Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Edit to rephrase this - does anyone else believe this is a bit deceptive?



No other tweets are in any fashion like this - most show the event flier with Brown on the cover. I know for certain some people who attended on the basis that this driver would be there racing. Thoughts?

Do you know for sure Tony wont be in the house?

No, I certainly don't - but regardless of if he is or isn't, he's not competing and isn't listed in the heat lineups. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but the tweet makes me think he would be racing. 

I stand corrected - Tony is in the house and just did an interview. Not nearly as bad but still minorly misleading. I'll take the egg on my face though and leave it up. 

Whether he was or wasn't...would anyone go just because of that?  Last time i checked he's only person?  I've never went to a race to watch one person

do it in the dirt

Absolutely - the NASCAR guys always bring in additional fans, regardless of racing or not. I'd assume some of the guys racing even probably get paid to show, but that's pure speculation on my part. 

He damn near gets a standing O just for walking up the steps at Eldora so yes you can bet you're ass that there would be people go just for him.

No different than any other twitter countdown I've seen.  They use a car with the # of days left (their twitter says:  14 days until Osky!).  The next day they probably used Dobmeier's car, then a #12 car the next day, then a #11 (multiple of those to choose from), then a #10, and so on and so on.

C'mon Vande, you're better than that! In the original post, I specifically pointed out that no others were done this way. They didn't Brown with 21 days left, or any other dates with drivers pictures that correlated with a countdown. If it were that way, there would be no issue at all - this one was specifically done and was the only one. 

I guess I could care less about how someone promotes their race personally.  I don't count on ANYONE being there until I see them in the pits (and that includes Outlaw Shows).  You can advertise that Kinser, Schatz, Sammy, etc.  will be there but until I see them in the pits there is no guarantee (anything can happen at any time - car accidents, a family emergency, etc.)

If anyone was basing their attendance at this race based solely on one tweet, they must be pretty naive.  I guess they see tweets from celbrities and believe what they say as gospel too huh??

They didn't ADVERTISE that he'd be there (if he were on thier posters saying "Come watch Tony Stewart Race" I could see your point, but in this setting it means nothing to me.  Social media is just that, social.  They could have a Facebook page and OTHERS could post to it stating Dale Jr. is racing and someone would believe it (sad but true).

So should we take that to believe that posts made on social media can be blatantly false? For example, a dirt track could say they're paying a $1 million to win race on their Twitter and then when drivers show up go ahead and say that "Oh, we just put that on social media - it's only $1,000 to win."

Pretty bad reasoning there. Social media is the new form of posters/flyers. It is absolutely on the same level of advertising as a physical poster or flyer is. Agreed on your last point, but this obviously isn't someone else posting it - it's the official account of the event. 

I don't see the big deal,  it is car #14 (which has raced the FRC in the past) posted 14 days before the race.  

If someone looks at that tweet and makes their decision to attend or not based solely on one photograph from last years show , quite frankly they are not very smart.   It almost makes you wonder how they had enough gray matter to follow "oskychallenges" on twitter to begin with.     They are making technology too easy these days...let's weed out the morons. 

Anyone that believes Social Media as gospel truth needs to realize that twitter, facebook, etc. are just ways to communicate, they are not advertisements or news. 

I could hack someone's twitter account (let's say I hack Eldora just for fun) and tweet out that the King's Royal is going to pay $200,000 to win with $5000 to start.

Do you (A) Believe it as gospel truth or (B) verify it via their website, through a phone call, press release, etc.?

If you chose (A), you are falling into the trap of social media.  Is it a form of communication?  yes.  Is it advertisement?  No.  Is it gospel truth?  No.  Is it entertainment?  sometimes.

My point here is that social media has a greater chance of being inaccurate (or hacked these days).  Heck, with the right amount of computer skills, you can create a ghost website that looks real for a legetimate business and make false claims (it's happened) and take people's$$$ when they try to purchase your false goods online.

I saw a driver tweet out that they were racing at XXX track not too long ago and then about 3 hours later tweet out "plans changed, not racing tonight".  Did they get lambasted for not showing up?  Nope because they're a driver, now if the track had retweeted their first tweet that they were racing at their track, they sure would have...

It wouldn't be worth commenting on if they did car #10 10 days before the race and car #24 24 days before the race and so on. However, they didn't - they didn't do any others at all - just this one. 

There's strong inference on that tweet that Stewart is racing.

I find it hard to believe that you guys have a hard time understanding why someone would come just to see a NASCAR star race. Or is it just a matter of trying to enforce the "dirt track purist" perception that most here attempt to have?

It's not that I have a hard time believing that a NASCAR fan would attend a dirt track race merely based on the fact that Tony Stewart is competing....promoters all over the country have figured this out by now. 

I have a hard time believing that the combination of following @oskychallenge on twitter, knowing that was Tony Stewart in the photograph and NOT knowing that he would most likely NOT be racing this year after his national headline making accident would take a special kind of stupid. 

Give Tmac's PR staff a little bit of credit though....two weeks before yesterday was the time in between Smoke testing his sprint car and his return to competition.   Anything was possible at that time. 

Personally,  I don't think it is worth commenting on at all.  You are trying to read somthing into nothing. 

Fair enough. It seems that this community is OK with this kind of behavior - I just think it's a fairly deceptive practice, but it seems to be a minority opinion. Some of the examples being here are pretty ludicrous - there's a huge difference between unauthorized and legitimate uses of social media. 

A random sidenote - just got a text back from one of the group that went expecting to see Smoke. Sounds like they won't be back, and it wasn't because of the on-track product. Not hard to see why this happens. 

Tell your random text'ers to quit being so f'ing stupid.   If they thought that Smoke was going to be in competition based solely on that one tweet and were so bitterly disappointed by everything else they saw, they shouldn't be allowed to use social media.   Tell them that NASCAR is in Watkins Glen and Monster Trucks have the weekend off but will be in Knoxville Sept 19-20.  (Smoke will most likely be at only one of those events, see if they can figure out which one based on social media)

Well, those are the ones that are not needed at a sprint car race. If they just go to see Stewart, they are idiots. When Stewie was at Huset's last year to race, I saw some of the most stupid people I've ever seen at a dirt track. They clustered around Stewart's pit to the point the crews around them could not work on their cars because the idiots had to see Stewart. I'm still amazed that no one got run over by a sprint car or a push truck.

No not at all. He was there last year it's just a promo photo. Terry does an awesome job. I laugh at all the bitching going on about no POV no Internet etc etc. pay the money and come grill in the puts or wherever and sit down and enjoy one hell of a good show and enjoy the company of others. All the whiners stay home

The funny thing about the photo is...it's Fred Rahmer driving Tonys car at Volusia...