PSA: Mind your P's and Q's online, too

I wondered why I hadn't seen an acquaintance of mine on the slopes of Snoqualmie Pass this season. Then this post on his blog appeared last week, explaining his absence. Apparently you have to watch your words, even on the Internet:

Well over a year ago (March 2013) i wrote a post about an article that Kim Kircher posted on her site. My post was titled Fuck You Knuckle Dragger which seemed perfectly fitting. In it I highlighted a few choice quotes from Mrs Kircher where she more or less bashed on snowboarding. I felt i kept my article fairly neutral and didn’t get derogatory towards Kim.

The result of my article was a mini snowboarding-interwebs viral backlash against Kim Kircher and Crystal Mountain–Snowboarding was pissed. Multiple other bloggers wrote about Kim’s article. Multiple comments of mis-treatment by Crystal were dropped in comments. Stickers were made. T-shirts were made. A Fake-Kim-Kircher twitter account showed up. Even an Instagram account popped up. Shit went bonkers for a while and Kim Kircher deleted her original post. The amount of activity as a result of simply pointing out what Kim Kircher had written on her Blog blew my mind.

Fast forward to February 2014 snowboarding at Alpental for my first day of the season (super late winter up here in the NW last winter). Ticket checker scans my pass and notes to me that i have a message in his little scanner thing that i’m to call Dan Brewster. Weird…Ok? I disregard and proceed to continue to ride a few more times. Eventually my pass ceases to work.

Story was that Kim Kircher was a little bent on my article and all the resulting stickers/t-shirts/Twitters/Instagrams and handed down a decree to pull my pass. If you weren’t aware, Crystal Mountain or Boyne Resorts owns/manages/operates/whatever Snoqualmie Pass. Enough so that Kim Kircher was able to call up Dan Brewster, the General Manager at Snoqualmie Pass and kill my pass.

Shitty, and shady stuff for Kim Kircher to pull my pass for simply pointing out how asinine her article was even though she agreed as demonstrated by pulling her original article (which you can find here ). As far as i know i’m 86′d from Snoqualmie Pass. Probably Crystal Mountain too.

I could care less as i’ve retired from snowboarding but figured i’d keep this BS rolling in classic passive aggressive Northwest form.

Have a great summer!

Link: www.nwbroweather.com/2014/05/taking-one-for-the-team/

Be prepared to get severely ragged on.....

or take it for what it is...

Someone posted a sensitive topic on the internet with the purpose of enticing a response.  The response was more than they had ever expected.  Maybe some assumptions were made about the internet and how civil folks are?  Either way, feelings were injured and opinions expressed.  The original poster of article responds by pulling the season pass of the person they, in their opinion, started the whole mess, which is my opinion.  Gotta love how folks play hardball.

Opinions are like a$$holes...everyone's got one.

And yeah, that article was, to say the least, lacking. Did FOX sponsor Crystal?

I posted this to present just another data point in the increasingly blurred relationship between the physical and digital world. What you say online can bite you hard in the real world, something I'm well acquainted with. I have no grudges against Crystal or Boyne for that matter. But I don't think that indirecting through your parent company to have someone's pass at a sibling resort pulled is appropriate behavior. I also don't think this guy handled the situation appropriately, either.

As far as I can tell, the "instigator" caused no measurable damage to Crystal or Boyne. I put that word in quotes because he reacted to a perceived affront on the entire snowboarding community by a head ski patroller. IMO, Kim's original blog post was out of line, but it was on her personal blog, so to escalate to her employer isn't really justified. But, my acquaintance broke no laws and circumvented no rules. Boyne, however, caved to the demands of one of their more respected employees and used the "we can do what we want to whoever we want" attitude that's all too present in the resort industry these days to justify their actions, which is kind of a scary thing and establishes an unsavory hierarchy between guests and management.

Shaun White retired! Snowboarding is dead.

Long live teleboarding.

Be prepared to get severely ragged on.....

still waiting