Moose Gray & The Internet Trolls
I love this picture of my grandfather. He’s young, actually a lot younger than I am now! He was at the beginning of his adult life. Dating a pretty young girl he had met, she is the one who took this picture. His name was Arthur and in this photo he was trying to share a piece of himself with this woman he would eventually go on to marry. He is paddling a canoe. I’m not sure on which body of water in Maine he took her too, but his idea of the perfect date was to get this woman outdoors! He loved the outdoors, he was a sportsman. A hunter, a fisherman, a paddler, anything that kept him outside. He loved the outdoors so much that he was given the nickname “Moose”. He owned his own camp on Chemo Pond in Eddington, Maine. He belonged to the Eddington Salmon Club, was involved with conservation efforts on the Penobscot River. Snowshoes and baskets woven in the traditional styles of the original peoples of Maine hung on the walls of camp next to the ice fishing equipment, guns, red and black plaid wool coats and the ever present hunter blaze orange caps. That was my grandfather, Arthur “Moose” Gray, it even says that on his gravestone, right next to the engraving of a fish caught on a hook.
For whatever reason this great love of the outdoors, this sportsman gene, did not get passed on in my immediate family. In defense of the DNA, Moose’s daughter, my mother, never got into fishing and hunting as her brothers did. But as I grew up she did take us hiking, camping and insisted that we play outdoors as often as possible. Hard to be a sportswoman when you are a single mom raising two daughters on your own, working full time and living within the city limits. Not Mom’s fault that I don’t know my way around gutting a deer!
By the time you get to the next generation, my own children, I dropped the camping. Mostly because I’m not a fan of sleeping on the ground, but my boys got a little bit of camping experience in the yearly Boy Scout Camping Trip! I still took my children hiking, or more like, walking around cemeteries. I tried! I did make sure they got outside! But I wouldn’t call anything about my children’s upbringing as sportsman-like. When the last two were in high school I did buy them snowshoes. The ones from Sam’s Club that are mostly aluminum and plastic. We gave it a go on the walking trails within the city park. It was fun! Moose may not have been as impressed.
Enter the 4th generation, my own grandson, and from somewhere deep within biology Moose’s rogue genes have emerged!! My own grandson is fascinated with camouflage clothing, swiss army knives, hunting, fishing and survival skills. I don’t even come close to being able to relate to this. The closest thing I’ve got to camouflage is an olive green sweater with a brown zipper. The grandson is clearly an anomaly in our family of book lovers, computer programers and tax accountants. None of us feel up to the task of helping to support him in his interests. It’s not because we don’t want to foster his passions, it’s just honestly none of us know what we are doing when it comes to this stuff! It’s clear to me though, that my grandfather, Moose Gray, lives on within my own grandson.
Recently the family all took a step in the grandson’s direction, when we bought a campground. He is absolutely in heaven. He sure loves being outdoors among the pines and having the full run of the place before we officially open for the season. I wear many hats at the campground, one of which is handling the advertising and social media marketing. In our most recent ad campaign I chose to highlight our catch and release fishing pond. I think the pond is one of the most beautiful places on the property. It’s serene and peaceful. I actually sat down there for the total solar eclipse we had on April 8th. In the semi darkness I heard an owl hoot. It was magical.
To promote the pond I thought it would be nice to take a few pictures of my grandson fishing and make a video out of them. I even found a fishing rod in the attic of the campground which was perfect seeing as none of us actually own a fishing rod. I know from my social media marketing experience that most people view reels for only 4 seconds before they swipe left and move on to the next reel. That’s right, the current attention span of adults using social media is 4 seconds. Sad but true.
So on a beautiful spring evening, when the setting sun was providing us with the most perfect natural light filtering through the trees, I handed the fishing rod to my grandson and had him stand next to the edge of the pond. “Just hold it like you are fishing.” I instructed him. He stood there all decked out in his camouflage, rod in one hand, lightly touching the reel with the other hand. In my opinion he completely looked the part of a young angler. I was so proud of him as I snapped away taking a few pictures. Then I got some pictures of the pond itself, the bubbling stream that feeds it and finally my most artistic idea yet! I leaned the rod against an old log, placed some random fishing tackle I had also found in the attic along with it so that I made a wicked cool still life and took my final picture.
Back in my office I assembled four photos into a video collage template. A picture of my grandson “fishing” in the pond, the pond itself, the bubbling brook and finally the still life against the log. I added some awesome music and was really proud of myself that I had managed to create a four second video that, in my opinion, was pretty impressive. The first picture in the series, the one of my grandson, was only 1.6 seconds. Keep that in mind, it means something later. The other three photos appeared for only .08 seconds each. That’s how brief all of this was. The entire ad was only four seconds.
I posted it that night. I made sure the website and phone number for the campground were easily identifiable. I added text that read “Come check out our catch and release fishing pond!” and then I threw in a bunch of hashtags so the internet would send my ad to anyone interested in #fishing #camping #fishingwithkids #activitiesforkids #RVlife #visitMaine #Maine etc. I went to bed confident that I knew what I was doing in regards to social media marketing.
What I awoke to was enough to shame Moose Gray from beyond the grave! Oh yes my video was getting tons of traction. In fact at the end of the five day run it amassed more plays, Likes, Comments and Shares then any other video I had ever produced! But not for the reasons I had intended. You see that ad became a target for internet trolls, hundreds of them. For in that four second video, but even more specifically in that 1.6 seconds that the image of my grandson flashed upon their screens the trolls noticed things that I never thought of.
First my grandson was holding the fishing pole upside down. Second there was no fishing line. Third, apparently it’s absolutely taboo to wear camouflage while fishing, at least according to the trolls. My lack of sportsmanship knowledge was clearly evident!!! I want to point out that I never intended to post an instructional video on fishing technique!! I posted a 1.6 second picture of a young boy standing at the edge of a pond holding a fishing pole. ONE POINT SIX SECONDS PEOPLE!!! Of the over 28,000 people that watched that video, close to 6,000 of them watched that video repeatedly. Not just watching it once and moving on, but watching it at least twice in a row. Do you people not have anything better to do? Well actually they do….
They found time to post nasty comments about how stupid my grandson was, how stupid the adults in his life were, how sad that this poor kid didn’t even know how to fish! I spent all five days of that ad campaign deleting comments and blocking users every waking hour of every day. It was easy to tell that the majority of them were trolls, but it still didn’t ease the pain that I had let my grandfather down. I didn’t even know the right side of a fishing pole!
From a marketing standpoint any publicity is good publicity so I’m still pretty darn proud of myself that the video was our top performing video ever!!! Sorry Moose, I’ll do better next time with the grandson. We went to the sporting goods store and purchased a proper fishing rod, fishing line and plenty of tackle! We also found someone who knows fishing and he’s going to teach the boy how to do this activity properly. Who knows, maybe he’s the next Moose.