Culture

SeaWorld Have Launched A Twitter Q&A About Killer Whales, And It’s Not Going Well At All

"How does being used as a surfboard improve Kasatka's health and well-being? #AskSeaWorld"

by Meg Watson  27 March 2015

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It’s been nearly two years since the release of Blackfish — the award-winning film which alleged that SeaWorld were seriously mistreating their killer whales — and for some reason, people are refusing to forget about it.

SeaWorld continue to heavily dispute the documentary, instead referring to it as “propaganda”, but they’re still facing legislation that seeks to outlaw the practice of keeping these animals in captivity as well as class action cases in which disgruntled customers are seeking compensation. The company’s stock has since dropped by about a third and NPR report their number of visitors has been slashed by one million in the last year alone.

Obviously, they’ve been trying to turn this around for awhile. Late last year, they launched a video called “Sweet Tweets” which turned around Jimmy Kimmel’s viral bit and emphasised the good things that happen at the theme park. Last month they quietly started launching a series of Youtube clips that draw attention to their whale care. And this week, they’ve pulled out the big guns: a $10 million PR blitz that includes a concerted and ongoing Q&A on Twitter.

But, if the public’s perception of you is so bad you can’t even do “Mean Tweets” properly, it seems like social media’s probably not the best place for you to turn.

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#AskSeaWorld

The main thrust of the campaign is to face the public’s criticism head on, and provide a platform for their own narrative. Accordingly, they’ve launched AskSeaWorld.com and have invited the public to engage with them in a Q&A on Twitter.

Over the last few days, they’ve been resolutely posting pictures of killer whales — which has been somewhat of a rarity over the last few years — asking people to join their “truth team”, placing doubt on organisations like PETA, and attempting to start a conversation about their whale care.

It’s a noble goal: addressing this kind of problem is the only way to get past it and this attempt at transparency is a promising step for the organisation. But all that doesn’t really take into account quite how much people seem to hate them.

Accordingly, the questions have been less than ideal:

In fact, the website designed to host their answers to these questions is predominately filled with pre-planned FAQs, with only handful of questions coming from actual people. And now, others are jumping on the failing hashtag.

PETA have also been running their own campaign in protest, offering people the opportunity to send an automated letter of complaint to the amusement park through their own dramatically named website, SeaWorld Of Hurt. It’s estimated that around 1.1 million people have already taken advantage of the service.

“Instead of spending millions of dollars in creating this website and trying to rehab its image, it should be spending the money on rehabbing the orcas confined there so they can live out their days in a sea pen in as natural an environment as possible,” PETA’s Jared Goodman told USA Today. 

What’s worse: all this just hit the late-night circuit.

Good luck, SeaWorld!

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Feature image via WikiCommons.