The 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid were memorable for so many reasons – the Miracle on Ice, Eric Heiden, Roni and Ronny the Racoons, Chuck Mangione’s Olympic theme…
Imagine how cool it would be if a small town in the Adirondacks could once again host the world’s greatest winter sporting event!?
Well, according to this Facebook page – that could be a reality in 2018!
Lake Placid 2018 Facebook Page
As if that wasn’t enough to get you excited, you can also win a t-shirt and a 24 hour trip to visit the Olympic sights in Lake Placid! All you have to do is become a fan of the Facebook page and they will track your IP address and match that with your mailing address. Wow! Sounds fantastic doesn’t it?
Any maybe a bit… silly?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I was raised to believe that if I read something on the internet, then it must be true. But still, I can’t shake the feeling that something about this Facebook page just doesn’t seem right.
What could it be?
I can’t quite put a finger on it, but maybe it is because they spelled ‘comittee’ wrong in their Information Box? No, that isn’t it… that could be an honest mistake.
Hmmmm, maybe it is because the logo they are using is almost exactly the same as the logo for the Garmisch Partenkirchen (GAP) 2011 Ski Event? Eh, I suppose it is possible they paid the same designer and got similar work.
Lake Placid 2018 Logo
The GAP 2011 Logo, look familiar?
Oh wait, now I know why this all seems a little “off” to me.
It is because the bidding for the 2018 Olympics has been over for several months and only 3 cities actually submitted bids. Those cities are: Annecy, France; Munich, Germany; and PyeongChang, South Korea.
So, as much as I hate to disappoint the 1,718 fans of that Facebook page, no… Lake Placid will not have a shot at the 2018 games and no… you will not be getting a t-shirt or a 24-hour trip to the Adirondacks.
It is a hoax. Albeit a well crafted hoax that someone obviously put some effort into… so don’t feel too bad if you fell for it.
Athlete Accommodations, can you imagine the APA approving this?
PyeongChang is in Korea…
The prank has 4000+ fans as of now. I’m sure I’m not the only one who “reported” the page to Facebook, but they don’t seem to want to be bothered…
Y’ouch, that was some sloppy posting on my part. Thanks for the correction.
Pretty amazing that in about 12 hours the amount of fans to that page has more than doubled. I’m fighting the urge to make more fun of them, because I see a few of my friends in that list! 😉
Same here… more and more of my friends are signing up, one even “invited” me to it. Ugh!
The Games are so much larger now than they were in 80… look at the amount of medals handed out compared to now. All the snowboard events, freestyle skiing, curling, short-track, skeleton, women’s hockey… I’m probably forgetting others. Placid is waaaayyy too small for a modern Winter Games.
Lillehammer 1994 will go down in history as the last “small-town” games, and even then, they have 20,000 population. The IOC rejected the thought of a Lake Placid/Montreal bid, so now we’re pretty much stuck having to piggyback on… uh… Albany?
Plattsburgh 2026?
OMG – it has now moved to 2022 and has 12,000 fans!
Yup. Hoaxer suddenly realized his page had been rather torn apart today… also deleted the ripped-off German logo and asked for “fans” to submit a new one (which a bunch of them complied – sigh)…
While he was there, he deleted dozens of comments pointing out how fake the page was, including how all his “future facilities” are slated for Birmingham, Alabama, ridiculously ill-fitting to this region and never be able to support 3 feet of snow piled on their roofs…
It’s not so much the fact there’s a page to promote a Lake Placid bid, but how this guy is still insisting on making “official” pronouncements and pretending he’s the (non-existent) “Olympic Comittee [sic] of New York”.
Changing it from 2018 to 2022 makes the hoax a little less obvious, but still. I’m sure dozens of people have hit “Report this Page” on Facebook, but still no action.
Facebook is going downhill now that all the MySpace kids are flocking to it.
Ok, I am now temporarily ‘blocked’ from facebook for posting the link to this post on several of the entries on that page!
Sheesh!
Blocked from the entirety of Facebook??!
Or just the hoax?
the page cleary is real. The New York Olympic Campaign is a Non profit group organization that works in promotin the olympics to be held in New York State.
Learn your quo asshole. and learn to read and clearly the page dosnt look like that
LOL… yes, it “cleary [sic] is real”. Because there’s fancy logos and sketches and stuff. And it’s on Facebook. It must surely be true.
There’s no such thing as the New York Olympic Campaign, or a “non profit group organization” for that matter, either.
Judging by how you spelled what’s supposedly your own name, “hiliary”, I’m guessing you’re the hoaxer himself — because the page in question is rife with 6th-grader spelling flubs as well (e.g. “dosnt”)…
No need to be angry here. You’ve already fooled 13k+ people, despite the efforts of several who’ve pointed out the holes in your little story, so you’ve already “won”. But you’re delusional if you truly believe you can manage to fool those of us who live in and around Lake Placid and are intensely familiar with the dealings of the APA and ORDA.
If you’re NOT the hoaxer yet truly believe, as per that hoax, that ORDA’s bid “for the Lake Placid Winter Games for 2018 was voided under the terms of the IOC Due to Late entry” – which isn’t even close to how the bidding process works, never mind the sheer absurdity of this ever happening anywhere – then, uh, I’m sorry.
I’ve emailed Ted Blazer and Jeffrey Byrne, President and Vice President of
NYS Olympic Regional Development Authority and pointed them to that facebook page.
They will either confirm that as correct, and if not, they are the ones that can have that page removed.
time will tell, either way.
~ZZ
Wow, this is out of control. I keep waiting for it to die down and then it just… keeps… going. My question is WHY? What’s the point of perpetuating a stupid rumor like this? Whoever is behind it is only going to look like even more of an idiot in the end. Guess it’s fun for him (or her) for now.
Can you all do a favor and pass this around?
It’s the letter I received from Ted Blazer, the President of Lake Placid’s ORDA: http://www.orda.org/newsite/index.php
It’s the email response I received from him, disputing the truth of what that page is saying: http://twitpic.com/179995
Thanks,
~ZZ
Nice job getting confirmation from ORDA. The whole thing is so ridiculous on its own that I didn’t even want to bother — but maybe you’ll have nudged them toward having that page removed. If Facebook can ignore thousands of individuals reporting the page, maybe they won’t ignore the legitimate organization.
Jessica: I think the explanation can be found in that virtually nobody is clicking on to see the “Just Fans” section, so all they’re really seeing is what the hoaxer is putting up there. One still has to set aside all critical thinking to buy this hoax, but it’s not like most Facebookers ever really think twice about becoming a fan of anything…
You’re welcome.
I am really surprised that Facebook is ignoring this, given how many people have ‘reported’ it and given The President of ORDA’s own denial of this.
The owner of that page has been deleting my posts with that Email from ORDA though.
He/she doesn’t want others to know.
He’s trying really hard now… giving out two different dubious Manhattan addresses and referring to those calling him out as “haters”.
It’s depressing to see how many people have apparently accepted this additional meaningless verbiage as proof that he’s legit. As if once you’ve produced a sufficient amount of bull$#^t, people will accept it. Ehh.
Now this facebook page is promting lake placcid 2022!