Dear readers,
We appreciate you checking out our site, reading our posts, and following us through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. While we’ve only had the site up for just over a month, you may have read some of our satire that we’ve posted on Saturdays and dubbed Satireday. After careful consideration, we have decided to end our posting of satirical pieces.
As an organization, Silver Spring Inc has a mission, and brand values. We have the amazing opportunity to live in a great community, and we’ve released content to try to contribute to that community. We try to attract audiences to highlight important information about Silver Spring, provide a platform for our community voices and creativity as well as connect community members to facilitate conversations about Silver Spring. We have used our satire in order to draw larger audiences, and for the most part that has worked. The satire we have released has attracted more traffic than the majority of our posts.
The satire, however, is not consistent with our brand values. One of those values is positivity. We try to contribute to our community and not detract from it. While we earned some fans due to the satire that we’ve posted, we’ve also alienated some individuals, as well as hurt and disrespected certain institutions in Silver Spring. We don’t want to do that, and as long as our satire will have that effect on any part of our community, we can not, in good conscience, continue to create that type content.
For those that have enjoyed that satire, we hope you will understand our decision. For those that have been hurt by our satire, we sincerely apologize and hope that our efforts moving forward can restore your faith in our organization. We hope to having a lasting impact on Silver Spring, and we want that impact to be a positive one. We welcome your feedback and, again, thank you for reading.
Sincerely,
Pete Tan
Co-Founder
7 COMMENTS
Sounds like a tough decision and I for one enjoyed the satire pieces and appreciate the responsibility of honoring inclusivity and positivity. Key and Peele’s story on cover of Time magazine discuss this same topic – balancing humor with political correctness: http://time.com/22993/key-and-peele-make-fun-of-everything/. Look forward to more posts!
Thanks so much for reading, Tip. The Time article is great, and Key and Peele do a great job of articulating important aspects to this topic. I, personally, believe that nothing is off limits, as long as it’s considered and intelligently delivered. That being said, we’re not a comic site. We’re a community business with brand values, and we attempt to be funny when appropriate (emphasis on “attempt”). It was a hard choice, and not one we took lightly, but we are confident this is the right direction in order for us to move forward. Thanks again for reading. We’ll have more posts in the future as we’re bringing on new contributors, and you’ll find some comedy in there as well, but it won’t be my jerkface satire.
Never apologize.
Wow. We’re going to look like even bigger jerks when we redact our apology.
Woot! A comment from Silver Spring Singular. We’re flattered. Thanks for reading, and keep up the good work. We would love to interview you. If you have the slightest interest, email us at [email protected].
Seriously though, what is the point in having a Silver Spring blog if you don’t use it to ruthlessly mock City Place. IT DESERVES IT.
city place IS sh*tty place.
the post was right.
i’m with sligo. be like dan synder and say NEVER
Never apologise.
Well, we’re not really fans of Dan Snyder, either, but thanks for reading and the feedback!