Ely, Minnesota, bans social media

It’s April Fools Day. Don’t worry, I won’t try anything. There’s always some bush leaguer saying they’ll shut down their blogs on April Fools Day. But they never do.

My friend Paul Ryan, who succeeded me as editor of the UW-Superior student newspaper, did an April Fools joke back in 2001 in which he published a story that the college was going to shut down the journalism program. He wrote it as a straight news story, making up quotes from various campus officials. Problem was, the very next year the college did exactly that — shut down the journalism program. The real story was eerily similar to the joke story. In fact, they were interchangeable.

Ely, Minnesota, has a tradition of April Fools Jokes from their city marketing wing. This year Ely floated a fake “social media ban.” They even have yard signs.

“The only thing online here is a fish. And why would anyone need Pinterest?” Ross Petersen, Mayor of Ely, said in a statement. “We have a big bulletin board over at the grocery store for that sort of thing. Or the Twitter? We have at least 140 characters right here, living in Ely. And don’t even get me started on the kids listening to their Zunes.”

Continuity error: Iron Range officials who would ban social media (and they’re out there) would never call social media networks by their given names, or know even the crudest elements of how they work. They’d simply vote to ban “all that stuff” and then hire some six-figure charlatan to mop up the details, which would take him five years and would end with him being the city administrator after all the councilors died of natural causes.

You can still Facebook in Ely, by the way. Everything is fine.

Comments

  1. This is the funniest insightful description of local Range politics I have ever heard.

    “They’d simply vote to ban “all that stuff” and then hire some six-figure charlatan to mop up the details, which would take him five years and would end with him being the city administrator after all the councilors died of natural causes.”

    We could wish it was just an April Fools joke, unfortunately not.

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