It's been a week since the now infamous photo appeared. From the moment we found out the real story, the PPP moved to show just how much we support Mike. The first thing we did was to let everyone know that OUR message board was up for fans to express their opinion either way. The Wall on Mike's fan page was temporarily taken off, however the PPP Wall was on fire with various opinions.
I made sure to let people know that they can feel free to express their opinions. We saw so many reactions. Shock, disappointment, anger, sympathy, hope, annoyance, faith, were represented. Even though I didnt like many comments, I was happy that the PPP board was available to those who had so many strong immediate reactions.
Our second sign of Michael Fred solidarity was dedicating our Facebook profile pics and status. PPP member Kaitlin created an awesome pic and tagged most of us in it. For 24 hours most PPP members had the pic up to show our full support. And ever since that day, many of us still post pix of MP. Why? Since day 1 the PPP were dedicated to showing how much we admire, support, and adore Michael Phelps.
Our page has well over 1300 photos of him, we recently topped 15,000 Wall posts, and we make sure to 'rock' his main fan page wall from time to time. :) The harder non supporters push, the harder we push back.
The third phase of solidarity was to get the words, pix, vids, blogs, etc of Michael Fred on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and of course, Blogger. Upon the news that Kelloggs will not renew MP contract, many PPP are staging a boycott of Kelloggs products. Some of us are going out of our way to support Subway who continue to support Mike at this time.
I'll be honest, I never expected to become one of those groups of people to get enraged and want to protest and start boycotts. I dont eat much Kelloggs cereal anyway. But Im showing my support to defend the right of someone to be a flawed person. Meaning although I dont support certain behavior, I believe that people make bad choices. We've all done it, and will do it. Thats why we're so upset. How dare anyone sit in judgement of Michael Fred's behavior? Like Candace wrote in her blog, I think many people's disappointment in Mike comes from the shattering of an unrealistic ideal. People come up with this image of a celebrity that is very non human. So they get upset when the image vanishes.
At any rate, the PPP keep supporting Mike and swimming in general. We're happy that he's back in the pool. We hope he'll be awesome at his next competition. And some of us cant wait until July when the PPP will be in full force at the Conoco Phillips National Championships & World Championship Trials!
