Nookazon
| Discord server | |
|---|---|
| Name | Nookazon |
| Date(s) | April 9, 2020 - present |
| Owner(s) | Daniel Luu (squishguin) |
| Fandom(s) | Animal Crossing: New Horizons |
| Scope | In-game trading, art showcasing, general chitchat |
| Access | Public |
| URL | https://discord.gg/nookazon |
 | |
| Related articles on Fanlore. | |
Nookazon describes itself as "marketplace to trade Animal Crossing: New Horizons items & more".
An extremely active, public Discord community with over 400k members that was supposed to accompany the Nookazon website, but that has stood by itself since the messaging feature was introduced. It was first started in April of 2020, just a few weeks after the launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, out of the creator's frustration with the trading systems in the game's early days.[1]
Controversies
At the end of May 2020, the whole discord moderation team came under fire for trying to silence conversation about the then recent protests against police brutality occurring all throughout the United States. They were especially criticized for using anti-BLM language when censoring and banning users advocating for the movement, going as far as banning users for having "political/controversial statements" in their usernames[2] and being outright confrontational and provocative towards anyone who raised the subject.[3]
This immediately sparked backlash from the whole Animal Crossing community, and users took to Twitter to denounce their actions, as well as promote other sites that supported freedom of expression.[4] On the discord itself, the outrage caused a raid and users were spamming all the channels with "ACAB", "1312" and "BLM" sentiments until they overtook the entire server.[5][6][7][8]
Finally, and after a mod stepped down over the controversy[9], the Nookazon moderation team issued a public statement via their twitter.[10] The server took a few days to get back to normal, the moderation team tasked with cleaning what was left of the online protest while fans were still leaving en masse.
References
- ^ Nookazon creator Daniel Luu on the meteoric rise of the Animal Crossing online marketplace Accessed Feb 15, 2023.
- ^ Discord screen capture of a mod asking a member of the server to change their username.
- ^ Mods being confrontational.
- ^ Reminder not to support the actual Nookazon website or discord; for those unaware the moderation team and admin banned all of ACAB and BLM speech and only backpedaled and apologized after hundreds of users left the server. Use alternatives like http://nook.market instead. Tweet by @SuspectACtrades. May 30, 2020.
- ^ my discord feedback is that nookazon is taking the side of the oppressors. Tweet by @1015suneater. May 29, 2020.
- ^ Their discord is on fire rn. ACAB and BLM spam in every chat. Good. Tweet by @literal_cyanide. May 30, 2020.
- ^ Every channel is being over taken by messages of ACAB and BLM. People are still upset but I think there’s too many to stop. A nice thing to see before I leave the discord, tweet by @lovebugletters. May 30, 2020.
- ^ Locked the channel and as SOON as they opened it, everyone went off, tweet by @KiddFennik. May 29, 2020.
- ^ oop one of the mods stepped down, by @pinkingway. May 30, 2020.
- ^ "We want to assure you that Nookazon is supportive of the BLM movement. Our intention was not to remain complicit or silence views...our team was unprepared for a response to current events of this magnitude, which led to excessive moderation." Statement tweet by @nookazon. May 30, 2020. Full statement.
