Parody platform: City officials take satirical Facebook pages in stride

Converting the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge into a draw bridge, incinerating leaves with flamethrowers and random drug testing for SEMO District Fair animals are just some of the posts on a Facebook parody of the city of Cape Girardeau website.

There's a parody of the city of Jackson website, too. It includes a post about the formation of a committee to add "banks" to the sign advertising Jackson as the "city of beautiful homes, churches, school and parks." Another post states "residents should take down last year's Christmas decorations before putting up new ones."

Officials in the two cities are taking the posts in stride.

The city of Cape Girardeau last month posted on its official website that "even we bureaucrats enjoy a good joke. Of course, we would not advocate for reckless driving, renaming the city after a sponsor, keeping grandma in a hot vehicle or anything like that. Laugh and have a good time. If you're unsure if something is true, ask us."

Cape Girardeau city spokeswoman Nicolette Brennan said the only problem is some residents and even some other cities believe the comments are coming from the city's official Facebook page.

Some of the comments poke fun at other cities.

One woman complained about a post that said Cape Girardeau city government planned to attach flamethrowers to city trucks and set fire to piles of leaves raked to the curb, Brennan recalled.

"She was angry and upset," she said.

The post on the parody site read, "We will be able to complete citywide leaf eradication in half the amount of time by using this method."

Brennan said she and others on the city staff have enjoyed many of the humorous posts.

"A lot of it is just fun," she said.

"Fake news is hard to spot for some folks," Brennan wrote in an email to the Southeast Missourian.

Mayor Harry Rediger said he has not looked at the satirical Facebook page and was not aware of it.

"I try to stay as far away from Facebook as I can," he said.

Jackson Mayor Dwain Hahs said he has not received complaints from residents about the parody Facebook page.

Hahs said some residents even enjoy the posts. He said residents have forwarded several of the humorous posts to him.

"I think it is seen as a parody," he said.

Cape Girardeau resident Andy Pritchett created the Cape Girardeau parody page.

"I started this page because I wanted to a few laughs from people within a former group of friends by sharing a few ridiculous things that occur within the city and have it appear as if they were official postings," he said in an email to the Southeast Missourian.

"The page grew much bigger than that after random people started sharing the posts on the page," he added.

Pritchett said the page is clearly marked as "satire/entertainment."

But he said he is not surprised some readers think it is the official city of Cape Girardeau Facebook page.

"Some people tend to believe anything these days they see on the internet, which therefore adds to the humor of the page," he said.

Pritchett said he has no plans to stop posting humorous comments.

He said he did not create the parody of the city of Jackson Facebook page or others in the area, which, he added, were started after he began his page.

Pritchett, who is originally from Farmington, Missouri and moved to Cape Girardeau in 2010, said he enjoys "being the voice to say what others may be feeling but don't have the proper platform to say it."

mbliss@semissourian.com

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