Golden Knights’ attempt to “troll” the Boston Bruins on Twitter falls flat

Apparently, being an expansion team in professional sports comes with a learning curve, both on and off the playing surface.  The Vegas Golden Knights learned that the hard way when they attempted to troll the Boston Bruins on Twitter before their match-up.

Time to address the giant gila monster in the room.  In the age of social media, everything you do is public.  That works both ways; your accomplishments can be proudly shown to the world to be lauded by the masses, and your epic failures expose you to reproach and ridicule.  The Vegas Golden Knights attempt at humor at the expense of the Boston Bruins (and Bostonians in general) last night rightfully falls under column B.

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with the Twittersphere, the Vegas Golden Knights official Twitter account came into the NHL with a splash.  They were providing well-timed and witty jokes.  They were appropriately edgy, with a real sense of humor, mixed in with a desire to be taken seriously as an organization.

For example, taking out the Habs and putting them in their place:

https://twitter.com/GoldenKnights/status/910572952478822400

When the Sharks wanted to dance, gladly agreeing to tango:

https://twitter.com/GoldenKnights/status/903740058703769600

They also brilliantly trolled Sidney Crosby and Pittsburgh Penguins fans by doing a list of the Top Things #87, which included Vadim Shipachyov and minority owner Rob Gronkowski, and no one else.  And then, when Penguins fans were up in arms, basically pretending as if they didn’t know who Crosby was.  Immature?  Sure, but pretty fun to see.

All of these jokes are above-board, well crafted, thought out responses.  Best of all, they’re actually funny.  They don’t come close to the line of inappropriate.  The Canadiens and San Jose jokes are good faith barbs back at organizations that are actually coming after them.  The Crosby thing, well, I can get behind that because if you win back-to-back championships, expect people to take their shots at you.

However, the VGK Twitter controller, or social media director, may very well find himself/herself in hot water.  The all-in-good-fun humor came to abrupt halt last night before the game between Vegas and the Bruins.

So what was so bad?

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If you’ve seen the movie “Ted,” starring Boston guy Mark Wahlberg, you know it isn’t exactly a family movie night special.  I have seen the movie, and find it to be funny.  One of those “so stupid it’s funny” comedy movies.  And hell, it features a Shawn Thornton cameo, so it’s hard to go wrong.  But while it was a popular movie, it’s not exactly one that was so transcendent that it worked its way into pop culture that it gets referenced on a regular basis.

When Vegas announced the lines and scratches for the Bruins before the game last night, every player listed was actually a girl’s name, many of them “white trash” names.

If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t get the joke, there’s a scene in the movie where Mark Wahlberg is trying to guess the name of the new lady his teddy bear Ted is dating.  He goes off to list dozens of names before Ted interjects with Tami-Lynn.

I’ll let you read the rest for yourself.   ***Update*** As of publication of this article, the tweets have since been deleted.

My take on it

I’m all for fun and games, and if you’ve followed our Twitter account (which you DEFINITELY should), you know that I love poking fun at other FanSided blog Twitter accounts for NHL teams.  We keep it above-board and professional, and mostly like to use GIFs that accurately display our emotions and jokes themselves.  Joking like that can be a lot of fun.

But resorting to calling the entire Bruins organization girls?  Yeah, not exactly a joke done in good taste.  AND THEN, to spend the entire game tweeting out words spelled as if you’re speaking in a Boston accent…get a clue!  You already butchered any chance at humor when you sent out the first tweets.  You gotta know when to stop.

I get it, Ted was set in Boston and people from Boston have accents.  Ha ha, really dug deep for those jokes.  Lots of movies are set in Boston.  If you wanted to reference the theater, why not announce the starting line-up as Matt Damon – Mark Wahlberg – Chris Evans as forwards, Casey and Ben Affleck on defense, and Leonard Nimoy in net?

I think the worst part about it was that as they were getting called out for it by MANY people (take a look if you don’t believe me), they refused to do a mea cupla and acknowledge the misstep.  Take the loss and move on.  What makes it even worse than that is that it’s amazing to read the replies and see how even more misogynistic people got defending it.  That only compounds the already unfunny “joke.”

Call me the fun police or a snowflake.  Tell me to “relax, it’s just a joke.”  But I have a wife that I love, and a daughter who will be born any day now.  I spend my days surrounded by strong, confident women, and I hope someday that I’ve instilled in my daughter a belief that she can be anything she wants to be, including a NHL player.  I’ll be damned if I sit idly by and not comment when I see something like this take place.

Next: Bruins were bad in Vegas

You want to be a funny Twitter account, Vegas?  Go ahead, more power to you.  I thought you were off to a great start early in your organization’s existence.  However, jokes that could alienate a large portion of your fanbase, and the casual fan who may either (a) be female, or (b) is someone who doesn’t like jokes this this?  Not exactly a good look for you.  To quote everyone’s favorite American Idol judge Randy Jackson, “it’s a no for me, dawg.”