A Sonic The Hedgehog fan site that has been running for 21 years has shut down after they Tweeted possibly the worst Black Lives Matter tweet of all time.
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TSSZ, a Sonic fan site that has been running since 1999, closed after the site’s owner compared some of the stuff video game character Sonic the Hedgehog has been through to the plight of Black Americans and Black Lives Matter.
Obviously the Tweet has now been deleted, but here’s a screenshot thanks to Kotaku:
Yikes!
The backlash against this Tweet was so severe that not only did the site owner delete it, he also deleted EVERY SINGLE Tweet ever made on the account as well as his entire website which contained 20+ years’ worth of Sonic news.
If you try to access the site now, you just get this message:
Everything is an extraordinary circumstance right now. Too much is happening that makes Sonic, Sega, or video game news, frankly, unimportant. Our community and our world demands better, but now does so to unsustainable extremes. And in that, TSSZ can no longer be the platform it should be. The decision has been made to permanently close TSSZ, effective immediately.
This site and those behind it have been accountable to you for the better part of 21 years. Amid our strong coverage of community events, stories that drew the ire of movers and shakers at every level, and Tweets that did little to navigate the waters of the social media cesspool, all of it was with the intent to make you think. The collective success of our team members, past and present, leaves no doubt of our impact.
Much will be speculated about closing in our current climate. Silence, indeed, is not an option. This platform has championed and molded change for nearly its entire tenure. With what is in front of all of us, it can no longer effectively do so—certainly not without continued deluded pleas for escapism and ignorance.
There is nothing to celebrate in this decision. Another voice in the community is lost. Another avenue for accountability is cut off. Another perspective on the world around us is gone. With any luck, better voices and perspectives will replace it.
TSSZ has endured 21 years of strong reporting born from strong collective decisions that few ever see or know of. There is little else for the platform to prove. Our team, now largely comprised of working adults, has bigger to fish to fry, and better lives to live.
As for me, T, I encourage all in these times to use their platform for a greater good. If the messages and issues you’ve seen from me here and elsewhere weren’t effective, craft better messages. It’s easy to shout people down, and cancel people and content you don’t agree with. It’s more difficult to take the uncomfortable step into the shoes of an agent for change—for yourself, and for others. I am confident in the collective power of the community this platform has covered for over 20 years to do just that.
To a good future.
Damn. If the rest of us reacted like this every time we said something dumb then we’d probably have deleted our entire lives by now. Then again most of us haven’t compared a real life hate crime to the struggles of a cartoon hedgehog, so maybe not. RIP TSSZ, maybe they’ll be back when this all dies down and the next news cycle takes over.
For the time Lil Wayne completely embarrassed himself when asked about Black Lives Matter, click HERE.
