YOU’S LOT ON THE INTERNET! – YES HE MEANS YOU

According to recently published internet usage statistics this recent sweeping generalisation by Hugh Keevins on the Clyde “Super” Scoreboard encompasses 82% of the population. This frustrated shriek sounded like the caretaker of an alleged haunted hotel who had just been un-masked on Scooby Doo. There is an element of life imitating fiction in this analogy as in truth if it wasn’t for you pesky kids on the internet they would be getting away with it too.

It appears to be a common held opinion amongst many of the hacks, particularly those on the airwaves that people in the habit of contributing to the world of online social media do not hold views worthy of consideration and are to be condescended. These are some of the self same people who were gladly tolerated at supporter’s functions and the like in the late eighties; but then I suppose there were five books to sell and the customer is always right. There was an add on to one such rebuke on a recent show about how these people on the internet have caused terrible situations that the police are having to deal with. 



There is a small percentage of unfathomable people who use the internet to peddle abuse and cause harm to others, these people have existed in every generation and every walk of life. The use of the internet is now predominantly their preferred tool of communicating their message of hate and abuse. These are the same collection of people who in the past would send poison pen letters, heavy breathers down the phone line or make hoax calls to the emergency services. That these people now use the internet instead should not cloud people’s judgement on the other 81% of the population who use it without crime.

It fits the old medias agenda to portray a different story and make those unfamiliar with the online community suspicious and wary of it and make those who actually contribute to it or follow it feel like a bungling extremist. I believe there are two main reasons for this; the realisation that the established old media is in decline and the awareness that those pesky people on the internet are actually better informed than them. Both of the reasons at their source have the underlying fear that there is a shift in power.

The global decline of the newspaper industry is well documented, it stands to reason that a drop in sales leads to a drop in the amount it can command for its advertising and whilst titles have online versions, the print pound is more valuable than the digital penny. Burdened with large fixed costs they are vulnerable to the downturn in sales as people find alternative ways of accessing their news. Some commentators have studied the trend in falling sales through the world and predict a timeline for the extinction of Newspapers across the continents with the UK being one of the first to fall in 2019. This information was from the internet so it must be a misinformed extremist view though – right?

Putting the Global decline aside and concentrating on the sport pages of our own Daily / Sunday papers it is not hard to see why people have turned away from the old media. In the good old days before the pesky internet you had limited choices; you bought the paper in the morning, you bought the Celtic view once a week and you listened to BBC Scotland or Radio Clyde. On the morning Maurice Johnstone signed for Celtic in 1989 I remember being in the kitchen having breakfast when it came on Clyde Sport, the news of him not signing for Celtic (and everyone remembers where they were) was discovered by walking into a newsagents and seeing the front page of a tabloid. The days of the media breaking stories in this way no longer exists for the majority of people. Tuesday’s signing of Jaroslaw Fojut was broken by Celtic via a twiiter link to its website and quickly followed up by online contributors providing career background stats and opinion on his attributes. Within 10 minutes of the signing being announced there was nothing left to find out, rendering the purchase of a paper or listening to the radio sports desks redundant. By following a small number of people in the Celtic Twitter Family you have access to the Celtic news and views immediately.

The power previously held by the old sports media in this country was immense, the sports editors could set the agenda or agendas of others and the common man in the street had no other source to dispute the validity of the piece – a hole eventually plugged by fanzines like Not the View. Coupled with this if you had a platform on the airwaves to reinforce the agenda then the stranglehold on the sports news was complete. Think for a second about how the current Rangers Tax Case story would have been massaged and manipulated if there was no other form of media. Stories of potential global brand moonbeams, super casinos and whiz kids with wealth off the scale would have a gullible and accepting audience whilst the severity of the tax case would be dismissed with reports of negotiations going on with the top brass in the HMRC in London. Without the quality of online contributions from unpaid yet vastly more informed individuals the tax case would have been allowed to creep up with the similar type of silence normally only reserved for a Celtic goal in a David Begg Commentary.   

The acknowledgement that the material produced on the internet via blogs like the Rangerstaxcase is well informed and erudite, is hard to reconcile for the older generation of the media who have had a cartel on dictating the sports agenda for decades. The claim by some that they have never viewed that particular blog is hard to believe as equipping yourself with as much knowledge on a subject that is the biggest story in decades is surely a competence, unless of course you don’t want or are not allowed to demonstrate your knowledge to a wider audience. You can hear the discomfort on a nightly basis on Radio Clyde (if you so wish) as reasoned people ask reasonable questions and make reasoned points signifying they know more than has been or will ever be reported.

The attempt to set the agenda is already underway by the old media who have one eye on the worst case scenario as you will no doubt be familiar with the “Celtic need Rangers” Mantra or the “Scottish football would implode” Mantra. In the event of a Newco Rangers emerging in the future they are starting the campaign to rip up the SPL statutes and allow them to be lifted over the turnstyle. Its all about self preservation and why not? the demise or decline of the club who provides your publication with the majority of your readership is obviously going to hit your figures hard, perhaps even a mortal blow. 

But of course those pesky folk on the internet are going to keep meddling and stop them getting away with it - and they know way too much.