Being an Online Supporter
We have had similar discussions to this on Woof before, mostly relating to players receiving targeted abuse, but I found this article really interesting. Although it focusses on English football/Liverpool, there are a lot of comparisons to the online AFL world...I'm sure you have all read or seen people on FB/Twitter/IG/?Woof who share some of these traits at times.
It's been a tough time to be a fan as we have been forced online, but it emphasises the need to ignore the trolls, be mindful of what you are putting out there and try not to be too pessimistic!
Click the link for the full article, but I'll share some relevant parts:
Link
I’ve always known that “Liverpool Twitter” is a distinct ripple of the platform, operating almost like a self-governing principality within the Twitter ecosphere. I don’t engage in it too much—when I tweet about the club, I’m really only talking to people who follow me and happen to be Liverpool fans. But I’ve spent the summer fascinated by this particular breed of online supporter that has mutated in the wake of the relative adversity the team faced last season after two years of stunning success. I’ve found them impossible not to observe, like they were ducks in a backyard swimming pool. At first, I couldn’t get my head around what I was seeing, but I was fairly sure it had something to do with youth culture and capitalism.
I’m transfixed by these accounts because the way they engage with football seems completely detached from my lived experience as a fan, which I’d broadly summarize as being largely reliant on what happens on the pitch (crazy concept, right?). They use language I don’t hear in Dublin pubs when I watch matches, or at Anfield, or among my Liverpool-supporting friends when we talk about the games in person or on WhatsApp. This phenomenon is not limited to just Liverpool. Every club seems to have a similar faction lurking within. I’m sticking with Liverpool as a lens into this strange brand of online culture because it’s what I know. It wouldn’t surprise me if everyone reading this recognized their own club’s fan base.
This is not an organized group that operates under a unified banner, so pinning them down isn’t easy. From what I can gather they are mostly young—teenagers or in their early 20s, though some are grown men who really should know better. And they’re loud. Really loud. You’ll often catch them flooding the mentions of journalists, news outlets, and the club’s official account. On top of all that, I would say this breed of online fan shares three main characteristics:
One: The first thing you must understand about these fans is that transfers are the barometer by which they believe all footballing achievement must be gauged. Liverpool had a relatively quiet summer on the transfer front this year, but they still solved the most obvious hole in their squad by signing centre back Ibrahima Konate. Of course, that was never going to cut it for fans who deem “winning” the window as the most telling metric on whether or not a club is in good health. It’s fair to say that Liverpool Twitter in the closing days of window was in a state of anarchy.
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But this obsession with transfers has grown into something beyond improving the squad—beyond what new players can do for your team on the pitch. It has become a hobby tangential to the sport. For this ideology to work, you have to buy into the idea that the 26 first team players that Liverpool can currently call on have no chance of succeeding this season, but if we had only added number 27, we’d be just fine. For this ideology to work, you must assume that every transfer will be a net positive for the club—that poor transfers frequently make a squad worse is never acknowledged. For this ideology to work, you have to believe that every setback we suffer this season could have been avoided if only we’d made more signings in previous transfer windows.
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To be fair, the prominence of transfers in football culture is a problem much bigger than one small subsection of Liverpool fans. I do have some sympathy for people who fall into this obsession. Football media is saturated with transfer news. Because the money involved is so mega, there’s a lot of people financially invested in making transfers a cornerstone of the game. Every football news site gives prominence to crazy rumours; Sky Sports News has essentially built its brand on transfers. As the great Rory Smith wrote in 2015, “The cult of the transfer has tricked us all into thinking that only signing new players can solve problems. It is has led us to believe in magic bullets."
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Two: If there’s one thing these extremely online fans love more than a transfer, it’s fighting Liverpool fans on Twitter. Their mantra is very much that any fan who isn’t with them, is against them. Most of this exhibits the symptoms of classic trolling behavior.
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Three: They are extremely pessimistic. To this strand of online fan, Liverpool are already doomed to failure this season. The most important thing now is that they proved right about this. Results must plummet so there’s evidence that transfer window was a disaster and that the owners running the club into the ground. When a player gets injured, it’s a cause for celebration. Every player who has suffered at least two knocks in a calendar year is dubbed “injury prone,” and must be sold or scrapped. Our own players are fair game to abuse—currently their favourite target is Divock Origi, a cult hero among Liverpool fans if ever there was one.
It’s a very fatalistic way of viewing football, right? Being interested in Liverpool enough to dedicate your social media presence to the club, yet not being able to find any joy in it. What a cold existence. If social media can be called an artificial world then their fandom feels artificial, their experience completely detached from the club itself. It’s cold and sterile and none of the club’s most attractive elements—such as history, tradition, and the city itself—are celebrated. It was an emotional time when we won the league. When I look at LFC Twitter, I don’t always see the emotion. These fans might present online as fans, but it’s a poor impression.
Re: Being an Online Supporter
Quote:
The most important thing now is that they proved right about this. Results must plummet so there’s evidence that transfer window was a disaster and that the owners running the club into the ground.
I'm a fairly optimistic person by nature so can someone please explain this to me? Some pessimists would prefer disasters and their club have a lack of success in order that they are proven right in their predictions than be wrong? Is that the case?
Re: Being an Online Supporter
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Twodogs
I'm a fairly optimistic person by nature so can someone please explain this to me? Some pessimists would prefer disasters and their club have a lack of success in order that they are proven right in their predictions than be wrong? Is that the case?
An AFL example that came to mind would be Collingwood supporters cheering on their poor results as a reason to remove Buckley this year, or Carlton supporters hoping Mitch McGovern doesn't come good.
You could argue the "Sack Beveridge" subset of dogs fans are in that bracket as well - they have made the call once, so despite results will be happy when he inevitably fails and is forced out of the club as it will prove them right.
Re: Being an Online Supporter
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jazzadogs
An AFL example that came to mind would be Collingwood supporters cheering on their poor results as a reason to remove Buckley this year, or Carlton supporters hoping Mitch McGovern doesn't come good.
You could argue the "Sack Beveridge" subset of dogs fans are in that bracket as well - they have made the call once, so despite results will be happy when he inevitably fails and is forced out of the club as it will prove them right.
It is a mentality that I find hard to understand.
Re: Being an Online Supporter
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jazzadogs
An AFL example that came to mind would be Collingwood supporters cheering on their poor results as a reason to remove Buckley this year, or Carlton supporters hoping Mitch McGovern doesn't come good.
You could argue the "Sack Beveridge" subset of dogs fans are in that bracket as well - they have made the call once, so despite results will be happy when he inevitably fails and is forced out of the club as it will prove them right.
I guess it's like the grass is always greener mindset. I'm more of 'be careful what you wish for' type myself. In that specific example I think that right at this moment Bevo is the best coach we could possibly hope for. That will change in time obviously but that time is still a fair way off. He's not perfect but then nobody is.
