Stop everything you’re doing and read this

[Dougal]

Liverpool chat? In Spurs Chat!?! It actually relates to many many fans and perfectly puts into words a problem I, and seemingly many others, have when discussing the modern game. Whole conversations descend into drivel due to the appearance of the sort of fan mentioned here. I’ll shut up now and let this gentleman do the talking.

The Cold World of the Extremely Online Liverpool Fan

The odd existence of the digital football supporter who doesn’t care about football

dean-magazine.ghost.io

 

[cockerel downunder]

Great read! Certainly a few of them on here, the relentless pessimism and negativity really grind me down.

 

[Tucker]

I don’t think this is a phenomenon limited to football fans, Twitter in general is just a void into which people shout these days. The louder and more extreme things they say, the more reaction they get. So it’s become a competition about who can say the most over the top thing.

People do it on here all the time now, too.

 

[dudu]

Great read! Certainly a few of them on here, the relentless pessimism and negativity really grind me down.

It's a systemic problem with all forms of social media. The loudest people are generally the ones who are the most irked.

Matchday threads when we are losing and playing badly tend to be longer than those that we play well.

I'm sure this site is more active during times of turmoil than it is during times of positivity.

 

[Dougal]

I don’t think this is a phenomenon limited to football fans, Twitter in general is just a void into which people shout these days. The louder and more extreme things they say, the more reaction they get. So it’s become a competition about who can say the most over the top thing.

People do it on here all the time now, too.

Football, Twitter, politics, television. The world is full of obnoxious little runts.

 

[Dougal]

It's a systemic problem with all forms of social media. The loudest people are generally the ones who are the most irked.

Matchday threads when we are losing and playing badly tend to be longer than those that we play well.

I'm sure this site is more active during times of turmoil than it is during times of positivity.

It’s fine to have a rant. My presence on this site recently was most felt in the Mourinho thread. Although I always tried to keep a civil and light-hearted despite my distaste. But that’s because it was a subject I felt strongly about. You won’t find me in every thread ranting on every subject. You won’t find me in the Nuno thread much either as it’s early days and his slate is a lot cleaner than Mourinho’s was.

Problem for some is their viewpoint is turned up to 11 on all matters. It’s ok not to have a strong opinion on some things. And the opinions you do have are just that, no matter how loud you shout them. And continuously shouting your opinions just make you look like a dick.

IN MY OPINION!!!!!

 

[Tucker]

It's a systemic problem with all forms of social media. The loudest people are generally the ones who are the most irked.

Matchday threads when we are losing and playing badly tend to be longer than those that we play well.

I'm sure this site is more active during times of turmoil than it is during times of positivity.

People need a way to vent their frustrations, that tends to happen the match thread when things aren’t going well.

Tumultuous times will always garner lots of interest because people want to know what’s happening and naturally have their say. But at the same time, you only have to look how busy the Bale thread was when he came back last September to see that good times mean things get busy too.

 

[Spurs_1981]

I don’t think this is a phenomenon limited to football fans, Twitter in general is just a void into which people shout these days. The louder and more extreme things they say, the more reaction they get. So it’s become a competition about who can say the most over the top thing.

People do it on here all the time now, too.

It's not a bug, it's a feature. Twitter (in particular) legitimately gains more engagement through negative posts than positive. Twitter users are effectively voluntarily inviting negativity and abuse in into their lives, into their homes, into their psyche. It's self-abuse. My sense is it becomes adictive and cyclical and hard to escape. Effectively these types on-line become abusers and abused, both victims and perpertrators.

Of course, their are many people who can navigate these waters succesfully and will have positive experiences and outcomes but broadly I think we are sleep-walking into a crisis of negative mental health.

 

[Tucker]

It's not a bug, it's a feature. Twitter (in particular) legitimately gains more engagement through negative posts than positive. Twitter users are effectively voluntarily inviting negativity and abuse in into their lives, into their homes, into their psyche. It's self-abuse. My sense is it becomes adictive and cyclical and hard to escape. Effectively these types on-line become abusers and abused, both victims and perpertrators.

Of course, their are many people who can navigate these waters succesfully and will have positive experiences and outcomes but broadly I think we are sleep-walking into a crisis of negative mental health.

