Recipe for viral video: Take existing commercial. Add wildly inapposite clips. Edit, post, voila:
Yes, I know, Vancouver is a great city and the rioters were not representative of the vast majority of British Columbia residents. Deep down, even the people painting the province with the widest accusatory brush know that. Yes, most Vancouverites are upset at the rioters and pitching in to find those responsible and to clean up downtown. And, yes, the videomakers left the “2010” reference in (daaaated!) and could have found a spot for the now-infamous couple-in-the-road photo. But, face it, the moment the riots broke out, this was inevitable.
Vancouverite here with the flipside to the ugly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLJCVpjGvhc
I do love this town…
It’s always a sad thing when something like this happens. But like Perry said, Liz, both Vancouver and sports will get over this. And indeed, for every guy that rioted, there are dozens of others out there, who are ready to help and clean up the mess, and with whom you can truly enjoy the next games.
This video actually reminded me of a billboard with an advertisement from a travel agent I saw three weeks ago. It said (roughly translated from Dutch) “Unrest in Tunisia? Go over there and find out.” with an image of a man sunbathing on a beach. Though that ad was remarkably quickly removed: it seems I wasn’t the only one who didn’t appreciate it.
The thing is: while there will always people that do whatever they like without thinking of others, there are far more people that do have a heart and a brain, and are not afraid to use them.
Thanks Perry. And I know there are a ton of cities who have experienced the same thing. One thing for sure though… the people responsible for the looting, arson, violence etc sure didn’t plan on being busted by Facebook 🙂 Social media FTW!
Liz, as a Philadelphia sports fan who constantly has to say “no, we’re not ALL like THAT,” I feel your pain. Vancouver will survive this as it did the previous hockey riot, as L.A. seems to get along despite the Lakers and UCLA (and Rodney King, for that matter) riots and Dodger Stadium parking-lot assaults, as Montreal has since the Canadiens riots. This, too, shall pass. But for the short term, there’s a little tarnish on the image….
As a Vancouverite it really hurts to see something like this, but you’re right it is definitely inevitable. I just hope that people who see this video also see the work of thousands of volunteers cleaning up yesterday. The photo galleries of those volunteers. The thousands of people working to identify those responsible for criminal acts. And the fact that we are ashamed of what these people have done to our beautiful city. It wasn’t about losing the game, it was about a bunch of a**holes who were intent on destruction. They planned to do this if we won or lost. We just happened to lose.
Sad day for all of us 🙁
We have a guy from Vancouver working here. He didn’t riot but he did hack the company’s online sales video to add “Bite me!” to the audio track in a Darth Vader voice with a heavy Canadian accent.