Most pathetic fanbase

[Ben]

I have seen a fair few incidents of football violence in real life (including at every match I've been to), but have never seen an angry 14 year old bottling someone over One Direction.

You can't wear a Wolves top around Birmingham, as I've learnt to my own detriment before.

I'm totally with Jordan here, football fans are the worst. And just at my work place of 80 there's at least 5 guys I can think of that go psycho over it, the same with tattoos of their **** club... I get beef at work cause I have a Wolves mug, no one has ever insulted me for my Take That one.

Has anyone here ever really seen someone go violent over pop music in real life. REALLY?

 

[furie]

You've also gotta look at the audience you're dealing with. Young girls arent sound of mind at the best of times.

Football is an institutionalised obsession. It's an acceptable way to demonise other members of the human race in essentially a tribal way. It's obsessed over by grown adults (who should really know better than 14 year old girls). Few people ever grow out of being a football fan.

Agreed

The media is making this look worse than it is, though. Football violence is an every day occurrence. No idea how you've missed it all 100 or so years of your life!

I suspect it's because I'm not in a large city with a major football team. I think dispersion comes into it...

And, AND, how much of it is trolls and internet only phenomena? The percentage of these girls who use Twitter is going ti be higher than football fans.

You're right in that the issue comes from the accessibility of the fandom from a girl's home and the way tyhey can feel part of a bigger world without ever leaving their bedroom. I think it's rare that these fans ever actually join together "en masse" away from concerts. It's all virtual social interaction. Football fans will tend to gather physically...

Football violence is not an every day occurence.

I absolutely wouldn't say that. I have no doubt that every day this week, some person, somewhere in the UK has been beaten up for happening to be wearing the wrong shirt going past the wrong people. It's not reported because it's a small occurrence and is still quite unusual an act considering the number of football fans in the world.

Though there's absolutely a degree of "well, it's just what happens".

I have seen a fair few incidents of football violence in real life (including at every match I've been to), but have never seen an angry 14 year old bottling someone over One Direction.

However, distribution... If you put 100,000 One Direction fans and 100,000 Bieber fans in a stadium together to watch a battle of the bands between JB and 1D do you think it would end in a mass group hug?

Has anyone here ever really seen someone go violent over pop music in real life. REALLY?

Ever seen Quadrophenia? See...

You can't wear a Wolves top around Birmingham, as I've learnt to my own detriment before.

That wouldn't bat an eyelid in Stafford. In fact, you'll probably find people in Wolves shirts alongside people in Birmingham shirts... Beating up or abusing people who dress like Jordan...

See, ten years ago, Jordan would have absolutely been verbally abused for looking like she does if she was in Stafford town centre. Twenty years ago she'd have been physically attacked for it.

So would anyone who wasn't wearing the "town uniform" of whatever was the local Top Man fashion that week.

Going back to Quadrophenia...

I'm totally with Jordan here, football fans are the worst. And just at my work place of 80 there's at least 5 guys I can think of that go psycho over it, the same with tattoos of their **** club... I get beef at work cause I have a Wolves mug, no one has ever insulted me for my Take That one.

The problem isn't actually football fans. Jordan was too narrow here. The problem is actually men. They generally will attack/be aggressive towards anyone who doesn't fit in with their group/tribe. If those five guys we all Oasis fans, with Oasis tattoos, that mug would have been smashed by now Ben

But yeah, I do understand the institutionalization of football into our social make up and the fact it allows men with tribal/aggressive territories to rally around a flag and make themselves bigger and better than others (when they're in a group, backed by others of their tribe).

That really is just men though. I guess that this issue is "just teenage girls" in the same way, so Ian asked a valid point, which is worse out of the two choreful groups of teenage girls.

I think we can all agree men are aggressive arseholes

 

[IntaminToWin]

I thought this was going to be a topic on Cedar Point's moronically loyal contingent of fanboys.

 

[Edward M]

I got to school with 14 year old girls.

Both.

 

[Smithy]

Football violence is not an every day occurence.

I absolutely wouldn't say that. I have no doubt that every day this week, some person, somewhere in the UK has been beaten up for happening to be wearing the wrong shirt going past the wrong people. It's not reported because it's a small occurrence and is still quite unusual an act considering the number of football fans in the world.

Nope, sorry but I'm not buying that it happens every day. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. Nor am I saying that it's rare. But every day is just a stretch too far without something to back that claim up.

