Depending on who you follow/care about/ignore, the ‘broken sun’ remains a life and death catastrophe or just one of those things. With TikTok coverage of first rehearsals being universally panned, there was little else to talk about in the world of fan. And then …
Thank whatever deity or non-deity you worship for Ronela Hajati. Clearly being of sound mind when it comes to creating a buzz, the Albanian team triumphed in a social media takeover yesterday. What follows is masterclass in PR.
Twitforks at the ready
The non-story started when someone at the Eurovision web team got cold feet about uploading one of the professional photographer pictures from Saturday morning’s rehearsals. They removed the offending picture – see above. After certain fan sites waded in, Twitforks were gathered and paraded the length of the information superhighway. Heads should roll, the otherwise terribly reasonable and not at all unhinged good people of Twitter and Reddit proclaimed.
Chinese whispers turned an ill-advised admin decision into censorship not seen since the Great Firewall of China, before the mood mutated into a protest against female oppression. Soon there was talk of the EBU/Eurovision forcing Ronela to change her provocative choreography.
Crying face
Things got worse when La Hajati happened to post something that neither confirmed nor denied the rumour.
😭😭😭😭😭
— Ronela Hajati (@RonelaHajati) May 1, 2022
The day rumbled on with nobody from the Albanian camp stepping in to stop escalating calls for the head of the producer, until late last night a sheepish online message from within Ronela’s team confirmed the choreography wouldn’t be changing. Suggesting that maybe, just maybe, the whole thing was made up.
And as for ‘that’ photo – the one the EBU didn’t want you to see. It’s absolutely everywhere and everyone is talking about the song and staging.
Chapeau Ronela. You know how to work it (and fandom).