Matt Bacak is a survivor. He survived bankruptcy to build up a multi-million dollar business. And more recently, the man, who for a short while held the title of “The. Biggest. Douche. in. Social. Media.” (sometimes referred to as a “New Media Douchebag”), survived a social media s**tstorm (it all started with this admittedly awful press release).

On my post about Lessons from social media marketing failures (and successes), I wrote that

When Matt Bacak’s over-the-top press release got him a great deal of negative attention on Twitter last week, he wasn’t afraid to apologize and admit his mistakes. While it took him longer that most of us would’ve liked, he certainly responded faster than the Motrin folks, or some of the old school horror stories like Kryptonite.

It turns out he’s done more than apologize. He’s gone person-to-person to address the criticism. He’s eaten a whole lot of humble pie, and is coming out not as an example of a failure (though that release will still go down on the top of my list of bad press releases), but as an example of how to handle yourself in a social media crisis.

He’s gone so far as to agree to have his picture taken with a t-shirt that I designed (see above–the shirt first appeared on a blog post by Warren Whitlock, which also includes a link to a long audio podcast interview with Matt). The shirt is not something I’d wear in mixed company, but he’s going to wear it to a session he’s leading tomorrow. That takes guts.

Matt, thanks for wearing my shirt. Keep up the good work. Tune down the rhetoric in those releases, but don’t lose your enthusiasm. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve more than redeemed yourself–you’ve come out shining.

You can see our complete, and extensive dialog on Twitter below. For Twitter neophytes, you’ll want to start from the bottom and work your way up, as they’re in reverse chronological order.