Arsenal: A blogosphere survival guide « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does
By Terence McGovern.
It seems recently that the internet world involving Arsenal has descended into madness. We are inundated with reactionary pieces spawned by sensationalised and generally unfounded rumour. It is enough to drive even the most staunch supporter insane.
The ridiculous part of the problem though is that Arsenal supporters, for the most part, inflict it upon themselves. Here are a few survival guidelines to reduce your stress and enhance your calm.
STOP FEEDING THE BEAST
Online publications of the mainstream media survive on advertising revenues. The amount that they can charge for advertising depends largely upon their hit-rate, that is to say the number of people that they can get to click on their articles. As a result of this, they have a deliberate policy of publishing sensationalised pieces designed to attract somebody into clicking on their story.
The problem is that so many Arsenal supporters take the bait so often, that this has become a very lucrative operation for all concerned. Arsenal fans need to take on board what is going on here. YOU are their hitrate. If they consistently publish materials that upset or offend you DO NOT CLICK on their site again. If the type of articles they are running with receive very little traffic, they will be forced to rethink what it is they print about our club.
It is Arsenal supporters who perpetuate these types of articles by clicking on them if only to argue the point which in turn leads to debate and even more traffic for the offending site.
STOP giving them traffic. Deny them air and you will find that they will in turn change their policy.
IF the articles that they write about Arsenal are being ignored by Arsenal supporters they will have no choice but to contribute articles that are not offensive and will draw the traffic back.
JUST BECAUSE IT IS QUOTED DOESN’T MAKE IT TRUE!
Time and time again our supporters fall for the old misquote trick. An article is printed painting our club in a bad light using an alleged quote from on of our players and everybody accepts it as fact! How gullible are you? The source is almost always from a foreign publication in a foreign language which is then run through a translation matrix of convenience.
In other words a publication can write what they like and attribute it to one of our players because nobody is going to be able to trace it back and then translate it and even if they do, they will find it hard to be heard above the deafening chorus of the media inches already allotted to the story.
If you see an article headlining an upsetting quote by one of our players DON’T believe it and even better as above DON’T click on it!
The worst culprits of this are actually some Arsenal blogs themselves. In the absence of anything to write of their own, they simply replicate these types of stories because they are not Arsenal supporter blogs but rather hit-rate whores on newsnow and goonernews. They don’t care about our club or our fans only their potential advertising revenues.
Last season it was Arshavin and this season it will be Fabregas.
RESIST THE RUMOUR:
We all get hooked during the transfer windows on a sniff of a potential signing and it is our club in particular that is vulnerable to this type of post because we rarely hear about a real transfer from Arsenal until all the i’s and t’s are dotted and crossed. ” Arsenal face transfer battle with blah blah blah for new teenage sensation blah blah blah”.
Sound familiar?
Save yourself the time and resist the temptation to click on these kind of rubbish articles. They are never correct EVER, and that’s 2 minutes of your life that you will never have back. Add those up over a transfer window and that is an entire day wasted in all likelihood.
As long as you keep clicking on this crap they will keeping writing this crap. By clicking on it YOU replicate it and YOU perpetuate it.
BEING SELECTIVE INCREASES QUALITY:
There are many Arsenal blogs out there some producing daily and others less regularly. If you do not agree with the on-going viewpoints of a certain blog or set of blogs, for the love of God stop clicking on their articles. If you click on them you are supporting them and supporting their obtuse, negative and sometimes racist views.
Most of the time these kind of blogs gain the majority of their readership from those who disagree with them and very often are abused by them when they comment. Simply refuse to CLICK on their crap no matter the temptation or provocation. They are not stupid. They will realise that their hit-rate goes up significantly when they post something offensive.
DON’T TAKE THE BAIT.
Rise above their ignorance and let their bile pass by unread and more importantly unclicked. If you click on them you give them credibility, encouragement and revenue. Starve them of readership until all they have left are the throwbacks to the National Front that revel in abuse and hatred.
The time you spend arguing with these idiots making their blog more successful could be better spent having an intelligent debate on other blogs that actually support the club.
There are many great blogs out there. Arseblog with the Arsecast is never a wasted visit. ACLF, Goonerholic, Eastlower, Arsenal Insider, Ladyarse, Clockenders are all worth a visit and comprised of genuine supporter sentiment all with different slants towards the same destination.
Stay away from the haters. they will only depress you and bring down the general tone of your week. They are malcontented in their own lives and only wish to take it out on others. Leave them to stew in their own misery.
Submit articles and open genuine debates. Make your points and consider those of others. Get involved and stay away from those who wish to profit by upsetting you and your love for the club.
“Victory through Harmony.” Some blogs profit by violating this motto. Stop helping them.
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Editor’s PS: Can I add that I do welcome articles for Untold Arsenal, and for the Arsenal History site which have a generally positive view towards the club and the manager. I can’t speak for Walter, but I understand that he is always interested in hearing from Arsenal fans outside the UK who would like to contribute positively to Arsenal Worldwide.
If you would like to write for this blog, just send in your idea, or your article to me at the address below. If writing an article please submit it as a word document with your name at the very top of the article, so I don’t lose track of who you are. (I am not, as you will have realised, not very well organised).
I do reject some articles, either because I think them inappropriate for this site, or because I think they repeat something we have already said. Because of this, writing about a hot topic first time around can be a problem, because we may well have two or three pieces just waiting to go up. Your best bet is to find some issue that we haven’t covered, or at least not for a while, and write a piece on that.
Most articles are about 1000 words long. They don’t have to be, of course, but a very short, or very general article will probably look a bit out of place here and not get published. Longer articles may be split into bits (as I recently did with my own piece about Wenger’s philosophy).
Email anything to Tony.Attwood@aisa.org