What started as a Facebook event to recruit employees for a new bar in Austin, Texas, has turned into a mass trolling of steampunk-ian proportions. On the event page for the Steampunk Saloon, which opened in December, employers of the bar stated they were looking to hire “extraordinary individuals” as bartenders, bar-backs, and security. On Wednesday night, the Internet delivered.
Dusting off their aged daguerreotypes and brushing up on their grandiloquent Victorian vernacular, Facebook users flocked to the event page to poke fun at the 19th-century industrialist science fiction genre that is steampunk. From inquiring if the bar was hiring “Bruce Springsteam and the E-Promenade Troupe” to suggesting the bar switch to eco-friendly “Solarpunk,” trolls showcased their steampunk knowledge and comedic talents, putting to shame the ornate, antiquated romanticism that the steampunk genre so lovingly encompasses.
Austinite Megan Alba said she caught wind of the heckling when a Facebook friend invited her to the event page. Though jokes were already posted when she visited the page, Alba said she thinks her friend was the impetus for the mass trolling, as he invited a large group of people to the page, and was later blocked from the page for spamming.
“I thought it would be funny to let my nerd flag fly with a witty comment about post-punk,” Alba said. “I think steampunk is way silly, and it’s even sillier that there’s a huge-ass bar on West Sixth [St.] dedicated to a marginal interest like that. I don’t have anything personal against the bar.”
While the folks at Steampunk Saloon took down a majority of the trolling posts and even blocked a few users—”We apologize for the deletion of some of your highly creative posts – We’re still attempting to figure out the inner workings of Facebook,” they posted on their Facebook page—other users fought back, posting more Steampunk-troll content Thursday afternoon before the recruiting event.
Steampunk Saloon has since stopped doing damage control and left the latest comments up. Though two counter events were posted to Facebook in response to the bar’s seemingly silly theme and mass deletion of trolling comments, the recruitment event on Thursday proceeded with little fanfare. Despite the continued promise of transportational pipe organs and zeppelins, this man’s homemade goggles were the only constructive procurement of the placid evening.
So much for steaming the castle. *post-industrial snare drum and cymbal crash* *Dusty pecks feverishly at his fitted leather overalls* *smaller bowtie sprouts even smaller bowtie*
Photo via Ever Falling/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)