Fanbase Wars

AKA: Everyone involved in this is an idiot
I've been actively Twittering for a good year now, and I think I'm finally starting to understand it. In terms of networking, it's pretty much perfect for building casual ties to people of a similar interest and keeping in touch with a community. Given it has a less personal nature, you don't feel at all awkward 'following' a total stranger, whereas on Facebook becoming somebody's 'friend' whom you've never met feels equatable to lunging on a passer-by in the street.


This has allowed fanbases to seamlessly come together in a massive online arena. Personally, I seem to have got myself into Portsmouth FC and Formula One circles, which gives me plenty of chance to keep in touch with the general opinions and latest news regarding the areas of interest. It took me a while to really get to grips with this point, but now I've really learned to appreciate how Twitter has aided me in that respect.

However, I am lucky enough to engage in subjects that (on a whole) are devoid of cretinous dullards. On the surface of Twitter lies the major fanbases that threaten to tear your faith in humanity to a catastrophic oblivion, and then shit on in just to be sure. The discussion that occurs in other fanbases becomes a reactionary, rage-filled shouting match for others. It is filled with mantras, emotive bewitchery, spite and delusion.

There's no prizes for guessing what sort of thing I'm on about here. Yes, Justin Bieber. Yes, One Direction. Lady Gaga. JLS. Jonas Brothers. You know the drill. I guess it's not a surprise that the most obnoxious fanbases come from the pop-acts that specifically target teenagers, but the effectiveness they drive up a complete frenzy within their support is astonishing and frightening.

Let's take Justin Bieber as the main example. I want to be clear that I have absolutely nothing against the poor woman, but the self-appointed "Beliebers" are a spectacular culture that rings scarily close to a modern day Third Reich. No, honestly, look at some of their similarities: They both worship an almighty leader, they both have total and utter blind faith in their almighty, they both attack those who dare question the leadership, they both have a set of catchphrases that pledge allegiance to the almighty, they both celebrate those who show the most loyalty towards the almighty, and they both hate Jews. (That last one may be a fabrication of sorts).

Don't believe me still? (God, you are a persistent blighter) Alright, let's take a few tweets from these Beliebers. One Belieber tweets "We will support Justin, no matter what". Ooh, what even if he started killing Jews? See, Nazis. Then another one writes:  "When Believe tickets go on sale, World War III will start." OH MY GOD I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG. NAZIS! NAZIS!

OK, I'm exaggerating but there's a great deal of over-protection and sensitivity regarding this sort of thing (and I'm not just referring to Bieber, this can apply to any of the ones I mentioned earlier - Bieber is just the example I'm going to go with). So much so that fans will often pre-emptively defend their hero. One girl, simply calling herself Girl of Bieber, sassily writes "Boy: I hate Justin Bieber. Girl: No, you hate the fact that you're NOT Justin Bieber." This biting wit towards something that she made up, though admittedly breathtaking in it's intellect, seems like a tremendously unnecessary defence against no-one. Another writes "you hate justin bieber? Cool, I love him.". Again, I must emphasize the fact that this was written towards nobody.

We can see this in trending topics as well. Often there will be one referring to Justin Bieber festering away on the screen, with the Beliebers all assuring themselves that they have proven their great leader's credentials in the music world with a display of his fanbase's enormity. This can often lead to comical scenes when, due to the saturation of Bieber posts, a large influx of Justin Bieber tweets are no longer possible and it becomes more difficult to trend. The fanbase then assumes that Twitter is conspiring to work against them and trend Bustin Jieber in a bizarre protest.

Then things get more interesting when the fanbases begin fighting with each other. I'm not really sure what happened, but I gather there was a row between Lady Gaga and Madonna fans, which ended in both of them pushing to trend a RIP for their opposite star. Sometimes they even end up fighting with themselves. After a few more hoax RIP trends, people started to declare that it meant 'Really Inspiring Person'. With this in mind, 'RIP Nicki Miniaj' started trending, which prompted Nicki Miniaj fans to become furious about another supposed hoax. It was like watching ants fight in a jar.

It all seems like the hardening of skin against potential wounds. To be fair, this is only what you might expect. Many of these fanbases primarily consist of teenage girls, and the popstars they idolise today are subjected to the internet in which all the criticism towards them is mightily exposed. It's perhaps not surprising that they end up feeling very protective over their heroes. While they do come across as obnoxious, frenzied and downright irritating, we all had our phases in teenage years where we idolized one thing or another. The teen icons of today, despite a more sporadic market, focus in on only a few huge stars, giving us their massive fanbases that unfortunately have the numbers to dominate Twitter, but it's only fair that we let them have their time of fandom before Justin Bieber takes the Macauly Culkin route or JLS split up, or however their careers all end in a few years time.

