#selltheteam: the A's anger thread as recurring genre

Across 2023-2024, the Oakland A's fan-resistance movement consolidated around two hashtags: #selltheteam and #FJF (Fire John Fisher). MadBitcoins ran a recurring anti-Fisher series under both, building a tweet-by-tweet record of the rupture between an ownership group and its fan base.

The crystallizing tweet came September 2024:

John Fisher is a disgrace #selltheteam #sell #FJF — @MadBitcoins, Sept 2024 — 55 favs, 6 RTs

Six words. Three hashtags. The tweet is pure fan grievance, with no Bitcoin context, no editorial cushioning, no attempt to broaden the audience. It assumes you know who John Fisher is, you know what the A's relocation is about, and you've been following the fan-resistance arc. The 55/6 engagement is mid-range for the era's pivot-mode community content.

The relocation timeline

The A's relocation arc had specific milestones. November 2021: Fisher announces the team will "explore" Las Vegas. April 2023: stadium negotiations with Oakland collapse. April-November 2023: Las Vegas relocation publicly confirmed. 2024 season: the A's continue playing in Oakland under a known relocation, in stadium conditions allowed to deteriorate, with payroll and player development minimized.

The fan resistance ran in parallel. Last Dive Bar emerged as the central fan-organizing account. Organized boycotts, reverse boycotts ("paid attendance" days), sign campaigns, and media pushes all became part of the regular game-day experience. The 2024 season at the Oakland Coliseum had a specific texture — fans showing up to oppose an ownership group that had visibly given up on them.

Hunt's #selltheteam tweets across this period weren't isolated grievance posts. They were participation in a sustained fan movement with its own infrastructure, its own communications channels, and its own measurable impact on the team's revenue and public reputation. The hashtag wasn't a private complaint; it was a coordinated public-pressure tag with thousands of contributors.

Why Hunt's amplification mattered

@MadBitcoins by 2024 was a 13-year-old account with established audience attention. Most #selltheteam tweets came from accounts the broader sports world didn't track. Hunt's amplification crossed audience boundaries. People who followed @MadBitcoins primarily for Bitcoin content were being exposed to A's fan-resistance content. Some of them came to care about it. The cross-audience exposure widened the #selltheteam tag's reach.

The pattern is the same one that worked for Hunt's other amplification work across the years — the BCH peacemaker tweets, the SegWit ATTENTION campaign, the Curio Cards milestone series. Pick a cause, lend the @MadBitcoins megaphone, do it consistently, watch the cause's recognition expand. The #selltheteam series is the same play, applied to baseball.

The unusual texture of the campaign

What makes #selltheteam unusual in the @MadBitcoins archive is that it's the only sustained campaign with no Bitcoin angle. The peacemaker tweets were about Bitcoin community. The SegWit campaign was about Bitcoin infrastructure. The Curio Cards series was about Bitcoin-adjacent art history. The A's content is just baseball — Hunt as a fan, using his account's reach to support a fan movement.

This is a tonal shift the audience had to accept. The pivot-era follower base accepted it. The engagement numbers, while smaller than peak Bitcoin content, were stable across years. The audience was telling Hunt: yes, we'll come along for this too.

By 2025, with the A's actually relocating to West Sacramento (as an interim) before Las Vegas, the #selltheteam series transitioned from active resistance to retrospective documentation. The hashtag still appeared occasionally. The frame had shifted from "stop this" to "remember what was lost." The series, like the team, was entering a different phase.

The pivot-era #selltheteam tweets remain in the archive as the clearest sustained example of @MadBitcoins running a non-Bitcoin amplification campaign — a structural expansion of what the account was willing to do with its decade-old standing.