Fuck of Samuel you fat c**t and if you sign up to Twitter I will say that to your face via my PC.
Now we've got 140 characters, but nobody's laughing - will the witless twits never learn?
By Martin Samuel.
So when did it happen? When did 'What are you doing right now?' and 'What's happening?' become 'Who's a cheat?', 'Whose legs do you want broken?' or 'Please submit a gibberish list of people you hate'.
Ryan Babel, of Liverpool, has become the first player to be charged by the Football Association for a statement made on his Twitter account, but he surely will not be the last.
Quite plainly, Twitter will be a reflection of our society, and if it is now drowning in a sea of witless bile and poison, this says more about the users than the medium.Babel posted a doctored photograph of Howard Webb, the referee, wearing a Manchester United shirt, as a means of intimating he was crooked in his handling of the game at Old Trafford on Sunday. Wherever you might stand on the issue of whether Dimitar Berbatov fairly won his penalty, or whether Steven Gerrard deserved his sending-off, it is wrong to suggest Webb acted in anything less than good faith.
Nor was it just a harmless gag, as Gordon Taylor, chief of the Professional Footballers' Association, claimed yesterday. If Webb was wrong - and I don't think he was, but accept there are plenty who do - it was not because he favoured Manchester United over Liverpool and he does not deserve Babel's suggestion otherwise.
Yet the Liverpool man is a minor offender compared to some, not least those who have taken to abusing various members of the Dalglish family via Twitter sites since Kenny took the Liverpool job (although his son, Paul, may not have helped matters by writing how much he hated losing to Manchester United and calling Webb the puppet of Mr. Ferguson).
Having just returned from the Ashes, it is rather dispiriting to be plunged back into this world of unsmiling nastiness and ill-humour once more. The Barmy Army have their detractors, too, mainly folk who preferred the days when cricket took place to a background of gentle applause rather than raucous doggerel in regional accents, but what sets the modern-day travellers apart is their instinct that watching sport should be fun.
The teasing of Mitchell Johnson may have been merciless, some of the chants repetitive, but when several thousand throats, to the tune of Yellow Submarine, assailed the Australians with a chorus of 'Your next Queen is Camilla Parker-Bowles', it was a reminder that part of being a spectator involves having a laugh and sometimes laughing at yourself, too.
Yet, walk among the Barmy Army and all you see are football shirts. These are cricket fans with dual allegiance to Blackpool, Southampton, Sheffield United, Luton Town, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur: all banners and shirts prominently displayed during England's tour of Australia. Their songs are rooted in football culture, too. So what happens on that long-haul flight home? Why does the banter so readily turn to abuse when deployed in a football stadium?
There are still funny interludes at football matches; there are still the wags in the crowd of popular cliche, but increasingly they are drowned out by coarser emotions, and what passes for wit these days are songs about paedophilia or inter-familial sodomy. And the players' Twitter missives reflect this febrile atmosphere.
El Hadji Diouf of Blackburn Rovers is plainly a nasty piece of work and his comments towards the stricken Jamie Mackie of Queens Park Rangers as he lay on the ground during Saturday's FA Cup third-round tie are, if true, indefensible. But for all the understandable emotion surrounding a team-mate with a broken leg being taunted by a callous opponent, for QPR player Clint Hill to later announce 'That c*** will get what's coming to him' is hardly an edifying development for football.
Yet this is the way the game is going. When Paul Merson made an honest criticism of England right back Glen Johnson recently, Johnson replied that Merson was an 'alcoholic drug user'. It was a complete over-reaction, nasty yet depressingly familiar. Merson's comments on Johnson's form for Liverpool this season were made in a professional context, as part of his work as a pundit for Sky.
Johnson's riposte was irrational and unjustified. Yes, Merson admitted alcoholism. He admitted drug use. He has battled to overcome both and has regained control of his life. These frailties have nothing to do with his ability to accurately appraise Johnson's form, which has certainly been inconsistent.
The phrase Merson used was that Johnson 'couldn't defend for toffee'. It is a colourful expression, typical of his outspoken style, but he is hardly the first to reach that conclusion. Either way, Merson is entitled to his opinion, indeed he is paid to provide it. Johnson is entitled to disagree, too, but to do so in such an aggressive manner does him little credit. Sadly, it is very much a sign of the times.
Managers are often in trouble for glorified sound bites in post-match interviews, uttered when emotions are at a high, yet the Twitter debate is even less sophisticated. In 140 characters all context and lightness is removed and what may be said with a smile can come across as sour and confrontational.
It takes a very clever man to make pithiness sing. David Lloyd, the cricket commentator, was brilliant at it, until one swear word too many appeared at the bottom of his observations, and he closed his account.
Some of the most entertaining posters have already given up, leaving a surplus of dross, of people labouring under the misconception they have something to say. Much of football's chatter falls into this category. It is the work of men like Jose Enrique of Newcastle United, who revealed that he would miss the Tottenham Hotspur match with injury, much to the annoyance of Alan Pardew, his manager, who was hoping to conceal this information from the opposition until the teams were announced.
Stupidity, though, we can handle. It is the loss of humour and the eager embracing of some of football's most negative aspects that is most worrying. It used to be said there are no characters left in football. Now we've got 140 of them, but nobody's laughing.
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