Imagine losing your job because you called someone "Bruh." Imagine someone taking your use of "Bruh" more seriously than the point you are actually trying to make. Imagine having the last laugh because someone couldn't handle being "Bruh" zoned. Well, only in this case, that 'someone'  was the honorable Dallas mayor (oopsie!). A journalist from Dallas claimed that her use of the word "bruh" to address the mayor cost her her job. Meghan Mangrum claimed she was fired as Dallas Morning News education reporter after responding to Mayor Eric Johnson's February 11, 2023 tweet claiming local media had "no interest" in reporting a drop in violent crime. Mangrum called Johnson out after multiple media outlets, including The Dallas Morning News, covered the crime trend.

As a response to his accusatory tweet, Mangrum wrote (had to later take it down), "Bruh, national news is always going to chase the trend. Cultivate relationships with quality local news partnerships." Calling Johnson "bruh" led to criticism from the mayor and his chief of staff. "Gotta love it when folks let their inherent biases show. I get to be addressed as 'bruh' by someone who writes for my daily local paper whom I've never met," Johnson wrote on Twitter. Although it is important to address people professionally and not like they are actually your pals, it was pointed out by a netizen that respect goes both ways and that the mayor had also crossed a line by referring to her as a "hit dog" instead of addressing what she actually said. 

"Standing up for my colleagues and the work that we do when I know we're doing good and honest work is something I pride myself on and something that I look for in my colleagues and my workplace as well," the reporter later told D Magazine. Mangrum, who is white, stated that the Morning News executive editor, who is Black, asked her if she would use the term if Johnson were white and Mangrum replied in the affirmative. Mangrum had previously used the term "bruh" to refer to "all sorts of accounts," according to D Magazine. Mangrum was fired by the Dallas newspaper three days after the tweet for violating the paper's social media policy. She claimed that the paper did not specify what policy she had broken.

According to KnowYourMeme, the term "bruh" was popularised in part by memes on the defunct social media platform Vine and is meant to "convey frustration or disappointment at something." According to Dictionary.com, the slang term has roots in Black English and has "spread as an interjection variously expressing surprise or dismay since at least the 2010s." Mangrum told HuffPost she is devastated to have lost her job and disappointed with the management's response. She went on to say that her dismissal was "one alarming incident in a broader story of the challenges facing journalists" at her former paper. Her firing came on the same day as a Dallas News Guild protest that she helped organize. According to Mangrum, the union filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board on her behalf.