Some of you may already know this but for those who don’t; on Sunday I unsubscribed from nearly every major Arsenal news feed. This means that I no longer get ESPNSoccernet, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Mail, the Mirror, or This is Staffordshire* in my daily diet. And much like a person makes a major change in the food they eat because of a health crisis, this shift in my reading diet after the Man U loss has revealed some hard truths. As well it should. After all, few people find themselves in a dietary crisis after a lifetime of eating well.
I used to get up at 4am and almost before my feet hit the floor, open my Google Reader. Once there I would skip down to the “News” folder and start skimming through the daily news feeds from all of the sources listed above.
Skimming was intentional. I know that I could set up an Arsenal only feed or filter out the content that wasn’t Arsenal related but doing that meant I would lose some of the context. For example, what is the point of understanding Arsenal’s semi-annual financial report unless it’s in the context of the financial reports of other clubs?
Another reason skimming is important is that I didn’t grow up in the football culture and I don’t live near the club that I’m covering. So, I need to immerse myself as fully as possible into that culture and, in a sense, catch up with the rest of you. Things like “banta” and chanting aren’t completely foreign concepts but I need to try to understand the subtexts of those cultural artifacts in order to comment intelligently.
I would get my breakfast ready, coffee on, and spend an hour to two hours just reading football related news feeds first thing in the morning. Then at lunch, more news feeds. Then after supper, more news feeds. Then before bed. And if I woke up in the middle of the night worried about something. How else would I have know important details like the fact that the Rwandan president has called time on Arsene Wenger’s tenure at Arsenal?**
I’m exaggerating, slightly, but the reality is that I spent an extraordinary amount of time sifting through the output of just a small handful of media outlets’ content to find maybe 10 stories that interested me, per day. There was a lot of duplication in there, there was a lot of contradiction between sites and even within, there was a lot of opinion, and the vast majority of the opinion and coverage of all the clubs was negative.
I’m not telling anyone anything shocking to say that newspapers thrive off negative coverage. Objectively, the Arsene Wenger era has been the most successful in the history of Arsenal and one of the most successful in the history of English football. And it doesn’t matter how you measure that success — trophies, players, fans, money, stadiums, reputation, etc — Arsenal are a successful football club. Also just as objectively, Arsenal are going through a rough patch.
It’s natural for the newspapers to cover the negative over the positive in that situation. In fact, I’d argue it’s natural for them to make the negative the norm. You only need to see the negative coverage of Man U, who are objectively the most successful club in Premier League history and who are not going through a rough patch despite losing players to injury and not splashing big money this January, to see that no matter what’s happening at your club the reporters will make the negative the norm.
How many red cards did Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal get when they were winning trophies? If you know the answer to that then, again, I’ve proven my point. It’s more complicated than that, of course, but I’m not writing an ethnography on English sports reporters here, rather, just pointing out that negativity has and always will sell and when multiplied with the number of stories that I was reading, it was and still is a bit of a burden.
I imagine it would be less burdensome if there wasn’t so much ubiquitous reblogging, republishing, and repeating of so much content. Well, I say “content” but I really mean “bullshit.” And the thing is that it’s not just simple multiplication of bullshit, it’s some kind of exponential function of bullshit. Bullshit begets bullshit and each of those bullshits begets their own bullshit and so on until we are entirely covered in bullshit.
See, what happens is that if negativity sells then people have to out-negative each other. One writer calls for a player to be fired, the next guy is dissatisfied with just one player and calls for a clear out of multiple players, the next for assistant coaches to be fired, the next guy for the manager to be fired, and then the board, and then the owners, and then….? What? Do we call for the Premier League to be fired? the FA? FIFA? Europe? The UN? God himself?
Now, imagine that you could take all that gluttony, that negativity, and all that bullshit that you’ve been carrying around for the last few years and put it down for a second.
It’s like double-rainbows all the way across the sky, man.
Trust me.
*I had to keep up on what people were saying about us in Stoke!
**I don’t read Brooks Peck’s “work”, someone from twitter sent me that link this morning and I thought perfectly illustrates every point I made above and below.
Arsenal News 24/7
I totally agree, but most sites are pretty obvious in their negative baiting, so its easy not to bother with them.
The multiple links with a slightly adjusted headlines are another, but the lengths some go to get attention during this transfer window has been something else? My current favourite is the Turkish player that said ‘… I have had no contact with Arsenal, but I would find it hard to turn them down’ Was the person asking the question his agent by any chance?
