The ESPN comments section will no longer exist in its current form after today. The cesspool that allowed sports fans to anonymously post their unpunctuated thoughts about sports while hiding behind the shield of anonymity is being replaced by a system that will force users to tether their comments to their Facebook accounts. So now is the perfect time to look back at the best thing the ESPN comments section ever produced: the Occupy Tebow meme.
It started organically, as all good memes should, when the anonymous masses collectively decided that they had finally had enough of ESPN’s fawning coverage of Tim Tebow, and stormed the comments section of an innocuous Bill Williamson column to engage in an act of protest against ESPN’s bullshit.
And then, rather surprisingly, ESPN began to fight back. Moderators descended on the comments section and began summarily deleting any “X>Tebow” comment. This only increased the fervor of the commenters, and a battle between moderators and commenters raged on.
After four days, the moderators gave up. The comments section of Williamson’s column was ceded to the mob, and the Occupy Tebow meme continued to live on. What it left behind was a spark of self-awareness and an appreciation of the absurd among ESPN’s commenters. To this day, new Occupy Tebow contributions are still being made.
Please enjoy the Occupy Tebow video tribute that we made at the top of the page, and if you want to celebrate the death of the ESPN comments section properly, you know where the party is.