By Walter Broeckx
I am busy on social media like Facebook and Twitter. Well as for Facebook I have to be busy as I am the chairman of the official supporters club in Belgium and we do a lot of our communication with our members using it.
Twitter is something special. It sometimes is (was) fun but a lot of times it is dreadful. I know that the handicap of 150 characters is terrible at times because you cannot really say what you want in such a short space and then you have to use 2 or 3 tweets and that isn’t really the best to make a good conversation.
In the transfer window period twitter is the play garden of the ITK’s (the ones In The Know). If the bloggettas and national media are bad…twitter is even worse. All kinds of people claiming to know someone who knows something from someone who had heard something from someone that has heard something and then passing on their “knowledge” is both funny, bizarre and terrible.
Now the problem is that some journalists know this all too well and they (in accordance with some managers?????) spread rumours. And of course if you want to attract attention from Arsenal supporters you can do so by spreading transfer rumours.
Twitter is a bit of a pissing contest. The more followers you have, the better you seem to be. In fact people even call out for other people to get them followed in order to get more followers in order to pretend to be more ITK than others. I must say that I have never asked people to follow me. I was on twitter because it was fun a few years ago. But now it is a frightening world. Sometimes I think the people of Twitter could just change their name in “Insult” as that is what you see most of the time.
As Tony pointed out in an article the other day: why so much hate? Well Twitter is a hate platform. Hence I don’t visit it that much anymore. There is already enough hate in the world without Twitter so I will not be part of it.
But what frightens me is the fact that there seem to be so many Arsenal fans out there whose only contribution seems to be to slag off anything that happens with Arsenal and most in particular Wenger.
As those who are on twitter might have been aware there has been that rumour that Arsenal are after Higuain. Only last week I wrote that it will be soon ‘Higuain spotted at the airport-time’ again and the rumours made a flying start.
Arsenal was serious and Wenger would meet one of the big ones from Napoli the media said and lots of “patati and patata” (A dutch expression to say that lots of hogwash is being said) about price tags, swaps with Giroud, oh well … stupid rumours.
The talk was mostly based on one reporter claiming to have spoken with someone who knows the manager of one of the players involved who didn’t rule out that there might be going to be some talks and well the usual bullshit we hear when a player is linked to Arsenal.
To make a long fairy tale short the ITK claimed that Arsenal would have to pay £80m for Higuain (really????) or would change him for Giroud. So how would that add to the team I wonder?
Anyway then they leaked that there would be a meeting somewhere this week (I believe it was to be today, according to what I read somewhere) to get a deal. Up in arms the Gooner twitter world went of course.
And then the next thing that happened was that the same sources (the ITK source of bullshit) came up with : Oh no, the meeting is off because it has been leaked in the media and Wenger then cancelled it.
As a result the shouting of abuse against Wenger went op on a twitter scale from 5 to 10.
But let us try to think about it using our brains. If Wenger really wants Higuain do you really think that Arsenal would stop or cancel negotiations because of a leak in the media????
IF and I repeat IF Arsenal wants Higuain they will probably have more problems with paying £80m for a 28 year old than with a media leak.
But the story presented by the ITK was that Wenger pulled out because of the media leak. Can you believe such utter nonsense?
Well the scary thing is…. Yes… my timeline was filled with people in anger shouting all kinds of abuse against Wenger and Arsenal because they pulled out of the deal.
Without using their brains of course. Because if they had used their brains they could have asked: Hey, those Higuain rumours we have heard them before. Is there any truth in them? Or is it just managers/journalists bullshit and invention? That is where I usually stop and classify it under the bullshit stories.
And even then they could ask themselves if the next rumours are believable? Because the Xhaka story was also leaked before its conclusion. And did Wenger and Arsenal pull out of the deal? No, of course not because Wenger wanted Xhaka to come. So a leak didn’t stop that deal.
But now it would stop the Higuain deal? Use your brain cells I would ask, but that seems to be asking too much for some people.
IF Arsenal and Wenger want Higuain it will not be a press leak that will stop this transfer. There are too many other things that can stop a transfer. The too high (in my opinion) price tag. Spending £80m on one player after we have already spend +£30M on Xhaka might be too much for Arsenal to pay. Or the wages might be a problem as Higuain will probably ask to be paid in $ and not £.
Or an offer from China. If you see how much they are willing to pay for a rather 2nd rate striker like Pelle…. Completely unbelievable….
