There is a conspiracy theory on social media that internet puzzle sensation Wordle has become more difficult after its purchase by the New York Times. This was all a ploy to weed out the non-serious players who wouldn’t stick through the tough times. Or this was all about calculation of a potential consumer base for fee paying customers. Or this was all about media control.
It had no basis in fact. The words had been pre-selected by its original owner and the NYT had done nothing to make it harder – it’s like none of them even remembered FAVOR-gate. People simply projected their fears about large media conglomerates ruining everything onto occasional word-game struggles. But that doesn’t matter: the success of conspiracy theories lies in popularity, not veracity.
And so to football. Last weekend, in the aftermath of Tottenham’s winning goal against Manchester City, fourth official Craig Pawson made the mistake of turning around slightly in the direction of Pep Guardiola. The half-second was slowed down on video and interpreted as evidence of bias or corruption that became its own media storm.
For a point of record, Pawson supports Sheffield United, which has been repeatedly detailed. Perhaps this beef all goes back to the Blades’ 2-0 League Cup defeat to Spurs in 1990. Perhaps there is simply a bond between Manchester City and Sheffield United that harks back to Sun Jihai’s free transfer in 2008. Or maybe people simply rushed to a misguided conclusion because they saw what they wanted to see.
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That word “agenda” has become one of the buzzwords of modern football fandom. There are those who passionately, radically believe that referees and/or governing bodies are working against their club. It doesn’t matter to them that supporters of rival clubs – Arsenal and Tottenham, Manchester United and Manchester City, Barcelona and Real Madrid – all cry the same and so disprove the theory at point of contact. It persists and it grows.
Where has this come from? The changing fabric of football fandom, for one. Even if football doesn’t mean more to people than it used to, the results of a team seem to. Previously, your angst would be confined to the 90-minute period and the walk or car journey home, but no longer. An increased desperation for success provokes extremes of behaviour and thought. When at those extremes, people open themselves up to increasingly desperate theories to find reasons for perceived failure.
That shift has been accelerated by the rise of the internet. Social media has become a battleground on which some supporters feel that they must prove and re-prove their loyalty. You become a “proper” supporter if you are prepared to defend your club’s honour, whatever extraordinary leap of belief or suspension of morality that requires. That plays into psychological studies on conspiracy theory popularity: believing in a discredited or explosive theory – and feeling part of a community of others who also believe – is used to strengthen the bond and so strengthen the belief too.
But it is also key that the conspiracy theory that lands most is about corruption amongst referees. We have created a climate in which officials have become everybody’s favourite scapegoat, a one-way critical conversation. You might refuse to see the link between abuse culture at Premier League level and a shortage of referees in the grassroots game, or how over-analysis of every decision might provoke some to cry foul about perceived bias, but all are branches on the same tree.
The media often makes things worse. Search “Craig Pawson conspiracy” on Google and you will see stories from fringe websites but also at least two national newspapers. The language is flirtatious with the conspiracy theory without ever fully committing to it; it’s all “unusual reaction”, “baffles fans” and “leaving fans to ponder online”. Add a few anonymous tweets for your fan reaction and you have a story where no story should exist. There must be a responsibility to be better than this.
There’s a reasonable argument to be made that none of this matters. It exists in a social media bubble that can easily be amplified excessively by those who submerge themselves in it. There’s the oxygen of publicity point too; by writing a column about such nonsense are you not providing it with some tacit vindication? Maybe, even if that clearly isn’t the intention.
But this weekend in English football, social media will again be awash with claims of bias and corruption from those who should know better. It is exhausting partly because it is so relentless, partly because it is so unhelpful and partly because each time it will convince a few more people to believe in it. That is enough to demand that we call it as we see it: tinfoil-hatted conspiratorial nonsense that undermines all reasonable arguments about refereeing.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2of9GHZ
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