BYT, it of the suicide-note competition, realized that not everyone finds killing oneself “cute” and backpedaled on its free-ticket prompt. Instead of asking readers to comment with a mock suicide note to win tickets to Morrissey‘s Dec. 7 show at Strathmore, the site changed its prompt.
I asked managing editor Logan Donaldson why BYT changed the contest. He writes in an email:
We appreciate you wanting to be thorough on this and we feel we’ve been very cooperative in the process, but we felt that since our goal wasn’t to ruffle any feathers with this in the first place, and the original post featured comments from our readers that chose to participate in the contest which were now being called out as inappropriate as well, taking the giveaway down from the publicly published side of things was the way to go at this point. That way it won’t cause any more potential aggravation. If the thing can be put to rest (no puns intended) – we feel that would be best.
BYT has also put the ticket giveaway page behind a login screen. Despite verifying my login information, I wasn’t able to see the page. I asked Donaldson to share with me the new prompt language. He wrote, “…the gist was: do a madlibs of Smiths/Morrissey lyrics to make a cu—silly sentence.”