One thing I would add though, is that the trending topics such as 'Pray for Belieber Lizzie' are sickening. While I can appreciate that young people are highly falliable, this seems to suggest a moral misfiring that is more difficult to justify. True or not, the story of a five-year-old girl dying is not something that should be used to push forward a fanbase, and by labelling it with a title like 'Belieber Lizzie' you are making it crystal clear that the only reason you feel she is worthy of a hint of concern is her love for Justin Bieber. After all, you'd never see anything like "Pray for coca-cola Mark" or "RIP Labour Jim", because it would be downright heinous.

Other than that... as you were, Twitter.

Racism, Football and Twitter

Last night’s incident at Anfield involving Tom Adeyemi leaves another bad taste in a mouth already filled with unpleasant sensation. The alleged racist abuse the young Oldham defender suffered from the ugly mouth of a fan has capped a string of incidents in the last few weeks that have the unshakable theme of racial abuse. It would seem that, despite Sepp Blatter’s ill-judged assertion, racism continues to rear its putrid head in English football.

It’s important to stress that there’s no confirmation the incident at Anfield last night was racially motivated, but it would seem very likely given both the accounts of those in the area around the incident and the distraught reaction of Adeyemi himself. This follows the long-winded dispute between Luis Suarez and Patrice Evra following the reported racist slur the Uruguayan used.

Both incidents involve Liverpool, but it’s not fair at all to tar the whole club and fanbase with the same brush. I think any club has a handful of despicable, racist idiots in the stands and it wouldn’t be right to pretend that Liverpool are the only club in the world in which that is the case. While racist chanting and the like is a thing of the past, you just have to look around you in this country to see plenty of racist idiots around.

Certainly, Liverpool Football Club reacted badly to the Suarez case with the overblown support, prior to a muted retraction when the FA’s report came out and showed the nature of Suarez’s statements, along with the lack of veracity the Uruguayan showed throughout the saga. Despite the lack of appreciation for the serious nature of the incident, we can forgive Liverpool Football Club some misplaced trust in one of their employees should they deal swiftly and with conviction with regards to this racist idiot of a ‘fan’.

Why is it that these incidents seem to have suddenly flared up in such succession though? I think there’s a lot of reasons (mostly boring political ones that make no sense). In truth, it all kicked off with the John Terry incident. His supposed racially motivated shout seemed like a moment of ignorance, frustration and nastiness. It seems as if Terry never thought he’d be caught, but the video clip of him shouting the alleged phrase was key in outing this particular incident. It perhaps suggests that more of this sort of thing occurs on the football pitch, but goes unreported.

For Suarez, it was a similar case. He claimed to be ignorant of the fact that the term ‘negro’ could be seen as offensive, but upon looking at the way in which the term was used in the report of the incident, it seems impossible that Suarez was unaware he was being grossly offensive. Of course, the FA had no concrete proof that all these things were shouted, but the nature of the case would suggest that there were at least a few assertions to that effect.

Some people seem to think that the victims of these attacks are looking for trouble. I don’t think that can be true at all. For Evra, he was branded a liar and had to go through a drawn out case with the FA over the incident. Unless he had a severe personal problem with Luis Suarez, I can’t think why Evra would want to cause such fuss if no racial abuse had taken place. Same with Adeyemi, people were saying that he was having a bad game and decided to selectively hear a racist shout. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean; why would Adeyemi want a reason to cry on the football pitch. That just sounds stupid to me.

You see, this sort of condemnation of anyone who’s prepared to step forward and call out racist abuse only serves to stop players from coming forward in the future. If Evra had kept quiet about Suarez, or if Adeyemi had not confronted the abuse he received, or if John Terry hadn’t been caught on video, players and fans around them may have considered that sort of behaviour to be acceptable because it wasn’t followed up by anyone. It’s easy for things like that to become the norm, so it’s a good thing that there are players willing to express the fact that this is unacceptable.

These incidents have led to a lot of frustrated fans. They are either totally offended that one of their players or fellow supporters is being condemned, want to cover up their ears and pretend that racism in football isn’t a problem, or are just flagrant racists. The latter of those three is thankfully the least common, but unfortunately more nastiness occurred when Stan Collymore was subject to racial abuse on Twitter. Sadly, the internet is an effective framework for allowing this sort of thing to be more outspoken and more likely. 

However, internet warriors are a different sort of people from actual football fans. The internet does have a lot of kitsch, tongue-in-cheek racism that some people may find offensive, but is done with a beam of irony. Unfortunately though, there are a lot of impressionable people that will take all this literally, and they don’t care that their hurtful comments are being directed at real people. Now I don’t really like Stan Collymore when he’s on the radio or anything, but I know he is a real person and I would feel embarrassed to send him something insulting over Twitter. It seems some people are happy to hide behind their keyboards and throw abuse wherever they feel is necessary.