That’s a good thing, Tim. Keep it up. Life should be better without negative input, regardless of the source, but yes, it sure takes a whole lot of frustration and anxiety out of following Arsenal just to stop reading the papers.
My own double-rainbow moment came when BBC’s 606 forum shut down last season. I wasted so many hours of my life on that pathetic site, mostly arguing with United, Chelsea, and Spurs fans, or winding them up or being wound up. Suddenly, it’s all gone. All that time insulting and being insulted just for following a team; all that time being told Arsenal are a sinking ship blah blah blah, being told that Eduardo and Ramsey were at fault for getting their legs broken, etc. And after a loss, it was hell.
I’ve closed the gates now. It’s just me and my fellow Arsenal fans, and I read only this site, Arseblog, and once in a while I’ll check the Guardian or the Daily Fail. The last thing I need is for this outlet in my life–that is, following a sports team, what is supposed be fun, even in the ups and downs (because of the ups and downs)–to be a source of anxiety.
+1
Ssinderias Reply:
January 25th, 2012 at 1:51 pm
@Bunburyist, I know exactly what you mean
January 26th, 2012 at 4:46 am
same here bun.the hours i have spent trying to ram logic down spud fans throats….endless.now i have stopped,my life is less stressful.great post tim,one i think we can all relate to.
p.s when are you flying over tim?
Good article.
Maybe you were taking the negativity a little bit too seriously Tim? I regularly read negative content and often laugh at how ridiculous it is. Take LeGrove for example – every day its negative, every day a new stick to beat the manager with. Disagree, and you will be called names and banned! The papers are the same, especially the tabloids, but some of the content is so piss poor that its actually quite funny.
That said, if you win things, generally you get good press. Maybe we need to win a trophy!
Bunburyist – did you use the same username on 606? I think I remember you, though I wasnt a very regular poster on there.
+1
Ssinderias Reply:
January 25th, 2012 at 2:04 pm
@GoonerDave, Unfortunately, a little negativity enters your mind even though it is only supposed to be funny at first. Excise your poison and be free. But I agree that we need to win, especially the big ones, yo start getting positive press
January 25th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
@Ssinderias, TO start getting
tim, well done. i stopped going to arsenal-mania nearly as much because of all the doom-and-gloomers, and now make it a point just to visit you and ‘holic’s site daily (with tri-weekly visits to arseblog). other than that, i can’t be arsed.
a friend of mine who’s deep into personal improvement and finding his godhead (make of that what you wish), he always says we choose to live the life we lead. choosing to get shut of negativity masquerading as news will not only remove the negativity, but will open up space inside for more positivity to arrive, even if it is the late train.
just keep writing! this blog is a bright spot in an otherwise largely dark landscape.
January 25th, 2012 at 3:03 pm
@scruzgooner, Good luck to your friend. He will be happy most of the time
Well done. It’s good to step away from the crack pipe every now and again, but especially tempting during transfer windows. I will be grateful when the matches are coming so thick and fast that there isn’t much time for hand wringing. Sites like The Arsenal Collective have the right idea though.
Hope this doesn’t have too much impact on your number crunching though Tim, which is kind of incredible. Keep that up please.
Cheers
I have been thinking this all season. Wenger has made mistakes but the abuse he’s gotten is disgusting.
Talkshite had an article yesterday where alan smudge smith criticised Wengers transfer policy for signing mertesacker over cahill.
what a joke that was. a guy who has never managed a game in his life criticising a arsenal’s most successful manager ever who signed the likes of petit, vieira, henry, vermaelaen and rvp. wenger has an immense track record in the transfer market. also gary cahill helped bolton to the worst defensive record so far this season.
When i pointed this out of course they wouldn’t publish my comment
January 25th, 2012 at 9:54 am
@Chief Gooner, why would you degrade yourself into a cahill vs mertesacker debate?
@tim i feel you on unsubscribing news feeds, you can’t help but have those mood swings, my lowest was when i ‘hid’ arsenal.com on newsnow last summer,i just couldn’t take the hyperbole n awkwardness anymore.
on regurgitated bullshit i call it clickwhoring give it up to the daily fail n goal.com when it comes to those hideous acts. btn i like the ‘exponential function of bullshit’ bit;brilliant.
excellent post,keep them coming.
I once did this exact thing with a whole ‘career’. Simply dropped it mid-sentence and walked out into Freedom and a new life. Fresh air smells so good, and your native intelligence and love of Arsenal will propel you to new -uh – well you get the idea. Well done lad, Nice out here, isn’t it?
