I do have a relatively limited understanding of the whole Fanspo discord vs Fanspo website beef, due mainly to my not being involved in the dispute, but I’ve seen a lot of discourse around the topic and figured I may as well share my take.

First of all, I feel like there is not a mutual understanding of how the Fanspo discord is an entirely different community from the Fanspo website. The website folks don’t really have any type of association with the discord people anymore, but the discord folks consistently come on the website and interfere with website community stuff, for example removing FijianThunder as a s/general mod shortly after he was added, with no mod misconduct to warrant said removal. If the discord people want to come back to the website, I’d welcome them back, I know a couple of the folks involved and they were great creators who I’d love to see come back, but I’d rather the relationship be one of real engagement rather than just the occasional interference between the two communities. Again, this is far from a condemnation of the discord folks, I have had a good relationship with quite a few of them in the past, but I am trying to educate them on a dynamic that they may not have even noticed having not been on the site actively in some time.

Regarding the specific situation that has recently caused the boiling of tensions between discord people and website people, I do have to condemn transphobia and nazism, but I have seen a lot of anger flying around in response to this. While I can understand why these responses happen, I must also point out that education is the best way to end bigotry, and not yelling and screaming. As much as this sounds like I’m soft on bigotry, I’m not, I am just experienced in political discussions, and I know that the more civil one can remain in these discussions, and the more it can be a debate rather than an argument, the more willing people are to move their positions. Yelling activates people’s defense mechanisms, even over the internet, and actually reinforces their bigotry in their mind because they see that the people who support the opposing position are rude jerks who like to scream and yell. I do have to commend Mohid for how he has handled this situation, all of the comments I have seen from him have been very much focused on educating and not reprimanding, which is the only way to make real change.

Additionally, we must reflect on the reason that Fanspo was created: as a social media for SPORTS fans, specifically to contrast the politically and socially charged social media sites like Reddit and Twitter. And yet, this site is plunging into the same political fights as those two. Like Coreynaylor, I’m a very political guy in real life (and even in places like Twitter), but I keep the politics off of this site except for the intersection of politics and sports. That’s the whole point of this site. If you want to put out political posts, that’s what Twitter and literally every other social media site on the market is for. I’ve used Twitter in the past to get my political debating energy out of me, and it is a good site if you just want to argue politics, as some of us do. I say how Corey is a very political dude, as he mentioned in his article of a similar nature to this one, but I have no idea what his actual politics are, which is how it ought to be here on Fanspo without me digging into his name off the site. The only political parties that belong on this site are FijianThunder’s Wilts and NonWilts. Arguments on here should be sports-focused and in good fun, and if you want to fight about something else, take it somewhere else.

This is a relatively unrefined article, I wrote it in about 20 minutes, and if I missed anything big, feel free to let me know in the comments. But it’s time to end this stupid bickering between the discord community and the website community. While I do condemn a couple of actions, I do not condemn any individual over any of this beef. Let’s put it behind us and show the brand new users, who see nothing but fighting right now, what Fanspo is all about.