Cod Almighty | Diary

Don't give house room to idiots

12 March 2019

Some months ago, Middle-Aged Diary had a moment of clarity. Town were going through a bad run and I was getting wound up by the stuff I read from other Town fans on social media.

So I stopped. I stopped following people who regularly posted negative crap, and I stopped following the people who regularly got into arguments with the people who posted negative crap. I made sure I was following the accounts that would keep me up to date on news and stopped searching on the #gtfc hashtag. Life suddenly got a lot better. It may also have helped that we started winning.

There will be people who say I'm turning twitter into an echo chamber and I should hear the opinions of people I disagree with. There is a word for that view. Rubbish.

We have our mobile phones with us at work, at play and at home. The view that we have to open ourselves up to complete strangers every minute of the day is a recipe for insanity. And I'm quite happy for you to shut your browser down now if I'm stressing you.

If we start next season with 10 straight wins, there'll still be someone calling Jolley a clown when we lose the 11th

Besides, it is not opinions I am shutting out. It is emotional spasms. It is people lashing out in their frustration that life does not always happen quite as they'd like, especially between 3 and 5 on a Saturday afternoon. I've not much time for people who insist on sharing their outbursts on social media, as though they want to turn the rest of the world into their punchbag. But it is always going to happen. If we start next season with 10 straight wins, there'll still be someone calling Jolley a clown when we lose the 11th.

It is not just football. If Andy Murray, for instance, had picked up his phone at the change of ends in a tennis match and read all the vacuous posts of "Murray's going to lose this", he'd not have been able to rise from his chair when the umpire called "time". But it is also football.

Football fans are as good and as bad as everyone else. If there is an increase in racist attacks in society, you can expect there'll be an increase in racist shouting at matches. It doesn't wash to say that someone who takes the trouble to buy a ticket to go to a football game is "not a football fan", even if most fans don't run onto the pitch to hit a player. None of that is solely football's problem, but the way we respond as fans must be part of the solution.

And part of the solution is not giving idiots any credit. Confront the stuff that needs confronting but let the trivial wash away. In my new, laundered social media feed, I am now getting the negative crap second hand, in the posts of people pointing out that wave of irrationality every time Town lose. But there is no need to magnify it. Let them have their tantrum.

Tonight, we travel to an in-form Tranmere. Given the contrary nature of Town's season, there's every chance we'll have a collective blinder and romp home easy winners. If we don't, don't let complete strangers make the experience worse for you. Mute them (mute me as well if you like), and move on.