Sega Apologizes for Twitter Fans’ Bad Behavior
Tristan Oliver | November 13, 2009
A Simple Question Yields Flood of Harassment
It could be nothing more than evidence that the old-school console wars of the late 80s and 90s never died. It could be further evidence that community conflict is boiling, and not waning. There could be a dash of ignorance thrown in all this. However you interpret this story, one central fact must be maintained; the event was notable enough for Sega to apologize on behalf of their fans’ actions.
Indeed, it may not just be the Sonic partition but Sega fans as a whole who embrace drama. That may have best been observed on Thursday, when an unknown number of Sega fans found a target on Twitter.
The problem’s acknowledgment started with one tweet that tagged the Sega feed yesterday from a user only known as supermarioex: “I got alot [sic] of nasty messages just by asking @SEGA a logical question about SOE. Sniff.”
Thinking it was an internal gaffe, a community manager at Sega apologized publicly on their feed to the user. Had that been the case, the notion of Sega employees sending nasty-grams to their less affiliated followers would, at best, be an isolated PR embarrassment.
Then came supermarioex’s response: “Not from you, from your fans.”
As it turns out, the follower–who, according to his YouTube profile, is a 29 year old named Oliver from the UK–alleges that several other followers of the Sega feed sent him very unpleasant messages when he asked his question. The question merely sought to know what “SOE”–or Sega of Europe–stood for. That simple question prompted the flood of nasty-grams, and it prompted Sega to issue, in social networking form, a public apology over the spat, on behalf of those who went on the attack.
“Eww. Sorry that our fans aren’t better behaved,” read Sega’s feed yesterday.
However brief and isolated the exchange appears, it does underscore ongoing social conflict within the fan base. Things like flamewars, personal harassment, site hacking and other extreme behavior have been prevalent in the Sonic community for years. Efforts have been made to curb it all, but a barometer of success has not yet been measured. This may demonstrate that the problem is more widespread among general Sega fans, and more work on several fronts may be needed to achieve peace and respect.
Oliver, for his part, seemed to shrug it off after the apology, but may not have done himself any favors in response.
“They [the offending Sega fans] are mostly just immature teens,” he Tweeted today.
Filed Under Gaming News, Sega
Oh dear oh dear.
I do wish people would be more logical on the internet.
Big deal, someone didn’t know what SOE stands for… So? What has happened to this world that people are harassed for not knowing little insignificant things?
If people haven’t yet realized that Sonic fans are a joke this should do it for them.
I… do not understand. Maybe I should begin to read all the text…
Man this was only made by a stupid mario fan (sonic hater) just to disturb us (sonic/sega fans) and SEGA too, f***’em all SEGA IS THE BEST ! !!!!!!! sorry for my language
Thank you, Sonic Unleashed (SU), for proving Dumbface’s point, ya’ idiot.
boring
I agree with sonic unleashed (SU) mario fans are more bias than sonic fans and think that all the stuff about the wii being the best system ever is true. I mean when it first ccame out nintendo deliberatly only made a few of them so it seemed like they were all selling out fast and everyone would try and buy one!
heh and this is why people look at games like they’re children’s toys because people like them who want to show theyre ignorance and argue between each other, mario’s the best, sonic’s the best blah blah blah….when did it stop us from wanting to play the games because they were fun? personally im a sonic fan but mario is good in his own way too as is megaman and many other game series so i congratulate sega for apologising for its fan base even if it didnt need to and as for the offending person who caused it i pity you end of the day i play the games cause theyre fun not because of some petty fight between series….
“I agree with sonic unleashed (SU) mario fans are more bias than sonic fans and think that all the stuff about the wii being the best system ever is true. I mean when it first ccame out nintendo deliberatly only made a few of them so it seemed like they were all selling out fast and everyone would try and buy one!”
I don’t think your long-term memory is that good. If you could actually remember anything past the last five minutes, you’d remember that the PS2 and 360 also had massive shortages when they were initially released. You would have also seen someone else on this site get pwnt for basically proving the point that was stated in the article, too.
Ouch.
@Sonic Unleashed: You see? Just saying stuff like that is gonna give sonic fans a bad name. No matter if you’re provoked or anythin’ wrong is wrong. To do so suggests immaturity – and I’m sure you’re not. :S
It’s obvious that No Drama ’09 didn’t work out, it didn’t matter where it came from it still caused a lot of trouble.
The comments here are case and point, in my opinion. I love Sonic and Mario and many other games (mainly RPGs). In this respect, I agree with killer2099.
I like the fact that Sega apologized for such immaturity, but I don’t think Sega had a responsibility to do so. Sega can’t choose its fans and their maturity or lack thereof is not something of their own choosing anymore than Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft can choose theirs.
Perhaps by apologizing Sega has at least made it clear that they expect a higher level of maturity from its fans rather than petty arguments and insults.
Why would the guy even care at being insulted by fans and why would this be news to begin with?
IT’S NOT NEWS.
IT’S TSSZ.
Idiots.
Why harass a guy that doesn’t know something as trinal as that?
I mean, its just plain silly.
Ugh.