For me the Higuain story is utter bullshit. An invention from a manager working with a journalist to stir up some transfer speculation in order to get him a higher salary at Napoli or in China and then no better team to use than Arsenal and then slag off Wenger in the same time for dithering, pulling out, getting snubbed, etc etc etc… you know the bullshit by now I think.
The biggest problem with social media is that it only takes 10 fingers to publish something and you really don’t need to use the brain cells in your head. Just shout, abuse and attack.
The world outside is frightening at the moment at times and social media is just a mirror of today’s sad state of affairs in the world.
PS: There still are some nice and intelligent people on twitter but somehow they get snowed under the hate and abuse messages people post.
- Suddenly everyone seems to agree. We’ve done the deal for Gonzalo Higuain. Well, nearly everyone.
- Aaron Ramsey: our undervalued midfield maestro
- “It’s been 12 hours since we last attacked Arsène Wenger. What’s keeping you???”
From the anniversary files
- 14 July 1894: It might seem trivial now but at the time it was a major step forwards. The first “Woolwich Arsenal Football Company Day Excursion” to Hastings patronised by 400 people, organised by the club’s great benefactor George Lawrence.
Walter
I’ve never done twitter, facebook, or any other social media platform, except of course UA.
The main reason being;
“There still are some nice and intelligent people on twitter but somehow they get snowed under the hate and abuse messages people post”.
The reason I came to Untold Arsenal was to talk to like minded people. I don’t want to get into a ‘pissing match’ as you rightly call it, with people with totally opposite views to mine. I, to my own dismay, have been drawn in to such conversations a few times and it never ends well. I make a concerted effort to not get drawn in to debates with people who have such diametrically opposed views to mine. I pretty much know I’m never going to change there minds, and they’re going to have to go some to change mind.
It’s like expecting a devout Catholic to change the mind of a life long protestant, or vis versa. Yes it may happen, but most likely they’ll just end up going round and round in circles, making the same arguments again and again and again, only in louder and louder voices until one chops the others head off !
That is why I agree whole heartedly with Untolds policy of censorship. I know some people get upset with it but if it wasn’t Untolds policy it would just end up like twitter.
An endless tirade of Wengers shite, no he’s not, the board are shite, no they’re not, and so on and so on.
The fact is there are plenty of places to shout ‘Wengers shite’ as loud and as often as you want, and you’ll be praised to the hilt.
I think it was Tony said the other day that something like 40% of posts don’t get published. I dread to think what this site would end up being like if they did. Well I know, it would be like twitter, and I, for better or worse, would be the first to go.
Sirs, I don’t know why we, Arsenal fans are easily incensed by the trash that are in the press. For me, i have the right of what to believe, especially when it’s about Arsenal and transfers. The Transfer index’ and Sir Hardly Anyone’s column are there to help us understand who and when(if) Arsenal is going to sign or not. We will wake up one morning to see this caption ‘EURO MIDFIELD MAESTRO-RAMSEY ON HIS WAY TO ARSENAL’; oh he is still an Arsenal player: He is coming back to training…Attacking Arsenal, the manager or the players is not only childish but stupid.If you’ve chosen to believe everything in the press, good luck to you…but blame yourself not your doctor when your lab result is out.
To all TRUE fans….keep blazing hot.
I’m afraid I can’t see the point of twitter.
To quote a friend, “It’s just an Ego-W*nk”.
From the simpletons that are interested that Stephen fry is going for a coffee, to footballers that unwittingly use it as a way of ensuring everyone knows that they are arrogant/ignorant/fashion victim/money grabbing.
The idea of taking one iotas notice of anything on twitter misses me entirely.
Facebook is as good or bad as you want it to be.
I use it to find out what’s happening with various friends/clubs occasionally but I do have friends that seem to live through it.
Following on from above, that doesn’t mean you have to agree with each other about every little thing.
For instance, some of you will of noticed I have a different opinion to Tony regarding the effects of net big spending, which is fine.
All the points Tony makes are valid, as I think are mine. I think the main difference is how the statistics relating to this are interpreted.
But disagreeing, and debating over such things, is a lot different to the ‘Wenger’s shite, no he isn’t’ kind of thing, that seems to be so prevalent in twitter land, but is to a large degree, kept at bay on here.
Don’t worry about it Walter. Twitter’s hardly a thinking man’s medium and Facebook’s Ok for keeping up with your friends.
