0
0
We’re not suggesting he be deemed a dangerous sex offender for life, but he seems to have topped Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin as this week’s Most Hated Person, at least among the locals on social media. A guy who decided his jacket wasn’t enough yellow for Longyearbyen decided to embellish the skateboard ramp in the town center with his naturally-generated watercolors, apparently unaware someone else decided his ought to captured as a portrait. Not that he cared where he found out, according to Diana Snibsøer, who on a local Facebook page notes she “confronted him with piss photo and said that it was the play ramp to the kids, but he did not care!!!!” Let just say the number of responses far surpassed those on posts about a certain Russian’s visit, both in number and ferocity. The scary thing is it’s not the first urine-related defacing of children’s equipment we’ve had during the past year, thanks to the guy who decided to pee on the fence at the kindergarten while the tots watched last summer…
And just so we don’t rule out all of this week’s suspects, Aftenposten accompanied its coverage of Rogozin’s visit with an article about China’s sometime’s suspicious Arctic ambitions, choosing as it cover girl Po Lin Lee, whose first act here was donating 500,000 kroner in 2013 for the giant Santa’s mailbox on the road into the town center. Combine that with the fact she’s from Hong Kong and, yeah, she’d be a good undercover agent…
Of course, we’re not just about disseminating dregs about foreigners, especially when our domestic higher-ups are all-too-eager to embrace trashy things themselves. Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit did just that Tuesday outside the infamous rubbish hut built last summer from trash collected along the north shores of Spitsbergen, with the princess declaring it a “fantastic edifice.” The waste-filled art project, built last summer with the help of a grant from the Svalbard Environmental Protection Fund, has been a source of heated local controversy, with some argue it’s ugly and the funds should have been spent on more practical efforts. Bu there wasn’t much social media debate after the royal couple’s visit: “Let it live as a symbol of what discarded or lost at sea and beaches,” was one of the few Facebook comments in response to the visit. The royal couple, accompanied by Minister of Climate and Environment Tine Sundtoft, also toured Longyearbyen’s waste-treatment plant and the Lance research vessel frozen into the sea ice north of Svalbard during their two-day visit that ended Wednesday.
