Taylors Banishment
Taylor's Banishment was the events that led up to his eventual ban from SomethingAwful. The ban had a cascade effect that would later eventually end BMW's relationship with Goons entirely.
Taylors Banishment | |||||
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The greatest ban post ever | |||||
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Belligerents | |||||
BMW | Serious Overchill | ||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||
Taylor Swift † |
FAT32 Ben Smash | ||||
Strength | |||||
1 Shitposter | Thousands of butthurt Troons | ||||
Casualties and losses | |||||
1 Ban |
History
Background
Taylor's attention to the SA Forums mods had been minimal from his 5+ years of posting, his only spats being with FactsAreUseless over the supposed "doxxing" of a Rust player. However, the forums paranoia with "secret Nazi's" had begun to reach a fever pitch in the aftermath of the 2016 Election and the "Rise of the Alt Right". In the midst of this, outside of the forums on the SA Discord, Taylor and Serious Overchill co-founder FAT32 had begun to feud over the communities direction, Taylor advocating for a hands off free speech method and FAT32 pushing his draconic censorship in the name of "a safe space".
Framing Taylor
Serious Overchill saw an opportunity using the forums paranoia to oust Taylor and set a precedent with which to begin attempting to deplatform him. Many mods on SA were either directly members of Serious Overchill or at the very least under their influence, something that would be seen years later when the same cabal went over Tempus Thales during The New World Drama. Using many out of context tweets in a Fortnite thread that had begun claiming that the SA Discord was admined by a Nazi used as an excuse to ban Taylor, for no specific reason other than "Maybe a Nazi".
Aftermath
While TT initially laughed it off, it wasn't much longer until he too caved, removing Taylor from admin on the server in an attempt to save his servers image. It did little to assuage the Goons anger, in fact just further killing his community. Taylor's banning was the catalyst for BMW's eventual war against SomethingAwful, eventually culminating in the Troon Uprisings in 2019.