Some businesses (and footy blogs that we know and love) find both quite useful though.
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OT: Away ticket news. – Just up at Arsenal.com.
Apparently the EPL clubs recently voted to limit away tickets to 30 pounds. Arsenal.com announced that away tickets for Arsenal games will be limited to 26 pounds.
This isn’t likely to influence my decisions on games, I live too far away. But many of you might find this helpful.
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I don’t use facebook, and I only use twitter to follow the Ladies games, when I remember. I do wish Arsenal.com would go back to putting the link for those games into their preview articles on the games.
Walter I am frequent user of twitter. I just use it for a quick read happenings here and there but I don’t tweet much. But the way I use it is by instantly blocking and muting any AAA, agenda driven media account or any other Arsenal hating account. The advantage of blocking and muting is that tweets from these accounts will never appear on your homepage or timeline.
My account is @mrarsenal93. I can share my block list with other accounts, if anyone wants it 😀 its over 1700 accounts.
I see a twit on Arsenal.com from Theo. He got another set of new boots. Let’s hope those boots have lots of goals in them. 🙂
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Usama, in the days of netnews your block list would be called a killfile.
Oh, if you are out shopping for new hardware and like AMD: I think the ASRock A88M-ITX/ac with a A10-7860K using a SSD for disk is a nice, small, energy efficient, low noise setup. That motherboard is a mini-ITX.
Gord,
The MB and CPU you mentioned are excellent recommendations for any quality budget PC. But since I live in the UAE where the temperatures for at least 5-6 months are 33-47 Degrees Celsius (even at room temperatures in some cases), the important parts for me are high quality fans and coolers, and any quality mid tower case with at least 2 cooler spaces. Because CPU temperatures sky rocket to high 70s (even 80s) Degree Celsius without proper cooling.
My brother knows about hardware much better than me, so he has found some ideal parts within a budget of (5000-5500 Dirhams) 1700-1900 CAD$. Budget is not a major problem right now, since this pc build is a one-off for at least 5-6 years.
Chief Walter, I am a great fan and user of twitter. In fact I’ve come to like it a lot. There isn’t any Bloggtta site that I’ve assessed which isn’t on twitter or facebook. Arsenal have both the twitter and the facebook accounts including others on their Android portal application. I use their official twitter account site to logon to it on any of the Arsenal match day game to talk to the Boss and the Gunners through it to make them to know my opinion and takes on the current match they are playing before kickoff and at halftime.
God save us from stupidity
Arsenal scout, Stephen Bradley, is apparently the new caretaker manager of Shamrock Rovers. Daily Flail has the story.
It’s a nice writeup. Bradley has permission from Wenger to the end of their season. As Bradley does not have a UEFA Pro license, he is limited to 60 days.
Good luck Stephen. Oh, maybe find some players for us while you are there. 🙂
The Easier Way.
“Let me get this straight,” the prosecutor said to the accused, “you came home from work early and found your wife in bed with a strange man.”
“That’s right,” replied the accused.
“Upon which,” continued the prosecutor, “you took out a pistol and shot your wife, killing her.”
“That’s right,” the accused said.
“Then my question to you is, why did you shoot your wife and not her lover?” the prosecutor asked.
“It seemed easier,” replied the defendant, “than shooting a different man every day!”
If we change the fans for the husband ; the FA for the wife and the England managers for all the lovers , would the majority be happy in such a scenario ?
This dog would be a shoo-in for a football pundit ! And just like ‘them’ he’d sit on command ,roll over , sniff butts and piss and crap on the issues !
A man sees a sign outside a house – ‘Talking Dog For Sale.’ He rings the bell, the owner appears and tells him the dog can be viewed in the back garden.
The man sees a very nice looking Labrador Retriever sitting there.
“Do you really talk?” he asks the dog.
“Yes,” the Labrador replies.
After recovering from the shock of hearing the dog talk, the man asks, “So, tell me your story.”
The Labrador looks up and says, “Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I was sold to the SAS. In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one imagined that a dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years”.
“But the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn’t getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at Heathrow Airport to do some undercover security work, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded several medals”.
“Then I got married, had a few puppies, and now I’ve just retired.”
The man is amazed. He goes back into the house and asks the owner how much he wants for the dog.
“Ten quid,” the owner says.
“£10!!? But your dog is absolutely amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so cheaply?”
“Because he’s a lying bastard, he’s never been out of the garden.”