Racism and all the bad -isms

Did anyone in the UK see Newsnight last night?

They looked at the accounts of 100 or so of the abusive messages sent to those England players. Over 50 were, by their reckoning, from over seas with a not very subtle hint at Russian involvement.

3 Likes

Probably not all of them. A Portsmouth U18 player really doesn’t have that great a chance of making it as a professional in the best case scenario - unless they are one of the top guys at the academy then they’ll have to go to trials and earn themselves another shot.

1 Like

So Instagram (owned by Facebook) doesn’t think sending monkey emoji to black players and telling them to ‘fuck off home’ is a breach of their community guidelines.

Need to government to intervene. The companies aren’t going to police themselves.

2 Likes

Um, why dont they just remove the monkey emoji?

I agree that governments need to get involved. I dont hold out much hope for the UK government doing much however but there’s a whole load of simpler stuff that could be done beforehand as well.

2 Likes

This very much. Nobody needs a monkey emoji.
I was wondering why it had been included on this forum as a reaction. I’m not convinced there’s anyone on here who would use it in that way, but I could imagine someone posting a cringy vid of one of our black players and someone reacting with that emoji and not even consider how that may be perceived.

1 Like

Was always going to be the case, but that doesn’t mean its not a problem here - if anything, it makes the closest racists jump out and jump on the bandwagon without realising that they’re copying bots and before they know it they’re jobless. Serves them right.

5 Likes

Yes, the Russian angle is real, but they’ve figured out their mischief is best directed at issues that already exists and are rife to exploited.

1 Like

Oh yeah it’s not public tweets, but for a football club, having 3-4 players being casually racist will naturally impact younger/other players and before you know it it’s rife.

In terms of nailing them, doubt it’s something that the police will get on to. Its for Portsmouth FC to deal with.

An education programme really is the best answer. Show them horrifc shit that’s happened in the past for them to realise why racism is wrong.

Suspect there is some kind of education at most clubs anyway. But it clearly isn’t working.

1 Like
2 Likes

My opinion is this is ridiculous. I don’t think it’s ever acceptable to make homophobic comments (which is my understanding of the post - I haven’t seen exactly what he said), however he was 14 and it was 9 years ago!!

Where is the common sense? Give him the opportunity to apologise and then move the fuck on.

4 Likes

I don’t even think he should apologise, for something he said as a 14yr old, nine years ago. The world’s gone mad.

3 Likes

I think he should apologise at the very least, that’s an actual thing that he’s done. It’s not some imagined action.

I’m not sure what I think about retrospective action like that however, since he was only 14. I think it’s more the age he was than the duration since, for me, that creates the question of whether he should be charged or not. If he were already an adult when he made those comments, then no question about it for me.

Of course he should apologize. If the basis of saying this isn’t a big deal because it was a while ago and he was a kid, then baked into that is the presumption that he’s learned and that is inherently tied to being able to apologize for previously doing shithead things.

One of the things we really need to get our arms around is the reality that for many people being a teenager is about testing boundaries. Lots of that period is spent doing dumb shit, and the dumb shit that is said is rarely meant or believed, but said with the intention of testing the reaction to it as a way of calibrating a personality. Young people today are learning those lessons on line, which is both troublesome for the reach and permeance the performative stupidity has, but also because the absence of a visceral connection to the people responding to you means it doesnt provide the same sort of feedback those of us had who went through this period prior to the internet, meaning it takes them longer to get through this phase. There is a big difference between a 14 year old making a racist joke vs a 30 year old and a young adult should not be defined by those moments.

5 Likes

Thank Christ there was no social media when I was 14.

5 Likes

11here……

It’s probably best if anyone in the public eye deletes all their social media accounts and then open new professionally managed ones. At the very least have some sort of tweet deleter for anything more than a few weeks old.

I sometimes get Timehop reminders of posts I did 10+ years ago and, while none of it was sexist or racist etc, I still shudder at the utter nonsense I would say as a 17/18 year old. Can’t even imagine what crap I was spouting at 14.

4 Likes

I’m dreading any of my old hieroglyphic tablets surfacing. :wink::nerd_face:

5 Likes

This has cracked me right up just thinking of the mental gymnastics required by people like Piers Morgan and other Nationalist loonies. I’d love to try and see them explain this one. Bit like where the £350m per week from the EU has gone.

Apparently the Queen supports a Marxist lead organisation now

Thankfully for you TIA is no more. Absolute drivel your stuff was. Not Gold like me and @Redbj

2 Likes