INDReporter

LCG scores Pyrrhic victory in battle with satirical \"LCG\" on Facebook

by Walter Pierce

Lafayette Consolidated Government convinced Facebook to force Lafayette City Government to change its name, but in its fight with the satirical version of itself managed to bring fake LCG to wider attention.

It's now called "Unofficial: Lafayette City Government." The Facebook page formerly known as Lafayette City Government, which so irritated officials at Lafayette Consolidated that they issued a press release on the satirical page, was indeed forced by Facebook to change its name — a fact confirmed by Unofficial: Lafayette City Government in its most recent post:

After days of crying about it and filing complaints, LCG got Facebook to force us to change our name. That's also after they reported something we posted to try to get our personal accounts suspended.
Maybe we should just change our name to Lafayette Constipated Government since then [sic] want to be salty.

In the head-scratcher of a press release notifying residents about the satirical Facebook page, real LCG noted at the time, pettily, that Lafayette City Government had a mere 200 "likes," as if likes on Facebook equal legitimacy. Those likes have soared to nearly 2,000 since then — a testament to the old saying "any publicity is good publicity."

We don't know who the administrators of the site are, but we did reach out to them with a few questions last week:

IND: I think y'all can make a strong argument that you are a satire site and therefore should be protected by the 1st Amendment.

U:LCG: Yes, we are satirical and we make it obvious to anyone who can use a bit of critical thinking that we aren't the real thing.

IND: What prompted you to start the site?

U:LCG: Because I felt that there wasn't a serious page out there making fun of Lafayette.

IND: It seems to place Lafayette before a mirror and the reflection is ... let's say less than flattering yet bitingly accurate at times. Was that your intention?

U:LCG: Absolutely. There are good and bad things about Lafayette, and if this forces our community to confront the issues this city needs to deal with, then this will have been a smashing success.

IND: Do you/y'all live in Lafayette, native to Lafayette?

U:LCG: Yes

In a message today notifying us that they had been forced to change their name, U:LCG says, "Knowing the collective IQ of the people who were confused by the name, changing our name isn't going to help."