The recent reappearance of former UK Prime Minister David Cameron reminded me of a quote from his 2015 Conservative conference speech, when he said: “Britain and Twitter — they are not the same thing.”
Whilst I wouldn’t often refer to his guidance, as we often have to begrudgingly admit with politicians we disagree with, he does have a point.
Social media. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it? Well, I’m going to try. I’ve recently closed my social media accounts and wanted to share some of my reflections as an Albion fan on social media.
I started up a social media account named The Tweeting Seagull and subsequently a blog of the same name around five years ago, simply because I love the Albion and wanted to share that enthusiasm with others.
I was quickly surrounded (albeit virtually) by a small group of other social media users with equal levels enthusiasm.
This was a joy for someone who grew up at a time when the son of the bloke who sometimes drove Albion’s first team coach to away games, was the only other child in my class at my primary school who supported the Albion.
And as I got older, most of the people I knew who took an interest in the club did so primarily to humour my own passion, initially at least.
After a while, The Tweeting Seagull started to gain a small group of regular readers. I quickly realised that a big part of what I most enjoyed about writing – as well as simply just mouthing off about the Albion and all other things football – was being a bit contrary to some of the noise, particularly the noise that was excessively reactionary in nature.
I’m not a trained writer or journalist, in fact I only achieved an E in English Literature and a C in English Language at GCSE, which hardly qualifies me as any kind of writer, albeit admittedly this was a fair number of years ago.
But I am just one of the many enthusiastic people online who express themselves creatively about a personal passion, nonetheless.
In particular, I enjoyed expressing opinions which, rather than sticking to the considered view, rallied against what I found to be the overly mawkish and tribal nature that had become a significant part of modern football fandom.
The internet has given us all access to a great deal of information from all over the world, to the extent that it’s impossible to be on top of it all, and means simplistic conclusions often prosper. But as the saying goes, a small amount of information is a dangerous thing.
Sticking to what I knew was my answer and I always tried to be fair and balanced in my blogs, even when writing about divisive subjects like Brexit.
But on social media, character limitation and instant reaction naturally led me to expressing greater levels of bias on a broader range of topics without doing as much background research.
After a while, the early momentum I had from blogging dissipated and instead I more often found myself (often half-heartedly) posting haphazard musings on social media.
As a result, I was regularly on the end of a fair amount of social media ire and counter-fire. Fair enough, it’s something which comes with the territory of expressing an opinion online, but for me it took a lot of the joy out of it all.
One particularly prominent fellow Albion social media user once told me privately that they ignored most of their notifications, particularly the negative ones. But personally, I’m just too weak and nosey and couldn’t help but look.
Even if I’d muted someone, I would find myself checking their replies to my posts and often still responded, despite knowing how it would end. I appreciate that defeats the object of the mute function, but I just couldn’t help myself.
As such social media had become an often infuriating and frustrating place. In particular, seeing the same people post the same responses time after time.
Or to reference a regular Albion social media trend during my time as The Tweeting Seagull, seeing the same rather reactionary Albion fans go from praising Brighton’s recruitment after a good run of form, to then complaining about it after a subsequent winless run of results.
Football has a history of short and conveniently evolving memories. Take Bill Shankly’s famous quote: “Some people believe that football is a matter of life and death, it’s much more important than that.” Possibly one of the most misquoted and misinterpreted lines in the history of football.
A line that is said to have actually been meant as a tongue in cheek remark of self-deprecation about his own harmful obsession with football, one which he also admitted was: “To the extent that my family suffered.”
But instead of this context being provided, this misquote is often used as a mantra to justify unhealthy obsessions with the sport. One that if you’re reading this far then I suspect you can relate to.
Social media seems to magnify this habit of conveniently evolving memories and revisionism. To a degree it’s just human nature, our memories do have a habit of being selective.
Just look at some of the Albion players who were once hate figures for some Albion fans, only to later become cult figures that a bad word is never spoken about. Dan Burn anyone? Or how about Guy Butters? Or maybe Johnny Crumplin?
Given all this, I had been thinking for a while about giving up my persona as The Tweeting Seagull, particularly as it was beginning to overtake my Albion experience.
But it was when a recent post of mine was quote tweeted by The Athletic‘s Albion reporter Andy Naylor in a derisive manner that was the final straw, someone whose work I’ve read and enjoyed for years, decades even.
I can’t blame him. The post in question was my latest bit of haphazard musing, a throwaway late-night post remarking on the silliness of some pre-match comment from Roberto De Zerbi.
It was a post that I expected to be broadly ignored, but subsequently ended up getting over 50,000 views and a number of angry comments.
It wasn’t necessarily Naylor’s derision in itself, but the number of views that struck me. After all, I’m not innocent of having posted the odd derisive quote tweet myself in the past, nor am I alone in the Albion community in receiving Andy Naylor’s public disapproval.
But that the views totalled more than my blog had received in its entire lifetime made me think: what’s the point?
If that’s what people are really interested in seeing and what social media is about, then I should probably be spending my time doing something else.
Maybe I should have been stronger and more resolute in my convictions, or just accepted that my silly post was misplaced and moved on.
We all have stupid opinions from time to time, of course. But this antagonistic environment was becoming a regular thing, and frankly who cares?
Football is meant to be enjoyed; it’s meant to be fun. And yet so much of modern football discourse seems to be antagonistic or argumentative.
So, I’ve decided to leave social media, because for me it wasn’t fun anymore and it no longer enhanced the passion and joy that I associate with supporting the Albion.
But I will forever remain a part of the Albion community. After all, #BHAFC Twitter and the Brighton and Hove Albion – they are not same thing.
Up the Albion x.
Phil
