The four-day boycott of social media disgraces and content hucksters
You obviously know. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
Scott Murray
OUR SHOW OF SOLIDARITY: THREE PARAGRAPHS CONTAINING NOTHING
As a mere garden-variety email, The Fiver doesn’t technically qualify as a social media. Quibble over the strict definitions all you want, but we simply don’t tick all the boxes. For a start, people read, pay attention to and enjoy social media. Unlike social media, The Fiver cannot slake your thirst for pictures of household animals cutely peering out of domestic sanitary facilities. And there’s no point asking The Fiver to join in the latest late-night reach-around as you all applaud each other’s staggering genius, we’re halfway through this bottle of Fistfight for a start, plus the snooker’s on, and in any case there are plenty of comment writers, panel-show contestants and phone-in hosts out there who will happily field that sort of thing.
Guardian Sport joins social media boycott in campaign against hate online
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Having said all that, it would be remiss of The Fiver to ignore the upcoming four-day sporting boycott of social media disgraces and content hucksters such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Football clubs, organisations and players across the land are removing themselves from the aforementioned platforms in a symbolic attempt to clean up the fibre-optic sewer of abuse that sluices the dregs of humanity into our homes 24-7. This extremely welcome and frankly long overdue show of silent solidarity begins on Friday afternoon at 3pm BST and ideally would end sometime in the year 2525, but in actuality finishes at one minute before midnight on Monday, which is a start, and we’ll grab what we can with both hands.
“This boycott signifies our collective anger,” says Kick It Out chairperson Sanjay Bhandari. “We are making a symbolic gesture to those with power. We need you to act. We need you to create change.” The Fiver is all in with this plan, so much so that earlier today we asked The Man if we could down tools in order to show our support, and absolutely not so we’d be free to get stuck into the remainder of that bottle of 73.8% ABV turps-flavoured beverage and watch Wilson-Murphy from the Crucible. The Man didn’t fall for our wheeze, though never let it be said that he isn’t open to compromise. “Three paragraphs as usual,” he bellowed, “but you can chip off at 2.59pm, and given the serious nature of the subject, don’t feel obliged to come up with any witty jokes.” As The Fiver sailed back through The Man’s office door along a perfect parabola towards our desk, one eyebrow was slowly raised.
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Here’s Brenny. Photograph: Plumb Images/Leicester City/Getty Images
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It is critical this is not a one-off. It should be viewed as part of a broader collective campaign that does not stop at punishing those with abhorrent views or who troll for the sake of trolling, but explores more broadly the root causes of racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of abuse, and looks to use the popularity and power of football to drive the changes needed more generally in society to eradicate those views for good” – why Suzanne Wrack is joining the social media disgrace boycott.
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Here’s the latest Football Weekly Extra podcast, on Big Cup and fan power.
FIVER LETTERS
“After reading Wednesday’s missive, I felt somebody should ask you if you feel Hennes VIII might be regarded as the Greatest GOAT Of All Time?” – Chris Weaver.
“I am not sure which I enjoyed most from yesterday’s Quote of the Day. The fact there really is a team called Cape Coast Mysterious Ebusua Dwarfs, or the fact that the manager of their vanquished opponents was able to throw his players under the bus in a manner that might have made even José Mourinho wince. At the risk of making your output both interesting and funny, can we have more of this?” – Colin Reed.
“Re: tales of referee misadventures (Fiver letters passim). It brought to mind a game I reffed horribly hungover at uni some years ago, when I rarely blew the whistle as it hurt. The lack of tooting probably didn’t help as, late on, I had to send someone off. I then realised I had no cards on me. Fortunately, it was such a nasty lunge he thought he was giving it the big one by storming off before I could card him. I definitely had a watch, but blew up early. PS: your ‘well worth a watch’ (yesterday’s last line) was bang on – thanks for that” – Dan Ashley.
“About 20 years ago, when I was in my early-50s, I was playing in a Co-Ed league in California. I came on as a sub wearing the team jersey and my cut-off Levi’s bespattered with house paint. The portly ref, a pompous Brit, scolded me for the shorts and gave me a yellow card. I told him we’d speak after the game. The match over, he was walking off the field, so I yelled to him: ‘How do they look from here?’ I turned around, dropped the offending kit and mooned him. I was banned from the league for the rest of the season” – Hanford Woods.
Send your letters to
[email protected]. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Hanford Woods.
NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
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Koeman gets told to do Ron. Photograph: Quality Sport Images/Getty Images
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Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO!
LONG WEEKEND. TAKE CARE ALL, BACK ON TUESDAY