There are a few places within the UK that you'd actually be in some sort of relative danger based solely off of your choice of football shirt. In Scotland it'd be the Celtic/Rangers divide, and in England you're looking at a handful of the major cities where there's more than one team and entrenched rivalries between clubs and fanbases. But there's an awful lot more places where you can freely walk around in any football shirt without the fear of physical violence.

The problem isn't actually football fans. Jordan was too narrow here. The problem is actually men. They generally will attack/be aggressive towards anyone who doesn't fit in with their group/tribe. If those five guys we all Oasis fans, with Oasis tattoos, that mug would have been smashed by now Ben

And, to a lesser extent, location.

With four major clubs in the region there's rivalries and therefore split loyalties deep within communities and fanbases, so Ben's experience of football 'banter' (ewwww I loathe to use that word) is going to be more heated than someone from Peterborough who's not going to come across loyal, vocal supporters from a mixture of teams.

 

[Snoo]

I like sports.

 

[Jason Voorhees]

Beleibers. Just because Justin Beiber needs to be kicked in the ass and put in jail.

 

[Ben]

I have seen a fair few incidents of football violence in real life (including at every match I've been to), but have never seen an angry 14 year old bottling someone over One Direction.

However, distribution... If you put 100,000 One Direction fans and 100,000 Bieber fans in a stadium together to watch a battle of the bands between JB and 1D do you think it would end in a mass group hug?

First of all, liking One Direction and liking Bieber aren't mutually exclusive like liking West Brom and Wolves, so you'd get a lot of people who are both. And then if you think this imaginary situation would be worse than the actual real one that happens every Saturday in a stadium somewhere in the country. Even if it were as bad if it happened, it doesn't happen. Football matches between rivals do, and fights do happen.

Has anyone here ever really seen someone go violent over pop music in real life. REALLY?

Ever seen Quadrophenia? See...

Ever see Green Street?

You can't wear a Wolves top around Birmingham, as I've learnt to my own detriment before.

That wouldn't bat an eyelid in Stafford. In fact, you'll probably find people in Wolves shirts alongside people in Birmingham shirts... Beating up or abusing people who dress like Jordan...

See, ten years ago, Jordan would have absolutely been verbally abused for looking like she does if she was in Stafford town centre. Twenty years ago she'd have been physically attacked for it.

So would anyone who wasn't wearing the "town uniform" of whatever was the local Top Man fashion that week.

Going back to Quadrophenia...

Yes of course they wouldn't care in Stafford. But that's like saying I could wear a 1D shirt to a P!nk concert because there wouldn't be any Beliebers and is totally moot. And just because there was one film on the 70s about violent pop music doesn't mean it's relevant... Seriously, if you think the amount of violent incidents caused over pop music rival those over football, you're an idiot. Or blind to things around you. Or delusional.

Men are arseholes though, I'll give you that.

 

[nadroJ]

With regards to to football/music fan comparison, I think with music taste there is a certain kind of 'snobbery' that you just don't get in football fans. For instance, someone who likes Pink FLoyd would obviously scoff at 1D/Bieber fans, not just because the music taste is so utterly different, but because they operate on such a different level of skill. I've come across this a LOT in music discussions. THe whole 'at least *insert band name here* are ACTUALLY talented, etc, etc'. I don't think I've ever heard football fans arguing over whose team is more technically talented and therefor has more cultural worth than the other. And with this snobbery you rarely get violence, but rather a kind of group looking down their nose at another group to make themselves feel more important.

I think the issue I was making in the first place (and you all knew THIS was coming ;]) is one of a feminist nature. The patriarchal society we live in dictates that it is socially acceptable for men to act like lunatics over football, whether it be every Saturday at a game, down the pub or just generally in a conversation (Conor pointed out that last night on shift he had 4 conversations about football in which team rivalry was brought up, I wonder how many similar conversations were had about 1D/Bieber?) and yet when little girls, who let's face it are basically doing no harm to anybody except maybe themselves, act in the same fashion towards a boyband it's dubbed as pathetic. And that is not fair, and it is definitely not fair to even attempt to argue that they are worse than football fans.

And yeah, Phil, there are a million more football related violent incidents than there are over music rivalries, there just are. Just google 'football related violence 2012' to see some examples even in the past year of the insanity this causes. Do the same for music. All the results give you are merely songs about violence and little to know examples of music related violence in 2012 itself. Surely that speaks for itself?

