kill yourself.

— Cocaine Burger (@Cocaine_Burger) January 1, 2014

To her credit, she continued to bear it well, insisted the original tweet was a joke, that she hoped her new found infamy could help her meet Snoop Lion and then that she was just back at school ignoring the whole mess and filling out college applications.

Ive learned a lot tonight, mostly that the Internet is forever and that the earth is about 4.54 billion years old

— $afiyyah nawaz (@safiyyahn) January 1, 2014