(ConservativeJournal.org) – The Cincinnati Cyclones hockey team received criticism online related to a post and a subsequent apology after a hype-post promoting an upcoming game was misinterpreted to be an endorsement for the riot on January 6th, 2021.
The minor league team put out a promotional video featuring forward Justin Vaive bathed in red light, wearing a red jersey. The captions from the now-deleted video suggested the team was going to “paint the town red” referencing lyrics to a Doja Cat song, on January 6th.
One user’s joking reference to the Capitol riot on January 6th went viral leading to confusion. WNBA social media coordinator Connor Moore jokingly suggested they were going to “paint the town” red on January 6th which triggered the confusion that the post was somehow related and not merely a coincidence with the timing of the event.
Within 24 hours the team had deleted the video and issued a public apology, demonstrating just how sensitive some people are about jokes on social media. In their apology message, they suggested the video was solely a promotion for their upcoming game and that any reference to the Capitol riots was unintentional. They said their “throwback night” regularly featured them wearing retro jerseys and “in no way” are they considered political.
Negative comments began to appear on the apology itself, chastising the team for cowing to pressure from “cancel culture.” Nati Sports suggested that apologies like this allow crazies to maintain what little power they have left. The account further suggested that anyone who spent time concerned about the issue who was still working for the team should seek alternative employment.
Another user said it was “lame” that scrolling was impossible without the need to critically correct or malign someone for content that mildly resembled some controversy.
Comments were limited on the post, forcing users to retweet it to make a comment. Many of the comments were similarly critical of the apology. One user actually joked that an endorsement of Trump would have made him “a huge Cyclones fan.”
Copyright 2024, ConservativeJournal.org
