Who is Thad Castle, anyway?
Our Nov. 23 online article Cumberland eatery victim of social media attack (http://www.comoxvalleyrecord.com/news/402726706.html) struck a nerve with some television viewers, particularly those within the semi-private, not-so-secret Facebook group "HimPower," which was allegedly responsible for the attack on BiblioTaco.
Soon after the article was posted, the Comox Valley Record Newsroom Facebook page lit up with "one star" reviews, similar to what happened with BiblioTaco.
The most common complaint was that we were interviewing fictional characters.
Ironically, these complaints were made in large part by people with fake names on their Facebook accounts. Some identified themselves as members of the HimPower community.
To address the issue, thank you for bringing up the fact that our interviewee shares the same name as a character in a television show. These things happen.
Castle is a popular surname in the Comox Valley. We don't have to look any further than our own newsroom for proof: Bob Castle is our award-winning cartoonist.
In the journalism careers of the staff within our office, we have interviewed a Ronald McDonald, who was not a clown; a Paul Henderson, who has never played hockey; and a Richie Cunningham, who did not appear in a single episode of Happy Days.
In fact, our own editor shares the exact same name as the former Lieutenant Commander of the Starship Enterprise, but he assures us he has never been to outer space.
More importantly, thanks for reading, because that's what matters most, to a newspaper. And that article was indeed popular.
It outranked every article we posted in the past week, and that says a lot, because we are, by a considerable margin, the most popular community newspaper on Vancouver Island, in regards to online presence.
So thanks, HimPower, for boosting our numbers even more.
Of course, the most disconcerting part of the story is that there is a group out there created specifically for young men to attack others on social media.
But we will let the authorities determine how to deal with that.
We are just here to report the news. And our numbers prove, time and time again, when it comes to Comox Valley news, we are the "go to" source.