Tampere goes viral in Russia
16.6.2016The Government of Moscow mixed up Moscow with Tampere, Finland. Thanks to the mistake, Tampere went viral on Twitter and other social media, as well as grabbed a solid portion of attention in the leading online newspapers in Russia.
What happened?
On June 13, the official Twitter account of the Government of Moscow tweeted:
"It's impposible not to love this city! #Moscow"
There would be nothing special about the tweet if the attached picture was not one of Tampere.
The first to notice this awkward mix up was a parliamentarian Evgeny Budnik. He wrote on his Twitter:
"We guessed that the mayor loved another city, not the one he governs. Well, at least now we know, what city"
Shortly after that, dozens of Twitter users noted in comments that a night view over Tammerkoski is not from Moscow. Pleasantly, quite many recognized the view being from Tampere, or leastwise Finland:
"This is a Finnish city of Tampere."
"Moscow is dreaming of being Tampere."
"Moscow is governed by the Finns and they are being nostalgic and homesick."
The picture with the original text went viral and collected thousands of likes and reposts. For example, a post about the issue made by a popular page Lentach on Vkontakte social network gathered around 8000 likes.
Next morning Moscow tried to ride out of this delicate situation with a new tweet:
"Hey all the attentive friends! Now we can be sure that you are not so easily misled, and you’ll always recognize your beloved city out of a thousand!"
However, the new message triggered a big wave of jokes about other cities that are also impossible not to love. Social media users started posting photos of European capitals and attractive resorts tagging them as Russian provincial towns.
"It’s impossible not to love this city! #Rostov"
Soon, the phrase exceeded the bounds of the city topic and was adopted to various contexts.
"It’s impossible not to love this president #Putin"
More than 10 online media in Russia reported on the case, including Meduza, Moskovskij Komsomolets (MK), Gazeta.ru. Meduza’s article was shared more than 700 times on Facebook and about 500 times on Vkontakte. The official Twitter account of the Moscow Government boasts of more than 200,000 followers.
The Government of Moscow, however, made the buzz work to its benefit and turned the meme into a new slogan for their city.
Tampere Region answered the tweet:
”Greetings from Tampere, Moscow! We love you too. www.visittampere.ru #TampereAllBright #Finland”