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By Joe Kozlowski
Sports Team Lead
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On the whole, sports fans are pretty loyal. Bad defeats and poor decisions, like it or not, are all part of the deal. You can't give up when the going gets tough. But, sometimes, drastic times call for drastic measures.
And that's where Los Angeles Chargers fans found themselves on Thursday night.
While the team was short-handed, no one would have expected the Bolts to find themselves on the end of a 63-21 divisional drubbing at the hands of the Las Vegas Raiders. It was the sort of night that leaves a stain on just about everyone involved.
Well, maybe not the fans. Because, in light of the defeat, the Chargers subreddit switched its focus to another, less disappointing type of charger.
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Chargers Subreddit Changed Focus
While social media can be a toxic place, the sports side of the internet can be an entertaining place. When faced with situations outside of your control—try as fans might, they can't control the in-game result—there's usually plenty of humor designed to address whatever negative feelings might arise.
To that end, the LA Chargers subreddit found a way to roll with the punches.
At about 11:30 p.m. ET Thursday, a post went up saying, "Welcome to /r/chargers, the subreddit dedicated to phone chargers and phone charger accessories and nothing else."
But how did that change come about?
"The decision was largely based on the concept of /r/lostredditors, which is one of the more entertaining aspects of Reddit, where people post topics in the wrong subreddits because they confused the name with some other topic," user bt3k, who moderates the subreddit and posted about the focus on phone chargers, told Newsweek via email.
"We get lost redditors and automated bots posting about things like phone chargers every so often in our sub since it's /r/chargers, and not LAChargers or some other iteration. I've thought about doing this for a while as an April Fools joke, but last night it felt like the right time to see what would happen."
The conversation drifted toward USB-C ("I love having a universal cord for most stuff," one comment read) and other electronic devices, but there were some football jokes.
"Hello. My name is Brandon Staley," user c_c_c__combobreaker wrote. "I just lost my job and they made me walk back home. My question is what is the best travel phone charger since I have a long walk ahead of me."
The comments that directly focused on the NFL team were met with a swift reminder that the forum was designed to discuss chargers.
A note in the subreddit's sidebar confirmed the group's purpose, reading "A Subreddit not for all talk about the Los Angeles Chargers, part of the NFL in the AFC West division, but for phone chargers."
Other posts asked how the group felt about wireless chargers (most weren't a fan), riffed on Bubba's famous shrimp quote from Forrest Gump while naming the different types of chargers and wondered about selling a used charger for $63.21 (a number we'll see more of shortly).
And while that may seem like a bunch of gallows humor, there were multiple aims at play. Beyond giving Bolts fans space to cope, the topic change also helped to keep things under control, especially on a night when the team was in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
"Ultimately it served a few purposes, it helped the moderator team deal with people coming to the subreddit to brigade [coming to the forum with little intention other than to rub Chargers fans' collective faces in their team's failures] by redefining the topic of the subreddit, but also gave our fans an opportunity to have some fun in light of a historic and downright embarrassing display of football in prime time," bt3k explained.
"On top of that, there's only so many ways the fans can express that you want your coaching staff and front office left on the tarmac in Vegas before it gets repetitive."
Nothing Positive to Talk About
And while you might think switching from a football team to a piece of technology might be a bit dramatic, the L.A. Chargers didn't exactly cover themselves in glory on Thursday night.
Quarterback Justin Herbert is done for the season and top receivers Keenan Allen and Mike Williams were also out of commission. And while those losses could be viewed as mitigating factors, those players aren't part of the defense.
On Thursday night, the defense was ripped to shreds. The Raiders, who only managed three points in their previous outing, jumped to a 49-0 lead. By the time the final whistle blew, the scoreboard read 63-21.
That scoreline set a Raiders franchise record for the most points scored in a single contest. The Chargers also made some history, facing the largest halftime deficit and the largest defeat in franchise history.
Adding to the frustration is that Staley was billed as a defensive head coach. His team, however, is allowing a shade over 375 yards and 24 points per game. As you might expect, those totals put L.A.'s defense near the league cellar.
"We got our [butts] kicked, running back Austin Ekeler said, per the Associated Press. "That's all I got for you."
Staley, however, offered a bit more.
"We just didn't have a good game tonight," the head coach said. "We didn't have it from the beginning to the end. It's just one of those games where nothing went right for us. We got a good group of guys, but it was just one of those games where all three phases, the worst thing happened to us tonight. It's a reflection of all of us."
All of us, however, doesn't include r/chargers. They, after all, are just fans of phone chargers, not a similarly named but unrelated football team.
Update 12/15/23, 11:58 a.m. ET: This story was updated with comment from the subreddit moderator.
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