Saturday, May 3, 2014

Best Fans St. Louis--How I Was Blocked by a Terrible Twitter Account

In the past, I have written positively of @BestFansStLouis, a Twitter account devoted mostly to retweets of racist, sexist, homophobic, and overly hostile Cardinals fans. I was never bothered by the account's obvious slant--there are similar, albeit less popular accounts devoting themselves to other fan bases. And while I understand people not wanting to follow accounts which put hate speech into one's Twitter feed, I do wholeheartedly endorse shaming those who propagate such vitriol. And for a long time, Best Fans St. Louis did this.

But it stopped. The account became excruciatingly lazy. Instead of pointing out people saying genuinely deplorable things, the retweets became a de facto robot devoted to those who referenced going to "Bush Stadium" (note: a simple Twitter search confirms that "Rigley Field" is a thing, and that's a far more egregious misspelling), to those who do the wave, and to those who were clearly looking to troll the account or ridicule the kinds of people who get retweeted regularly by it. For example, I once got retweeted by BFSTL for suggesting that the Cardinals retire the number ten in honor of our fans (I think I may have even spelled our as "are" because subtlety is overrated anyway)--anybody who knows the Cardinals (that #10 is already retired, for Tony LaRussa) or my personal loathing of the Seattle Seahawks' retirement of the #12 for their fans can pick up on the satire. But BFSTL seems to operate under a search and retweet method which, while lazy, was tolerable. I don't expect Twitter accounts to thoroughly vet everything they retweet.

But then, Best Fans St. Louis wrote what is, with no close competition, the dumbest tweet of their career.



In case, for whatever reason, you cannot fully grasp how terrible this tweet is, here's a quick rundown of a few of the absurdities of it.

1. This news article is from 1887. At first, I thought it was a reflection on the St. Louis Browns franchise that turned into the Baltimore Orioles, but it turns out that this news actually predates the founding of the Browns. 1887 is also known as "sixty years before ANY baseball franchise allowed black players onto their teams". I'm not defending the actions of any of these teams, but to chalk it up as a problem somehow reflective of St. Louis or of the Cardinals organization is beyond asinine. Like, if you want to go this route, at least mention Enos Slaughter or something. But this would still make for a dumb tweet because...

2. This has nothing to do with the fans. If your entire point is to ridicule St. Louis fans as racists, this article is a red herring. Forget that virtually nobody alive today's parents were alive to be part of this movement--the movement was not a fan revolt.

3. BFSTL is run by a Cubs fan. Whether it's his avatar, his tendency to greatly step up tweets during Cubs games (yes, the Cubs are a rival, but the Reds are a more contentious one), his retweeting of Blues fans while playing Chicago in hockey, or his occasional tendency to tweet and then immediately delete a comment on Chicago sports, it's abundantly obvious. This is fine and not unexpected. But, well, you shouldn't throw stones if you live in a glass house.

This was a link I sent to BFSTL in reaction to the article, in addition to normal general ridicule. It isn't fair to Cubs fans to consider this an indictment of all of them, but at least it happened within the last 126 years. But anyway, here was BFSTL's response to my criticism (deleted, of course, because cowardice): "25 RTs...weird! Thanks for your valuable feedback!"

Here is my reply.



Here is my good friend (said with the same voice inflection used by Michael Wilbon to describe Magic Johnson) Nick's better reply.



And, of course, we met similar fates.

It is truly an honor to have been blocked by an account that retweets horrible people. It makes me quite confident that I am doing something right. It also reflects a Twitter account that has completely lost its way--an account which has been told by fanboys so much that it is absolutely wonderful that it doesn't even try anymore. It is an account that cares not for your criticisms because it places its value on retweets.

This is not a good tweet. It has 564 retweets.

It's a shame, really. This account had done some good work. But at this point, it's become a joke. It is a self-congratulatory ideological mess that doesn't even bother to dig deep and would rather rest on the fact that Deadspin loves it than produce something resembling content. I've thought about unfollowing it--I'm all for hate-follows but it had become boring, and that's a problem. But luckily, because I wouldn't get in line, BFSTL proactively made sure I didn't follow it.
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