BlueSky was branded as the ‘woke’ answer to X (formerly Twitter) and was what X users would have you believe was for the left-leaning, ‘libtard’ snowflakes who couldn’t handle the perennially fatalist churn of the X feed.
Can’t deal with the endless string of bots and AI slop dressed up as far-right propaganda? Here, have a platform designed for measured argumentation, where users kiss and hug after pointedly telling each other that they “approach every situation with such fearless misunderstanding.”
The one thing that’a defied X’s demise is of course the subculture of football — the product that has infinite content-creation capacity.
This thing that exists in a world of its own. While mum and dad are divorcing downstairs, football Twitter harmlessly hits another home run on the Nintendo Wii, in peaceful ignorance of the fire ablaze in the kitchen beneath its feet.
Inheriting the traits — the positive and the negative — from our birthgivers is simply inescapable, even for this self-governed state on a little part of the internet.
Football Twitter is often as brutal, merciless, and cruel as the platform is in its wider context, and following Saturday’s frustrating defeat to newly-promoted Ipswich Town, I for one have been pining for a slice of that constructive, level-headed analysis on BlueSky.
Of course, like most, what I walked into after the full-time whistle on Saturday was warring parents, scrutinising, in painstaking detail, who’s to blame for their messy divorce.
Florent Ghisolfi’s a fraud. Granit Xhaka’s legs have gone. Luke O’Nien is out of his depth. Omar Alderete can no longer play football. Noah Sadiki robbed an old woman outside Tesco and used her card to buy a mega pack of toilet roll…hang on, that was just nauseating right-wing bot-drivel.
Should I labour the point anymore? This toxic echo chamber perpetuates non-issues until they become issues, and false, overinflated ones at that.
Sunderland lose football games.
We play badly. The players make mistakes, etc, etc.
We all know that, and this is football. Prior to the days of social media, these results were left in the stands and around bar tables after a post-match pint. But now they’re scrutinised, and dwelt upon, and analysis videos pose as some Channel 5 post-mortem examination of Trai Hume’s showing in midfield.
Perhaps I’m a minority, but I didn’t think — especially in the first-half — that we were all that poor on Saturday. We were playing neat football, we established ourselves as the better side, and restricted the hosts to very little.
We squandered some good chances via Brian Brobbey and Sadiki, but created nevertheless. The goals we conceded were all of our own making, which paradoxically is a positive within a negative, as that’s easily rectifiable — just don’t pass the ball directly to an opposition forward, lads?
Even after going 1-0 down, our heads didn’t drop, and we were back in the game within fifteen minutes, and although the last-gasp winner left little time to stage a comeback, for me there were more than enough positive signs.
Of course, there are going to be teething issues. We have several players that aren’t yet match-fit, we have another few yet to sign, and a squad starting a new campaign under different demands and expectations.
As we’ve learned so much in recent seasons, football is often a game won by how a team responds to adversity.
It’s well-recognised that what is said on social media often leaks into professional dressing rooms as it gradually erodes at morale and confidence, as player-fan relations become increasingly tense and fraught with niggling bitterness.
Ironically, player-fan relations have never been better at the club, but with the tirade of negative online discourse we run the risk of damaging that relationship.
Traditionally, we as a club have rallied behind players, and even after disappointing, frustrating results like Saturday’s, we should never stray too far from perspective.
