We hope you will be as amazed as us with the huge feedback to the little local story about the kids fishing off the Tongariro SH1 Bridge. It went ballistic!
In over 20 years of posting these fishing reports and other tourist info, this is by far the biggest response we have ever experienced. Unfortunately, a few disgruntled comments were made as well, trying to piggyback off over 400,000 more comments encouraging the boys’ fishing scheme. To maintain standards and avoid offence, we deleted the negative, crude responses.
However, it is sad to see such sick “haters” pop up amongst over 240,000 more positive viewers’ comments. This website was not an appropriate place to broadcast their racist leanings. It is even more strange that they have taken over 22 years to broadcast their objections? We can only assume the kids’ fishing blog set them off, as it was posted coincidentally at the same time. Or was it the previous complaint over TRM posting the photo of their meeting house? Or was TRM’s confession that the motel’s “mockumentary”, Tongariro Skulduggery, recommended the removal of the Waitangi Tribunal over five years ago before the latest review? We will never know, and I do not think they will tell us.
As we are trying to sell the motel (see sign above), their abuse fell on deaf ears anyway. (That was my poor effort at a pun as I lost my hearing – all part of the ageing process I guess.) We were delighted as we could not have dreamed up a better way to promote TRM. The buyers will inherit a huge client database. Even the abuse helped as any controversy always attracts more interest. The response shows how powerful the web is to get any message across.
The secret to our website success is no secret at all. TRM fishing reports started more as a novelty fishing report in 2004, long before Facebook and the others arrived. The consistent entertaining and informative posts over the years built our huge network of regular supporters. We owe it all to you.
Despite the tiny disgruntled number who took exception, we enjoyed sharing the overriding strong sense of local humour and the many great childhood memories captured in the positive replies. It confirms the strong support that TRM has developed over the years. Thank you so much to so many other “inmates” for their amusing comments. We appreciate it more than we can say.
The latest count from the post is:
Views: 403,529 – from 248,492 viewers; total engagement 51,994, 5K likes, and over 300 comments. We apologise if you could not find your comment on the schedule; there were just too many to list them all.
The original photo and blog posted last Thursday, 27 August, was as follows:
