Building Football Communities
As anyone with moderate traffic to their website knows, spammers and pissed off commenters are the scourge of the Internet. The anonymity the Internet provides – especially the lack of personal, eye to eye contact – allows people to say and do things they wouldn’t think of doing and saying in person.
Combine this with the emotions football evokes in people and it’s safe to say that football fans have a great potential to be assholes.
I’m not here to bash fans – we are who we are and I know first hand how strong those waves of anger and joy can be. The rush you get from baiting opposition fans, the thrill of beating down on them when your team wins, it’s war without bullets and it feels so good when you’re winning that one forgets all civil norms.
But is there a way to build an online community that doesn’t engage in such behavior without compromising on the passion that makes football go around?
Anonymity can create divisions between people and allow people license to do things they wouldn’t do in a normal setting. The solution?
Build a community where everyone knows who you are.
Encourage people to sign up and share information about themselves. Put a face to the comments. With time, familiarity builds friendships that can withstand disagreements. Don’t stop members from interacting offline – in fact, encourage it and whenever possible try to arrange group meetups for members.
Turn those user ids into real people.
Now this doesn’t take away ‘anonymity’ completely – especially since it’s a lot easier to abuse someone on the Internet than it is to say it to their face – but by promoting an open culture you will help create bonds that go some way in countering the downside of anonymity, especially if you’re able to factor in security (people want to share but they don’t want their personal info being public knowledge).
I’ve seen this happen in online communities – people who would tear each other apart as strangers getting more comfortable and accustomed to being on opposite sides when they knew each other better. Familiarity in this case breeds greater understanding and tolerance.
In football, we have family members and close friends who support other teams. We deal with it by accepting them as family and friends first and opposing fans later (if it’s the other way around for you, that’s your choice). We can try to do the same thing online, and in the process remove one of the major obstacles in building a general football community.
Not to mention that for the money-minded person, a close-knit community that willingly shares likes and dislikes is infinitely more valuable than a bunch of strangers.
Again: build a community where everyone knows who you are.