January 26th, 2012 at 4:50 am
good for you mate
Good move Tim. I had the exact same kind of experience trying to follow politics a few years ago. Consume enough punditry about any topic and you can find yourself living in some strange nether world that doesn’t really inform about anything other then itself.
I’d also like to say that while I admire your commitment to understanding the culture “over there”, I really don’t care what Stoke thinks about the Arsenal. I don’t think you need to “catch up” in any way. If some people want to dismiss your point of view because you’re American.. let em. fuck em. It’s obvious that you have a very global audience here and I’ll bet that the most of us don’t have Arsenal tattoos or ticket stubs from the 70s.
Agree so much. I used to read LeGrove just to laugh at the negativity. In the end I found it was more enjoyable not to bother.
Just this site and Arseblog daily, and ‘holic and ACLF after matches.
TIm, in the last 14 days or so, 80% of my Arsenal info comes from one source, and that is your blog.
I feel tired browsing through countless “Chamakh says: I want to stay in Arsenal” immediately next to “Chamakh says: I want to leave Arsenal” rubbish stories.
Once a day, I scroll through http://www.newsnow.co.uk just to see if something pops out in the headlines. Usually it doesn’t, so I spend the day waiting for my favorite 5pmkickoff post.
And quite frankly, it feels really well, and more importantly, I have the time to focus on something that could potentially be more significant than the news that Diaby suffered another setback, and that is the job which is paying for the bread on my table.
Well, I don’t really eat bread, but you get the point.
Tim, I have not had cable TV or television for the last 8+ years.
Food for thought.
(click to show comment)
There is a place for “good” criticism and I thought your post of a few days ago (I have no idea what we’re doing) was a fine example of such.
“We” are the reason why “they” play the game and I think it is responsible to ask questions. I don’t follow many other Arsenal websites, so I can’t speak to the uber-negative mentality. But I am concerned and in the same way I wondered about the loss of Cesc and Nasri at the start of the season, I wondered about the loss of all our fullbacks.
Can we recover? I hope so. But this season more than others has made me think, “What are we doing?!”
Tim, unplugging is the way to go. And it won’t hurt you one bit to take a little break.
I drastically cut down on my surfing Arsenal news after all the negative media following the Carling Cup final last year. Definitely been happier although last summer was tortuous and I had to make a conscious decision to read Fox or espn soccer. Again much happier afterwards. I did have to subscribe to Foxsoccer.tv cuz I don’t have TV at home.
my favorite game this season was home victory against Olympiakos cuz the fans were so loud you could hardly hear the commentators going on and on about RvP’s contract, and the Chelsea game cuz, well it was 5-3.
The only concern I have is that fans bring negativity into the stadium. Once the supporters enter through the gates, the only sentiment should be encouragement to the team. Maybe I’m too much like Scruzgooner’s friend in that I cut out the negativity, but “Come on, Arsenal.”
Tim,
I read these 2 sources which are now the reference for quality football content in France. Unfortunately, it is in French, but I wanted to share:
http://www.sofoot.com
http://www.cahiersdufootball.net
Seems like a tonne of people have done the same, Tim, including me. It used to be okay when the doom and gloomers came up with reasonable and well articulated arguments; at least they made sense then. Now, all I see is people churning out the same old nonsense, regurgitated by what they read in the papers, fueled by their own contempt at not being able to accept “Arsenal without trophies” (to quote God)
Kind of gotten used to the negativity and skepticism all around the club..Negativity seems to bring out the creative best in Gooners. Because not all of us are doomers gloomers..we want to see the positive side of a dire situation..
Following a club like Arsenal is not for someone who have not loved and lost…it comes with the heartbreaks, the anxiety, the frustration, the truck load of badluck..
I think the current problem with Arsenal…players and fans alike is…fear. The fear of losing..the fear that you are not as good as before..the fear that your opponent is stronger than you..the fear that its gonna collapse at the end.. the fear that an own goal is coming in injury time..
Why was the fear there that..when Ox was taken off and Arshavin brought in..that we would concede??…
In tough times..i’ve come to realise that nothing works better than faith…after all we are not doing anything grossly wrong..we are sticking to our path..its not going to be easy..its going to be stuck with negativity.. but take off the fear…stop getting wound up..keep the faith..its gonna feel better..
January 26th, 2012 at 10:32 am
@Cliffy, I keep thinking , what’s the problem ? In what was always going to be a difficult season , we are 5th , still in the CL, FA cup and were close to at least a deserved point v Man U . And I would like to ask Nasri why he left now (apart from the mega wages) ?