Tuesday, April 19, 2011

#mufc...ok?

Warning: This is yet another post on here in which twitter will play a prominent role. Time was when the biggest influence on my perspective on red-related matters was the view from my seat in N43, alas, no longer. These days, it’s an armchair view, with the chorus of cynicism, doom-mongering and rampant Scousophobia formerly provided by those in surrounding seats now coming direct from my mobile courtesy of twitter. It’s company I suppose, but it leaves a strange taste in the mouth.


On one level , it’s not that dissimilar to the experience of taking your seat and nodding to the usual faces. Some of them you know the names of, some of them told you their names a few seasons ago, but you’ve since forgot and it seems a touch off to ask them at this late stage particularly when they remember yours you rude bastard. Some of them you’ve even got their number in your mobile from when they sorted you out with aways and you reciprocated by letting them use your number for a Wembley trip you weren’t doing. Same faces mostly, stretching out in all four directions, the odd unfamiliar one slotted here and there, other obligations taking precedence for once. A community of sorts.

Do you get community on twitter? Of a fashion. Familiar names and faces – though these are faces squashed into minute avatar size. Any nodding as you take your seat? Not much. Instead for ninety minutes you hurl comments out into the digital void, but you rarely hear them make a splash. And your eyes flick towards the phone and you watch others do the same. Some amuse, many irritate. Often you find yourself struggling to beat down the thought , ‘Shouldn’t you be at – or at the very least watching – the game, seeing as you style yourself as the toppermost of top reds?’. Inevitably the devil on your other shoulder fires back the thought, ‘Shouldn’t you?’

You get this alot with twitter. It alarms you the degree to which some are consumed by United. When do you start wondering what team Fergie’s going to put out for a particular game? With me, it’s from about two minutes after I take my seat in front of the game. Not on twitter. Here, hours, sometimes days before, and people are pondering the permutations at Fegie’s disposal. Needless to say, when the team is announced, it’s the wrong one. I mean, really, isn’t it time Fergie was replaced by some crowd-sourcing app that picked the team for him?

Which brings me to another problem with twitter; the rampant self-regard. Naturally, I have to own up to the corollary that freights all these frets, namely, that as a tweeter and occasional blogger, I’m thoroughly contaminated with the same virus, but still. I get the feeling that some, and this is as a phrase I abhor, ‘prominent bloggers’, have risen to the status of spokepeople for all reds. And I want to know: who are you and who elected you our leader? (worrying possible answer: me when I clicked follow?).

I have no such fears with fanzines. They’re visibly there every game and have been for years. And it takes a damn sight more effort to get a fanzine together than it does to log on to wordpress or blogger. (And again, the pot can hear the kettle whispering that it isn’t red enough for his liking). Maybe I’m just peeved at my relatively miniscule following or the fact that this blog attracts so little by way of comments. Maybe.

Call me ‘old media’ but when you write a United blog and tweet incessantly about #mufc then I like to think you might have put in a few hours actually following them in the non-passive sense of the word. But if you’ll excuse me now, there’s about 83 people I need to inform why Fergie should be fired if he doesn’t start with Anderson in centre-mid tonight.

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