I must be getting old … I’m beginning to become nostalgic… nostalgic for the days when the build up to a game was a weekly publication called Rugby Leaguer… and a regular piece on Trinity by a dude with the pseudonym of ‘left footer’… or a daily visit to the newsagent for the first edition of the Evening Post with the possibilities of a couple of lines of news about Trinity… and then the real scoops of a Friday morning Wakefield Express back page… sometimes an odd rumour would come from a chat in the pub, or at training on Tuesdays and Thursdays… mostly things heard from a friend of a friend or someone’s mum was a cleaner at the office of one of the board members… all was taken with a pinch of salt … and 99% of which was just idle speculation or complete made up nonsense.
At games the order of play was 1) who knows any new jokes…2) guess the crowd numbers… 3) nod to your weekly terrace neighbours with bland indifference… 4) share any of the weekly rumours you might have stumbled across… also with a general air of scepticism… 5) watch the game booing the opponent and cheering (lambasting) the home team… 6) walk home happily chatting or blaming the referee… 7) get on with your life…
Latterly a more detailed update on news came every couple of weeks on a high rate phone number…
Then came the internet… and the world got crazy … or maybe it was always crazy and it just got more visible… in such a short time it has become a vehicle for abuse and hate… misinformation and manipulation…
Given the ubiquitous nature of communication through the internet, there is but little choice to subscribe or become totally isolated… I want to follow my team… follow the news and pick up of interesting discussion.
But, for me, this thread exemplifies the unpleasant nature of communication through the internet… in the past I could read an article, listen to a terrace conversation and then walk away.. I didn’t have to watch it cascade into self motivated set of, ever decreasing, dualistic and divisive arguments.
The concepts of truth, empathy and altruism have all but been destroyed in forums and on line comments. Anger and division are the new social mantras, and in the main, sensible, intelligent and reasoned argument have been replaced by cancellation, intransigence and intolerance,
I am genuinely nostalgic for the time before this all became ‘normal’
And I certainly hope my words are not victim to the afore mentioned ‘Dunning- Kruger’ effect.
