Fingers furiously typing away on the keyboard responding to outlandish claims and accusations, how could people be so naïve? Such thoughts and actions have been provoked often on a recently created Facebook page, Return Piedmont to Oakland, which has gained much attention through the Piedmont community.
The page popped up on Oct. 21 with their title description, “Piedmont is a wealthy ‘city’ that is surrounded on all four sides by the great city of Oakland, California. A city should not be inside another city.”
The page has continued to post various reasons why Piedmont should become part of Oakland, ranging from the fact that Nancy Bostrom, the woman who lived in the same house as her dead mother at the same time ran for City Council; to the added benefits the new paid taxes from Piedmont would bring.
Another claim is that the creator of the page has discussed with Oakland Mayor Jean Quan the possibility of bringing Piedmont back to Oakland. The page further claims that Quan was both supportive in this idea and had been making plans to act on it alongside the creator of the page.
When contacted about this claim, the Chief of Staff for the Mayor of Oakland, Anne Campbell Washington, replied saying that she was not aware of any conversation between the page creator and Quan occurring.
Many students have both seen the page and either commented on posts, made their own posts, or both. Senior Jason Kuh has commented replies and various memes in an attempt to “troll” the creator of the page and others; however he is not sure whether his posts are achieving its goal. Trolling, defined by Urban Dictionary, is “the art of deliberately, cleverly, and secretly pissing people off, usually via the internet, using dialogue.”
Kuh said he is unsure of whether or not the person in charge is serious, but thinks there’s a high probability that he is. He said he thinks that the claims of the creator talking to the mayor’s office are bogus.
“If he actually is doing this seriously, he really doesn’t seem to have that many people supporting him except a handful of high schoolers from the Bay Area that don’t like Piedmont for whatever reason,” Kuh said.
Senior Kevin Hughes does not view the page as being serious and believes that the creator has created the Facebook page just to poke fun at Piedmonters and to draw a reaction.
“I think the creator is definitely trying to rustle some jimmies, if you will, [and] I think it’s working because people are getting angry at him,” Hughes said.
Senior Ken Pan agrees with Hughes, saying that he never believed even for a second that the page was serious and because of this fact, has gone alone with Kuh and continued to “troll” the page.
“Lots of people feel that the page is for “the LOLs” but some others took it very seriously and wrote paragraphs upon paragraphs of replies,” Pan said.
“I think most people in Piedmont view it as a joke because to us, it seems too outlandish to happen,” Kuh said.
According to the City of Piedmont website, Piedmont was founded in 1907, and the land that now comprises the city was taken from a large ranch called Rancho San Antonio, which was so massive that it covered present-day areas of Piedmont, Oakland, and Berkeley.
“I think the creator of this page was either running a social experiment, or just trolling. I guess you can say it’s working, seeing how many posts it got on its wall within one night,” Pan said.
