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Amir from Cardiff is part of the problem

I quite like the Internet, on the whole. Slightly too big a subject to get into within the confines of a blog post perhaps, "the Internet: how about that?" but heigh ho. 

On balance, I'm pro. Or at least, not too virulent anti, I am, admittedly, less pro than I was a few years ago, what with the enabling of fascism and the poisoning of millions of minds with lies and bigotry, but I have a suspicion that that would probably have happened one way or another. The Daily Mail predates the World Wide Web after  all.

And I wouldn't be able to escape people's terrible ill-informed opinions either, I run a pub, listening to half-baked theorising and spectacularly wrong-headed nonsense is very much part of the deal.

No, my beef with the internet in this particular instance is more the legitimisation of said dreadful opinions, and I'm sorry, Amir from Cardiff, but you're the example that I'm picking.

A few weeks ago, a football club lost a game of football. This is an unsurprising event in a sport where losing is very much part of the deal. It's also unsurprising when that club are not having a very good season.

However, there are mitigating circumstances for their poor form, a significant amount of injuries, quite a lot of bad luck. This, however, meant nothing to Amir, who decided to message the BBC coverage to confidently state that the manager was getting sacked in the morning.

Reader, the manager was not sacked on the morning.

Now, I know this is a silly example, football, though I love it so, is a decidedly silly sport, around which all manner of inane hyperbole swirls even at the smallest incident. But really, what does Amir from Cardiff know? Why is his no doubt sincerely held belief published and thus given the same weight as commentary from people who might actually know?

Well, we know why, content.

And this, I think, is my problem with the Internet. There's too bloody much of it, and it needs filling, and an easy way to fill it is to invite comment from the ljkllikes of Amir from Cardiff. I'm aware that I'm here spouting off my own poorly thought out opinions, but the point is that this is my space to do so, and if you've got this far, the chance is that you occasionally find them mildly diverting.

What I'm categorically not doing, however, is putting them somewhere an innocent bystander might have to deal with it. When a large organisation like the BBC chooses to publish a comment, however, it is giving it a veneer of legitimacy. Someone, somewhere, has a made a choice, has thought "yes, this adds value to this experience". The end result is that we have an online culture where it doesn't matter how idiotic the opinion is, the important thing is to have one.

I'm not applying these standards to social media, it's a bear pit, and very much a case of you don't pays your money and you takes your choice, but I do think that news orgs using the minute-to-minute brain farts of their consumers as content is beyond the pale. Amir from Cardiff is, I'm sure, a splendid human, but he didn't have a fucking clue what he was talking about.

So what? You might well argue. 95% of columnists don't have a clue what they're talking about. A distressing amount of broadcasters don't have a clue what they're talking about. To which I would reply yes, but they're getting paid to be clueless. And also they are a fixed target, if Justin Webb is presenting the Today programme, I know fine well to switch over to radio 6. Amir from Cardiff's shitty opinion was thrust upon me, I had no choice in the matter.

So the position I arrive at is this, online news, sport and opinion is for the most part a sewer, but it's even worse when you try to do it on the cheap. I really, really don't care what Amir from Cardiff thinks about anything (sorry Amir), nor Ken from the Isle of Wight, not even Barry from Nova Scotia. Let them keep it to themselves.

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