 

[SaiyanHajime]

And how many football related violent incidents are never reported, because it's normal?

To even suggest that the ID/Beiber is worse than football has just kinda blown my mind. It's another one of those "people will defend without logic" things.

 

[furie]

Please read what I've posted. I've never said that pop music has a violent fab base, or that football related violence doesn't happen. They're two very different things.

The 1D stuff is insular and small scale. The football stuff is group mentality and huge scale. It's just the comparative scales of issues don't seem proportionate.

There's no way I think posting death threats on twitter is comparable to beating up somebody for wearing the wrong top. I also agree that most football related violence is simply not reported because football. However, those people who commit the violence would still find a reason to do it if football existed or not. Football is the excuse, not the cause.

that's why the majority of football fans are fine. We know that because if two third of the population are football fans and most are idiots out fighting all the time, we'd be knee deep in violence permanently. It took about ten thousand idiots to cause the riots in 2011. That's peanuts in numbers compared to football fan numbers in a single city.

At a match with 300000 people, what number fight? The police couldn't control a few thousand in the riots, so it can't be that many actually causing the trouble.

Of course, we don't know numbers in this case either with the 1d fans. Are there twenty very vocal, or 200000? We just don't know, but for a small number compared to the number of football fans, they've made a huge impact.

So yeah, I don't really disagree beyond blaming football, when in reality it's more as Jordan says, it's our male dominated society. A football fan in my opinion is no better or worse than a rugby fan, or a hockey fan or whatever. There are just more of them gathered around that "flag"

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

 

[Smithy]

and yet when little girls, who let's face it are basically doing no harm to anybody except maybe themselves, act in the same fashion towards a boyband it's dubbed as pathetic. And that is not fair, and it is definitely not fair to even attempt to argue that they are worse than football fans.

Sending death threats and stalking out the homes of anybody remotely related to these artists is harmful to others though.

If we're speaking broadly about music related violence too, the figures will be a lot closer with regards to injuries sustained inside nightclubs or at shows (someone was stabbed in Brum just last week), as Furie argues it's not the football (or in the case above the music) that is the reason behind most attacks, it's the people. So many other contributaries to just blame football.

 

[tks]

I think it's a rather sad situation that the record labels exploit the vulnerability of young women to such an extent and are getting away with it.

For a start parents need to take a much more active involvement in their children's use of the Internet and how they behave on it.

 

[Serena]

I watched 'Crazy about One Direction' and winced at some of the daft ways their fans were acting. But I don't think there's any difference between them and Beliebers; because the way they behave is simply a product of their age and of growing up in consumerist culture - the star/band is interchangeable.
If it weren't 1D, they would be obsessing over another strategically marketed commodity of youth - the potential for hysteria is already lurking inside teenage girls hormonal bodies, they just need a safe, glossy target to unleash it upon.

The problem with Beliebers and Directioners, is that they are growing up in the age of social technology - unleashing their obsessive angst-ridden worship on Twitter or Facebook for all to see. They self-publicize every crazy thought they have about 1D online (thoughts which would have remained firmly inside my head over Boyzone in the 90s...) which makes it easy for adults to perceive them as mad, and for Channel Four to make fascinatingly 'unrepresentative' documentaries in turn.

In regards to the football/music fans debate; I think that being a 'fan' of anything can be equated to being a child again. Whether you're in the football stadium or at a gig, there's something regressive about the emotional intoxication that occurs. Everything feels simpler in the shared experience of a match or a gig, because the sense of belonging creates deindividualisation, which can make fans act illogically - hating others for supporting the opposing team / for liking other bands, judgement is impaired by blind passion. Like a child, you're never neutral when you're being a fan - you're either extremely happy or extremely disappointed. Some people can't handle this and get violent or write death threats etc, but it's not the football or music that incites this, these types of fans are innately dickheads to begin with and will take any excuse.

Back to the subject of 1D fans though, this video really shows them up and is hilarious:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcjOUvPfN8s[/youtube]

 

[ciallkennett]

I'm watching that Channel 4 documentary at the moment. I cannot help but feel that if I was in a boyband, I'd probably be regarded as the "closet gay one"...

They're both as bad as each other, but if I had to murder a collective group of people for liking an artist, it'd be those who are on #TeamBruisey.

 

[SaiyanHajime]

Relevant...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH1g71X3tbE[/youtube]

Your mum jokes are for little girls.