So, farewell then @dgibbo28
At this point it’s customary for me to apologise for yet another twitter-themed post and to think back to the NME letters page of the late 80’s and 90’s which would invariably feature some waggish correspondent wondering if it wasn’t time the publication just changed its name to New Morrissey Express and had done with it. In which spirit, it might be time I just changed the title of the blog to United Road – Tweet Me Home or something. Apology done, back to the theme.
Wayne’s debut was conducted in now familiar fashion. Embarrassed first couple of tweets in which he explained that he’d finally succumbed and give him time to find his feet, soon followed-up by shout-outs to various acquaintances. Before long, confidence, and with it confidences of one kind or another, were flowing and we were granted a privileged glimpse of life chez Rooney. All with a flagrant disregard for the conventions of spelling and punctuation that were manna to his legion of critics.
Rooney’s twitter debut was sandwiched between the recent-ish arrival of Nani and Micheal Owen, and the subsequent one of Darron Gibson. Not hard to guess which of these will accrue the most followers in the weeks to come (presumably the source of much bragging around Carrington these days). In these particular stakes, Wayne (on 188, 413) still has a bit of catching up to do if he wants to surpass the twit-father himself Rio (841, 166).
Question is what do they, and we, expect to get out of their being on twitter? First thing they can look forward to of course is an avalanche of abuse courtesy of cyber warriors emboldened by the shield of their avatars. Darron Gibson joined twitter earlier today. A quick @dgibbo28 search, offers a pretty unedifying glimpse into the abyss of banality. Or rather it doesn’t. Not two hours after going up, his account was deleted, presumably to spare him having to wade through all the malice being directed his way. Actually, I found this pretty surprising assuming that most reds would just relish the chance to tweet ‘shooo(repeat ‘o’ for what’s left of your 140 characters) at him. Clearly not.
Gibson’s quickly removed toe, might deter team-mates, particularly messrs Carrick, Bebe and Obertan, from taking the plunge into twitter’s murky waters. Should we regard this as a shame? That depends. On my most recent visit to twitter, I learned that Wayne is getting ready to watch the Blackburn v city game and has invited his followers to predict the score. At moments like that, there’s an inescapable melancholy around twitter. You get the sense of lonely people reaching out through the ether to other lonely people. And even lonelier ones blogging about it at length a few hours later as if it has some profound sociological significance.
Don’t believe me about the loneliness thing? Just follow former United striker Guiseppe Rossi for a while and glimpse the void at the heart of the gilded cage that is the footballer’s existence. Most of his tweets seem to be about his immense boredom, asking people what they’re doing with their time so he has a clue what to do with his.
Some argue that twitter is breaking down barriers between players and fans, barriers thought to have been reinforced by the increasingly super-injuncted, hyper-privileged lifestyles that players lead. I see a bit of this. For some reason unfathomable even to me, I find myself following Bolton’s Kevin Davies. He seems a decent guy. Plays with the kids. Looks after his horses. Watches the match. All pretty mundane (if having your own stables can be considered mundane). Will I be less inclined to yell abuse at him next time he’s backing into Patrice Evra? Probably not.
Tweeting footballers have their moments. Last week, Michael Owen whiled away the longeurs of the return trip from Newcastle by debating his time at Newcastle and his attitude to the press with the Mirror’s Oliver Holt with a candour you rarely find. At the other extreme you have the embarrassment of Rio ‘bantering’ with uber-twat Piers Morgan and urging his ‘twitfam’ to get manboobs trending. Laugh? No, me neither.
Opportunities to hear what players actually think are limited. In pre and post-match interviews they serve up thoroughly predictable clichés and banalities. Most interviews are merely PR obligations for whichever boot/computer game/energy drink the publicist wants shoehorned into the piece. They rarely make for a fascinating, edifying read. You can argue why should they and why should we expect them to. Players like Roy Keane and Ruud van Nistelroy (himself a tweeter these days), with opinions and the capability to articulate them, are a rarity. Others, Joey Barton for example, offer top value in interviews, but, Beady Eye-like, can’t live up to their own rhetoric.
What Gibson himself makes of today’s events we’ve yet to learn. Rio, unsurprisingly has tweeted his two’pennorth, claiming that it wasn’t the abuse that scared him away more the general hassle of monitoring his feed (there’s a gag in there somewhere). United fans who admire the view from the moral high ground and with nothing better to do on a bank holiday found plenty to opine about. And the whole thing killed a bit of time that we could all have spent doing far more meaningful things. And if that’s not what twitter is ultimately for, I don’t know what it is.
posted by Royton Red @ 9:31 PM
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