He’s been arrested now though (the racist, no Collymore).

A bit of a Ricky Situation

Ohh, what's he done now?


You've probably heard all about the current 'Mong-gate' involving comedian Ricky Gervais. Since his return to Twitter, he's used the word 'mong' 728 times in 450 tweets (that may be an exaggeration), and consequently certain factions of the media have begun to kick up a storm about it.


Stand-up comic and writer Richard Herring weighed in most heavily on the issue, posting a blog piece about how he felt Ricky was using a touchy insult in a far too casual manner. "I think many comics are guilty of using mong as convenient and humourless punchlines. I don't think any of them would do the same with the word 'n***er' or 'p**i'" Herring wrote.

Furthermore, MENCAP and other disability charities have begun to express dismay at Ricky's use of the words. Francesca Martinez, an actress with Cerebral Palsy who appeared in Extras, also added to the criticism, saying "If you're in the public eye and you're saying [the word mong] is now fine, you're ignoring the reality that disability discrimination exists".

It all seems a bit of a pickle for Ricky, who for a long time has done some of the finest comedy that challenges the faux pas we have over things like race and disability. How has he got himself into this situation, and who's right?

To get to the bottom of it requires a good deal of thinking. Firstly, the word 'mong'. This shouldn't be a difficult debate really, as while definitions are fluid and in a constant state of change, there clearly still exists the derogatory insult for people with Downs Syndrome. Therefore, people are starting to take offence.

Now Ricky would say "Just because they're offended doesn't mean they're right". That's true, and we have to consider this further, but he must realise that they have a right to be offended no matter how meager the offensiveness appears to be. It may be a simple case of misunderstanding, but that doesn't discredit their right to take issue with a joke.

In either case though, 'mong' obviously does carry a weight behind it that renders it an offensive term to people with disabilities, and this is probably what the whole thing boils down to. Is it an derogatory insult or not? Well, I think you'd be best off asking the people who are actually handicapped or part of a disability group. If you're worried about whether a term is offensive or not, surely the easiest way to find out is to ask the people whom you're referring to (or not referring to as the case may be). After all, it's one thing getting offended on their behalf, but the real point is whether it actually does offend the handicapped and the families who care for them.

Intentions are more important when it comes to deciding if a joke is offensive or not, so this would be another thing to look at. Many of Ricky's tweets have used the word 'mong' as a jokey description of one of the horrifying faces he's pulled, or just a collective term for a bunch of idiots. I would find it incredible if Ricky was using this term to mean Down's Syndrome, so I think we can write off bad intentions for these jokes.

Context is also an issue. As Charlie Brooker pointed out on Twitter: "The word 'mong' appears in Dead Set script, where it's spoken by a character who's a) a twat and b) uses it to mean 'handicapped'." Clearly that isn't offensive, because it's an illustration of a character's persona and the word 'mong' is not played for laughs at the disabled. If it was also the case that Ricky was playing a bit of a persona on Twitter, then he'd have extra grounds for defence. However, the way he's taken to the defensive suggests this is definitely not the case. It is Ricky using these words.

The trouble Ricky has is he often goes on about his comedy 'coming from a good place', and therefore he can 'justify everything he does'. I believe he's right on the first quote, and the second, but that's not to say he's not making a mistake with these 'mong' jokes. Personally I'm not taking offence to them at all, but that's not to say other people aren't, and that's certainly not to say they are in the right.

My only issue with this whole saga is that it's making Ricky act very different to his usual self. The way he talks about the 'PC brigade' without irony. That really hurts to see, it's a term you'd expect a 47-year old jobless skinhead racist to use. The way he talks about 'haters' with seriousness. The way he's angrily defending himself constantly on Twitter, and using quite petulant means to do so (retweeting the odd 'I'm a mother of a Downs Syndrome child and I don't find it offensive' or a quote from a spurious online dictionary).

Someone mentioned that Ricky Gervais was becoming the new Jim Davidson. I don't think this could be further from the case, but Ricky's pride in being a shock comedian is pointing him in the wrong direction at the moment. The old him used to touch on tricky subjects with clever humour and the tongue firmly implanted in the cheek throughout. Now it seems the shock value has to come first and the joke later, and the obsession with 'mong' is possibly the very embodiment of this .

I mean, that's still a stretch from Jim Davidson, but look how well he's fitting into the jokes written for Jim: "Ricky Gervais: £25 - Strictly no mongs".

I'm still a massive fan of Ricky Gervais, and I look forward to his new series Life's Too Short. However, I wish he'd just use Twitter to post pictures of Karl Pilkington eating things with the odd insult about his head thrown in for good measure. Whether it's right or wrong to use 'mong' so casually, it certainly hasn't been much fun. It should be dropped by everyone now.