Twitter is almost the perfect storm for this kind of thing. The character limit makes reasoned posts harder to make, so people have to get their point across quickly, soon this becomes just blurting the emotion out. Couple this with the algorithm that pushes like minded people to see these kind of posts more and you get a cyclical echo chamber where every post feeds another, and on and on it goes.

 

[dudu]

People need a way to vent their frustrations, that tends to happen the match thread when things aren’t going well.

Tumultuous times will always garner lots of interest because people want to know what’s happening and naturally have their say. But at the same time, you only have to look how busy the Bale thread was when he came back last September to see that good times mean things get busy too.

True, but the Bale thread was more exception than rule, in my opinion. It's fine, but as @Dougal said I find there is a contingent that lack a bit of balance and I do find it grinding to hear the same negativity rehashed everywhere by the same people.

As for the match thread. I've seen enough of them to know that the venting, again, is unbalanced and emotional/reactionary. Which again is fine if that is your thing and that's what you need. It's no different for me than the people who just moan, and moan, and moan at games or at the pub looking at every pass or action in a vacuum and feel the need to insult and 'vent'.

 

[mattyspurs]

Bollocks, I feel so dirty. I never thought I’d agree with a Liverpool fan, but I have. It’s perfectly put and all of my recent thoughts about Some Spurs fans and Football fans in general are in that article.

 

[Yiddo1982]

There's no doubt that the growth of social media, and especially increased accessibility through smartphones, has accelerated the decay of modern society. Hatred, vitriol, racism, extremism - all fuelled by it. And it spills over into real life - like the behaviour of England fans outride Wembley ahead of the final in July. It's kind of accepted that you can now act like a prick.

I have definitely felt the effects of it, slowly building up over time. It even spills over onto this place. Collectively, since the window shut, I've spent about an hour on here. Looking back, that manger search thread did impact my mental health - I read pretty much every post. From a digital perspective, I just feel exhausted. Thankfully I own a digital marketing agency ?

 

[danedan679]

I deleted my Twitter account a few months ago and I genuinely feel a happier person without it. I do miss not being able to immediately see our goals if I’m out and about, but a) it’s a price worth paying and b) we don’t score often now anyway!

 

['O Zio]

Every time i go on twitter I'm reminded why I don't have an actual account. It seems to me to be just full of twats mouthing off at each other. Not sure you need a lengthy blog post to come to that conclusion.

 

[Gassin's finest]

Clickbait title...

 

[Donki]

I think you will find a lot of United fans will pose as Liverpool fans and make these kind of posts. Its not just a Liverpool things all clubs have trolls and people who have very little to do with their time. The surface anonymity of the internet is the absolute worst thing about it.

 

[Dougal]

Clickbait title...

You say it like it’s a bad thing…

I’ll change it to ‘You won’t believe what Christian Gross looks like now!’

 

[Mandy Dingle]

I remember watching a YouTube video where some guy released two videos, one of the top ten things he liked that year and another with the top ten things he hated to see what would happen. No surprise to anyone the latter gained almost 5x the views as the former. People are drawn to negativity and shout the loudest when in that mindset, the trouble is it drowns out any reasonable, middle-ground discussion so it seems like everyone is either toxically negative or overly positive, bordering on delusion.

I actually doubt the people posting the hatred genuinely feel that way, as others have said it's just the easiest way for people to get impressions and they're encouraged to keep repeating that cycle as where they once had zero likes on a tweet they get 5, 10, 100, 1000, constantly dripping addictive dopamine by posting increasingly extreme takes. The trouble is it's so easy to delude yourself into believing something that is verifiably untrue if you just get enough people around you parroting the rubbish you initially posted.

No idea what the solution is, if there even is one. Social media obviously exacerbates the situation but as Humans we've been this way since the birth of civilization and beyond so I'm not really sure what type of intervention there could be that wouldn't be viewed as draconian by people.

 

[Gassin's finest]

You say it like it’s a bad thing…

I’ll change it to ‘You won’t believe what Christian Gross looks like now!’

 

[davidmatzdorf]

There is a case to be made for using search-and-replace: "ENIC" for "FSG", etc.

I've never had a Twitter account. Judging by the tenor of SC during July and August, plenty of our entitled idiots prefer to troll here rather than there.