There was some rather exciting drama unfolding over at Ravelry recently after the General Council of the United States Olympic Committee sent a snarky note to the owners of Rav a note saying that the people of Ravelry were not allowed to refer to the non profit, Olympic support knit along as "Ravelymics"
This particular event has been going on yearly for some time, and consists of people getting together to watch the Olympics, support the athletes, and do their own version of going that extra mile by trying to say, knit a whole sweater in two weeks, or similar intense projects. It's always been in good fun and a way for people to try and get into the spirit of things, but apparently that was an issue this year since the General Council sent that note, which included this very well thought out turn of phrase.
"We believe using the name “Ravelympics” for a competition that involves
an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others,
tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games. In a sense, it
is disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes and fails to recognize
or appreciate their hard work."
They took a lot of egg on the face for that too, so you'd have thought they'd have started running their choices through a few more filters, but apparently not. Nope, they decided that a craft a long, which has brought people to watch who otherwise had no interest in the Olympics, was not only theoretically copyright infringement and 'diluting the brand' but actually insulting.
Is this a good time to mention that Ravelry has something like five million members at this point? And that a majority of them got REALLY. REALLY FUCKING MAD?
Anyway. The Council issued another statement, which I think boiled down to "Oops, sorry." And it sounds like the Ravelympics will continue as planned, along with an entirely half assed apology. Here it is folks.
“As a follow-up to our previous statement on this subject, we would again like to apologize to the members of the Ravelry community. While we stand by our obligation to protect the marks and terms associated with the Olympic and Paralympic Movements in the United States, we sincerely regret the use of insensitive terms in relation to the actions of a group that was clearly not intending to denigrate or disrespect the Olympic Movement. We hope you’ll accept this apology and continue to support the Olympic Games.”
Apparently also the original statement was over the signature of someone who was supposedly an intern... so apparently they're trying to say that they just let their interns send out rude statements willy nilly. That seems a bit bogus since letting an person in training send out LEGAL DOCUMENTS without reviewing them is just BEGGING for a world of self inflicted pain. That's like swinging a baseball bat at your knee just to see what will happen. The answer is pretty much always 'something bad'. In this case it's a few million still really annoyed knitters, many of which have now been left with a big nasty taste in their mouth and a lack of desire to have anything to do with the actual Olympics.
Personally I'm just damned impressed that this is the second time that these guys have taken a big PR hit and apparently haven't learned much. Maybe we'll see something a bit classier down the road... but I think my money is on "Gigantic PR train wreck and the McLympic Burger with bacon and extra cheese."
