The 'gymternet': gymnastics' devoted, sometimes toxic fans

The 'gymternet': gymnastics' devoted, sometimes toxic fans

SeattlePI.com

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TOKYO (AP) — Fresh off Tokyo's competition floor, four Olympic gymnasts lined up for a press conference. A podcaster offered a question on behalf of what has become a potent voice in the small world of elite gymnastics.

“The gymternet would like know...” she began.

The athletes nodded in familiarity with the online collective of diehard gymnastics fans cranking into gear for the Olympics.

Many in this world have a love-hate relationship with their noisy, sometimes noxious, corner of the internet, where thousands of passionate fans celebrate the sport that most people pay attention to only in Olympic years.

But some within the community acknowledge that its hostile approach to outsiders and some athletes is self-defeating. They want people to love the sport as much as they do, but they mock those who don’t as “four-year-fans” and attack athletes they don’t like or uneducated newcomers who wander into their universe.

“I think the gymternet has a good heart. It’s a well-intentioned space,” said Jessica O’Beirne, a de facto spokeswoman for the collective through her podcast, GymCastic, which 25,000 people tune into each week.

“The irony, of course, is that it’s also super mean,” she said. “The gymternet is so willing to defend athletes from abuse, but not look at their own part as an abuser.”

She started her podcast in 2012 because she didn’t like how mainstream media covered the sport. Women athletes were often infantilized and presented as objects. The gymternet is, in that, her ally. Unlike other sports enthusiasts, she said, people there care about more than winning or losing; they push for a change in a culture that for years allowed abuse to flourish unchecked.

Perfection is expected here — the ability to recite an...

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