GOOD NEWS! The Majority of Phillies Facebook Followers Aren’t Homophobes!

by Posted on

The Phillies changed their Facebook profile photo yesterday to a rainbow-themed P logo in celebration of their 5th annual Pride Night at the ballpark.

 

Simple enough, right? The Phillies occasionally do it from time to time for events like dog night at the park or St. Patty’s Day.

I thought it was simple enough until I looked at the comments section of the photo change. Geesh! The anger and hate that the rainbow logo generated was a bit jarring, especially on Facebook where people, for the most part, have their actual names and photos attached to their comments. Comments like “stick to sports!” and “when is straight people’s night?” were not uncommon.

I’m not going to show those comments because I’m not looking to publicly shame these individuals stuck in an insecure and antiquated ideology. They’ve done that enough to themselves by their comments and you can easily find them on the Phillies Facebook page.

Predictably, when the Phillies do change their profile or cover photo to themes supportive of groups such as the Irish, the “stick to sports!” crowd is pretty silent. In fact, if you look at the likes for the Irish fat P logo, you’ll see that no one hit the sad or angry emoticons. 21K people liked the Irish-themed fat P photo and 2 people loved it.

Now, take a look at the reaction to the rainbow P profile photo change in support of Pride Night.

1529 individuals were not happy with the Phillies Pride profile photo. 1,200 people laughed at it. 230 people reacted by hitting the angry emoji and 99 folks hit the sad emoji.

Far more people felt the need to respond negatively than I would’ve expected, which is pretty disturbing. Why anyone reacts negatively to traditionally marginalized groups being shown inclusivity is beyond me. Obviously, these people have never been marginalized or experienced life as a minority in any way.

Hate is never good, but there is a silver lining in all of this. The good news is that the majority of Phillies’ followers on Facebook are not homophobes! 90% of the profile photo change responses were positive!

Facebook isn’t really an oasis of progressive thinkers as it’s normally the digital soapbox of the Boomers and older crowd. To find such strong support for the LGBTQ community on Facebook posts should give us all hope that the archaic and bigoted homophobe crowd is a dwindling minority.

Nice work by Phillies and the overwhelming majority of their Facebook followers.