The post below will be of limited interest to those few of the ‘general public’ who read this, referring as it does to a discussion list for followers of Watford FC. There are general morals to be drawn from the lament, namely:
- that online communities are a piss-poor 2-D substitute for real, face-to-face communities, and that relating to people via a computer rather than in real life person-to-person leads to an increasing disconnection from them.
- without the rootedness of physical contact, an online persona can develop which is at odds, sometimes violently, with your real character
- online fora can evolve into ‘institutional’ forms as they become more popular and ‘established’
- free speech is well nigh impossible on web and email fora
After some 15 years of mostly uninterrupted membership, I’ve decided to quit the online community of Watford FC fans that is the Watford Mailing List (WML), both for my sake (and physical and mental health) and the list’s. This is a hard decision to make as I’m almost a founder member of the community, having been recruited back in 1993 after posting to an Italian Usenet newsgroup about Il Fenomeno Luther Blissett, at a time when the list membership was in double figures. Calling time on 15 years in WML is like leaving a long-time partner with whom you’ve had great times, and of whom you’ll always have fond memories, but from whom you’ve gradually become estranged, to the point where the mutual attraction has faded to a stuttering ember.
WML is not the place it was in the ‘golden age’, when membership was relatively small, many members knew each other in real life, BSaD was still going as the focal point of the online fan community, and WML operated by evolving social rules. In those days WML rekindled my (and many other’s) dormant support for WFC, encouraged me to go to matches often involving 3 hour or longer drives, and brought me into contact with good folk – Pete F, Craig, Fuzzy, Pete G, John C, Ian L, Kev le Belge, and many more – whom I’d meet for pre- and/or post-match pints, and at matches. WML largely ruled itself because most of us knew and respected each other, and whilst flame wars occasionally erupted these were calmed down by the ‘old hands’ who knew the combatants in person.
Over recent years, though, many of the ‘old guard’ have either left WML, or gone quiet, and nowadays I simply don’t recognise most of the posters – they’re no longer people in the real, social 3-D sense, but 2-D online personas, just names on email headers, for the most part indistinguishable to me, perhaps – probably – through not knowing them face to face. Worryingly, I’ve found myself posting differently in response to unknowns than to those I’ve met, being increasingly combative and indeed verbally aggressive to the former, and markedly more conciliatory to those I know (such as Kev le Belge and John of Wakefield). At times my posting has been akin to the behaviour I learnt in the bearpit of Usenet newsgroups where speech is free and argument red in tooth and claw, and my postings have become more rant and less communication. I’ve found myself using verbal aggression which I’d hesitate to use face to face, even though I’ve tried to stick to the principle that you should never post what you wouldn’t say in person.
How much of this is my fault, and how much is a function of a change in the list and its numbers (currently around 700 members), is hard to say. What I do know is that my anger is increasingly less moderated by personal contact and increasingly damaging to myself and others. As a result I’ve undoubtedly wound up many list members, both those I’ve fought with online – Dr Dave, Simon D, Hi-Ho Silver, Bruno, the Pillocking Pillock, to mention but a few – and those who’ve looked on silently, probably in dismay. I know that many WMLers now see me as a fuming, foamy-mouthed, purple-faced ranter, the sort of bloke that they – and I, for that matter – would move to the other end of the pub to avoid, or indeed to a different pub altogether.
This is not me, though, it’s not how I see myself, and it’s not how those who know me and have shared pre-match pints with me see the real life Fred Riley. In reality I’m an affable, friendly, sociable, slightly introverted bloke who stands his round, avoids barneys, and prefers to listen rather than yak. The portrait that many WMLers would draw of me would be unrecognisable to the real me, akin to Hyde v Jekyll. I’m a softy at heart, a believer and seeker after the quiet life, who avoids stand-up barneys and angry confrontations, not least because, amongst males, that carries a real risk of physical aggro. I’ve not hit anyone in over 30 years, and that’s a record I intend to take to the grave. Like most folk, I want to be regarded and remembered well, not as some Russell Crowe type, and I don’t want to make enemies unnecessarily.
For all these reasons, and also because I’m falling out of love with WFC (the subject of the next post) in part because of my estrangement from WML, I’m leaving the list for the foreseeable future before I really piss someone off whom I might bump into on matchdays.
WML will be marginally better off without me, and for me life will be quieter, calmer and far less stressful than it has been in recent years, when I’ve not only been on the list but have served in the Watford Advisory Group (WAG), the ‘ruling body’ of the list. I’ll miss very much the cameraderie, easy banter and freewheeling spirit of the ‘old days’, but those will never return now that WML has become an institution in its own right, recognised by the football club (some of whose employees are silent members), and with its own ruling body in the form of WAG. Indeed, the need for WAG is the clearest sign that the old easygoing days of free speech and self-regulation have gone, as WAG’s been increasingly called into action to police the list.
My membership of WAG has also led me in disturbing directions, and into disturbingly authoritarian and intolerant positions, which sit uneasily, and are often in blatant contradiction with, my natural libertarianism. The trouble with any email list or web forum is that it’s inherently undemocratic, owned as it is by a single person who can pull the plug at any time, and act as arbitrarily as s/he wishes. Even if, as is the case with WML, the list owner shares his power with an ‘inner council’, you just replace an autarchy with an oligarchy. The larger and more established the list becomes, the more necessary it becomes to police it to try to keep it running smoothly, and, in these litigious days, to forestall any possible libel action over incautious postings. This last has been the main threat to free speech on WML, such that WAG has been (over-)cautious in clamping down on rumours and allegations for fear that the club will take legal action, which may well fall directly on the list owner(s), such that he/they could end up personally liable for comments made by a list member. That is, the list owner could end up losing their home and being bankrupted for an alllegation posted by a list member, a heavy price to pay for free speech, and one which the list owner’s family might well take exception to. Whether this would happen or not, the finite probability that it might makes list owners both cautious and paranoid, and leads them into increasingly strict self-censorship. This is especially crippling on a football fan’s forum, as rumour is the very lifeblood of the fan – take away that, by demanding corroboration if someone’s heard, say, that Joe Bloggs had a training ground bust-up with a fellow team-mate, and you remove most of what fans talk about in pubs. Yet, as clubs like Sheff Wed – who took their own fans to court – and WFC – who sued the local paper, the Watford Observer – have already demonstrated, a libel suit is a real possibility. These days, the only place you can get free speech online is on Usenet, and even then you’d best cover your tracks with a proxy.
My WAG duties therefore made me increasingly uncomfortable because they necessarily made me authoritarian where list policing was concerned, even though I was part of the ‘libertarian wing’ of WAG. They also led WAG members into direct personal confrontation with WML members we were disciplining, the nadir of which was a bitter dispute with the Pillocking Pillock whom we eventually threw off the list, after months of argument, for both on- and off-list anti-social behaviour.
I will try to stay in touch with those whom I’ve become mates with via WML and WAG, and hope to share the occasional pre-match pint with them – they know who they are. I’ll also have to avoid those whom I’m pissed off mightily through my verbal aggression, at least until memory fades to the point where they think “Fred who?”. I’ll miss the gossip and some of the bonkers on- (Wings of a Sparrow) and off-topic (Ian Lay’s goat) threads, but will keep in touch with WFC news via BSaD’s successor, BHappy. However much I’d like to purge WFC from my life – and there have been times, particularly when growing up in Luton, when being an ‘Orn was a positive curse I prayed to be lifted from me – it’ll always be there. Truly, supporting a football club is a born affliction, not a chosen pleasure.
