April Fools – a final thought on CyClone Dairy

Over at Fair Food Fight, El Dragón has some very good points about the CyClone Dairy hoax.

It would have been far better to have construct a campaign that allowed people in on the joke immediately, to engage people in a way that would have allowed them to feel “in on the joke” and to inspire them to spread the word virally to others who might enjoy the joke, too.

Instead, the Cyclone Dairy campaign comes off as cynical by tracking down discussions like True Mosquito’s, creating sock puppets (“Melissa” is most likely a sock puppet — the profile was created shortly before the comment she made was posted, which, itself, seems a forced and unlikely argument — who takes the time to come on a site like this to defend cloned milk??), taking out fake ads on lefty social network sites that cloud the point of the campaign, and otherwise treating potential allies in a way that makes them feel like dupes, not allies.

As far as I’m concerned, El Dragón has hit the nail on the head. Food and Water Watch (as far as I’m concerned) has created a false campaign to fool people, in order to draw attention to cloned foods and the need to label them as such. And yes, they have fooled people.

By all means, it would have been much better to treat the liberal blogosphere and TV viewers like grown-ups and let them in on the joke. And while I do hope they achieve their main goal – to create more discussion about cloned animals and the issues that come with them – their decision to approach the subject by confusing people was amateurish and foolish.

And speaking of foolish, here’s a comment left on the blog Team Bettendorf by Margaret:

This is a hoax, I’d guess that they’ll advertise all week and then release some kind of public statement on April fools day to reveal the person behind it.

It’s an expensive hoax though, and I’m not sure what they’ll get from it—- they are counting on it to go viral I guess.

I must say that I agree with Margaret, and believe that come Wednesday, F&WW will get to their point. And regardless of the validity of that point, the expensive and shifty way they’ve went about it has made them look foolish before their point was even made, and will have made plenty of bloggers and viewers feel foolish for falling for it. And that’s no way to start intelligent and meaningful debate.

–WKW