“Can we all take a step back from our keyboards and phones and remember why we’re all here?” pleads the resort in a Facebook post.
Whether you snowboard or ski, shred waist-deep pow or stick to the bunny hill, chances are you get some degree of enjoyment riding your favorite resort. But apparently, even resorts aren’t immune to being trolled by haters on the Internet. On Thursday, Squaw Valley decided to clap back and publish an “open letter to [their] small corner of the Internet,” establishing ground rules of sorts, with a little tough love.
“So here’s where we stand,” reads the post. “This social media network we built is our home. And it was built for a place to share the stoke… but if you rant, spew hatred or bully our family and friends in our home we will break up with you. This behavior will no longer be tolerated.” Notwithstanding the fact that this sounds a bit like Squaw is not just a corporate Facebook page, but actually created the social network itself, the message is clear. Hatred and negativity, which is endemic on the Internet these days, will now have repercussions.
Reading between the lines a bit, it seems the resort may have experienced some hate trying to manage operations following a huge storm. And the Squaw Valley might be thinking in terms of safety with regards to its own employees. A ski patrolman was killed there last week while doing avalanche patrol work. “After this massive 23-foot storm, can we all take a step back from our keyboards and phones and remember why we’re all here?” the post continues. “We only come back to one thing: the simple fact that skiing and snowboarding here is FUN.”
In the age where Internet trolls run amok, this rebuke of negativity comes from an unlikely place and if you weren’t following the mountain’s feed, you’d easily miss. But it seems an example where an individual company has grown tired of hate and negativity on its social feed, especially after one of its employees was killed trying to make the mountain safe for customers.
You can read the letter in its entirety, here.
