Was it an intentional flub or a Freudian slip? A debate is raging over a resurfaced 2022 video of a supposed door-to-door salesman who gained widespread attention for all the wrong reasons.
The man, who identified himself as “Fernando” in doorbell camera footage, claimed to be selling solar panels for Pink Energy in Houston’s Acres Homes neighborhood, though the company denied knowing him.
In a disturbing slip of the tongue, he used the N-word in place of “neighbor” while fumbling a sale with a Black homeowner.
After knocking on the man’s door, he casually dropped the racial slur, saying, “We do solar around here, and we’re just coming around here talking to n*ggers — uh, sorry, dude, neighbors. I apologize, man.”
A stranger on your front step can feel intrusive or annoying under normal circumstances. Adding a vile racist insult into the mix makes everything worse — and potentially dangerous if tempers flare. In this incident, the homeowner, Michael, quickly shut his door.
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“In order for me to not feel the way I wanted to feel and do the things I wanted to do, I just had to separate myself and walk away from that situation, because that’s my house,” Michael told local station ABC 13 at the time.
The 20-second interaction was reposted on Oct. 26 by the popular X account Internet Hall of Fame with the caption “How do you slip up this bad?”
Indeed, the verbal flub was so egregious that some have queried Grok, X’s fact-checking bot, to determine if the video was generated by AI. A few believe it must have been staged, thinking no one could mistake “n*gger” for “neighbor.” The viral video is still striking a chord with viewers three years on.
“For anyone confused. No one confuses one word with another unless they frequently use that word…” read one reply, echoing many comments.
“How do you even keep your JOB after doing something like that? Why was that word even in your HEAD at all?” asked another.
The trolls have surfaced, too, adding insult to injury with even more racist remarks in the comments on X.
The solar company Pink Energy shared a statement with the news outlet at the time of the incident:
“Pink Energy does not comment on the activities of other companies’ employees. The shirt he is wearing is not a Pink Energy shirt and appears to have another company name on it. The individual in the video does not and has never worked for Pink Energy.”
Michael, the resident, described the experience as “surreal,” adding, “It really was, like, you can’t dodge it. It’s something that’s around you, in front of you, and it’ll come to your doorstep even if you don’t want it to be there.”
