#OccupyTebow: A Lesson In Community Management

by Chris Lubin, 11/03/2011

The ESPN comments section possesses all the characteristics of a typical comments section: it is juvenile, full of trolls, and often uninspiring. This is one of the last places you’d expect a quality meme to begin organically. But every once in a while nature intercedes and something special happens. When he wrote this post, poor Bill Williamson had no clue that his 1000-word comment would be hijacked and used to inspire one of the funniest, most ferocious memes of the year. Deadspin labeled the crazed trend #OccupyTebow. Here are some of the funnier, SFW posts:

Nickelback > Tebow

Knock Knock…Who’s there? Doesn’t matter, it’s > Tebow

Windows Vista > Tebow

myspace > Tebow

Kim Kardashian’s marriage > Tebow

Justin Beiber’s haircut > Tebow

Chewbacca attempting to keep his fur clean while taking a dump > Tebow

JarJar Binks>Tebow

That one dentist that doesn’t recommend Trident chewing gum for his patients that do chew gum > Tebow

If there is one guy on the planet who could generate such a craze, it is Tim Tebow. Just a week ago, the #Tebowing craze completely overtook the Internet. (ProTip: Once object of meme acknowledges and participates in said meme, meme is dead #RIPTebowing)

This isn’t a post about Tim Tebow though. There have been more than enough words written about the phenomenon that is ‘Football Jesus’. This is about “community management”, the sapien to the cro magnon era “forum mod.” No matter what you want to call it, the ESPN mods broke some of fundamental rules to forum moderation and community management.

There are two things that will severely piss off a commenter and a community of commenters in general:

1.) Deletion of their comments

2.) No explanation for deletion of comments

The article was posted about four days ago, but ESPN didn’t start deleting X>Tebow comments until two days ago- and that’s when it officially took off. Deadspin wrote a post claiming that ESPN.com launched a ‘Tet Offensive’ and the flame was fanned from there. I tried counting how many comments were coming in but it was impossible to keep up. Business Insider claims that over 100 comments per minute related to ‘X>Tebow’ were being posted. Many of the early comments addressed ESPN’s Draconian moderation and deletion of any satirical Tebow comments.

The greatest lesson learned from this incident is one of the basic tenets of marketing: communication is key. If someone from ESPN.com explained why comments were being deleted, the meme may not have spread quite as fast. If ESPN.com moderators weren’t so initially sensitive about it, there’s a good chance this may have never taken off. The rest of us should be thankful because it is still going strong and guarantees a laugh or two.

There are times when it is OK to delete comments, but not just because someone is speaking negatively about your brand or making fun of a post. Suffocating people’s freedom of expression will only fuel anger, which can contribute to a larger uprising such as that experienced by Chap Stick recently.

Comments Acceptable to Delete (Most of the time)