Hey, Sonic Unleashed, Stephen: Good job on completely missing the point. You win a series of tubes.
lol
Seriously, some people need to be reminded that it is 2009, not 1994. Shameful.
@JJ: Exactly. Still… Things were better then than now. After all, back then Sonic wasn’t having the identity crisis he’s having NOW.
But wow… This is hilarious. By the way, way to make an ass out of yourselves, SU and Stephen. You just proved that you are blind, immature, and irrational. You go out blindly praising SEGA (Hey, Sonic Unleashed wasn’t that great, it’s the honest to god truth), putting down Nintendo as quickly as possible (oh right, Mario fans have a crap ton of bias, eh?), and just being simply unreasonable (randomly spewing words in exclamatory sentence is real mature, SU).
Still, this is much lovely seeing SEGA apologize for its own fans’ stupidity and false praising. This is absolutely wonderful. Even they know their fanbase is bad now. If that isn’t interesting or what.
It’s go nothing to do with SEGA fans or Sonic fans showing hostility, it’s the internet in general. You go on youtube and look at the comments for a video and you’ll find things like this.
Example: “What is the song used in this video”
Response “How can you not know? Are you retarded”
To cut a long story short, 99.9% people on internet sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are ignorant. Why? Because they have nothing better to do.
@Rolo: And the other likely explanation is that they’re kids acting stupid. We were all kids, and we acted stupid more or less.
Well, after reading Sega’s criticism of the fan community, there’s a good reason why the company views us as thick-headed and are laughing at us for it. Well-deserved, too, I daresay. ^^
And I agree with Oliver’s response to the immature fanbrats who attacked him.
It’s incidents like these that make me embarrassed to call myself a Sonic fan.
Its shameful to be a Sonic fan when over 80% of them are immature idiots. Honestly no on takes us seriously as true gamers/fans. Not game communities, not other fanbases, and especially not SEGA. The comments section even proved this right:
“Man this was only made by a stupid mario fan (sonic hater) just to disturb us (sonic/sega fans) and SEGA too, f***’em all SEGA IS THE BEST ! !!!!!!! sorry for my language”
If the bad CAPS, unnecessary fake swearing and offending comment doesn’t prove this enough, then we truly are the laughing stock of the entire gaming community.
All communities have their issues with trolls. Most Sega and Sonic fans I know are generally quite mature and well behaved.
It’s fans of GOW and COD that really need to grow up. In comparison, this is nothing.
@Sonic Yoda: You forgot Halo 3 and Street Fighter IV but otherwise true.
I think I understand why Yahtzee would like to ban sequels and get rid of fandoms. It’s to get rid of this crap.
Tristan, do you have an email address, MSN, or whatever? I need to talk with you about an idea.
@ Waaurufu
I agree. Things like this give sega and sonic a bad name for family entertainment. Especially on what happened with the sonic movie fan project which give me the reason why sonic fans are always complaining about a sonic topic. No wonder why Mario fans get great mario games for not being spoiled rather than us Sonic fans being spoiled and getting bad sonic games.
@ RGX I agree.
@Sonic Yoda: Have to highly disagree, I’ve been to many other communities and theirs is nothing compared to ours. For example, did Halo fans go apeshit nuts over the spinoff Halo Wars? No. Did Mario fans go crazy when another countless Mario party popped up? No.
Lets rewind back to “Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing” annoucement shall we?
“OMG SONIC RACING THIS IZ GON B GAY”
“SONIC DOESNT BELONG IN A CAR SEGA IM NEVER GONNA PLAY A SONIC GAME AGAIN!”
“SONIC IS DEAD TO ME”
“SEGA IM GONNA KILL MYSELF IF U RELEASE THIS GAME”
“RIP SONIC 1991- (insert current years number”)”
These comments are way too common in this fanbase.
As well, all of these Sonic communities usually have drama…
Lemme list:
SFGHG
Sonic Stadium
Sonic Cult
Sonic Retro
SEGA.com
and even here on this website, TSSZ.
We had this guy being harassed about the movie then another guy being harassment over a question in less then a month…. this is ridiculous. We have too many drama articles on this site to prove my statement further. Every single person reading now can’t deny it.
I mean you can’t even go to a YouTube video of Sonic CD music without a huge war on whether the US or EUR/JAP vers is better and don’t get me started on discussions about “The Sonic Cycle”. I wouldn’t be surprised a “Sonic Cycle” would be made about the community, heh.
Jokes aside, there is a quite a handful of talented and mature members throughout the community. However, its definitely over-shadowed by its bad members. Don’t get me wrong though, we all experienced a bad comment from other communities on “why sonic sucks” or “why this game is better”, this is a given. Comparing our community to the others though, there is no doubt in my mind we’re the worst. I’m still going to be a Sonic fan because it is what interests me. I’m just hoping with time the community gets a bit smarter and more mature.
■TailstheHedgehog @: little bro, I’m sorry, you’r right, by expressing my feelings, I against the same thing I’ve suck said… I just think the SEGA/SONIC community should stop fighting each other and the company, and start working together just like we were some-time ago!
sorry again people