Hairy Tony, who lives in Venice Beach, California, sent me an email this week. Not that remarkable it may seem but it was his first foray into the online world for over six years and the very first email he'd ever sent from his own computer having previously got by using a local cafe's.
For years I had tried to persuade him of the value of the internet, if only for all the nakedness but he was always unimpressed largely because he has never been short of naked women in his life doing unspeakable things to him in his two room shoe-box, a stones throw from the sand.
But having just got a shiny new laptop and being a Newcastle United fan he went to check on the Toon's latest signings, naturally he hadn't heard of any of them so tried to find out if they were any good by trawling message boards and blogs. Because he is new to it all, it made a big impression on him and he wrote this rant. He writes as he talks so you need to imagine this in a Whitely Bay Geordie accent cracked with a million fags and bottles of Jack.
"So I had a look around like for info on players and that but its impossible to tell what's truth and what's bulls**t on the internet. It seems full of total c*nts, liars, p*ssed up a**eholes, stoners , losers, cheaters and mad f*cks and all of them think they're, like, the man, y,knaw.
"I reckon anyone with their s**t together doesn't bother writing anything because they've got lives to live man. They've got better things to do with their time than slag off someone who has said on some f*cking internet site that they think Steve Howey is the Toon's best ever player. I mean, I know that's mad, I mean f*cking Howey man! But y'knaw if someone wants to think that then I'm not going to give him grief.
"Why give a f*ck what these people think about anything anyway? But it's all 'you obviously know nothing about NUFC', and they're off on a big rant against some kid whose only f**king crime in life is to think Steve Howey was a good player.
Then there's w*nkers who say stuff like 'I used to think Keegan was a god now I think he's sh*t' as though their opinion f*cking matters. Who the f*ck are you son? Oh aye, I bet Kev's really f*cking distraught to hear that pizzaface43 from f*cking Byker or wherever the f*ck. It's like everyone thinks their view of whatever is like the biggest, best f*cking statement on it that's ever been heard. Like Mr B said Talking Loud, Saying Nothing.
"And why the f*ck do they write in this spastic f*cking text language? I bet they're the sort of c**ts who like to pretend they're hard b*stards from fucking Compton with their f**king massive jeans. You see them walking round here doing the c*nt walk like they're in a Snoop video. Always pulling at their cocks. I said to one of them once, I'd had a few like, if you want a w*nk son just go to the bogs. Wasn't best pleased like, starting making a clicking noise at me with his tongue, twat, don't know what that's supposed to mean but I had Hunter riding shotgun so I was alright if it kicked off like.
"Not like they're hard though, too f*cking lazy and fat to fight half of them, might shoot you like though. Listen to me I sound like an auld b*stard. But I bet they all write on these sites. Not about the Toon like but you get my beef.
"Anyway after an hour I just got pissed off and gave up and biked down to Hennessey's for a few beers. So y'knaw. F*ck the internet, it just rained on my sunny day."
Well who can blame him? He has a point. As he went on to say, back in '79 we'd sit in the Percy Arms in Newcastle on a Saturday lunchtime, have a few bottles of Double Maxim and talk about the football informed almost exclusively by local papers The Journal and The Evening Chronicle. That was all we had. Life was more simple.
The only views we heard were our mates and occasionally someone at the table next to you in the club on a Sunday lunchtime or standing next to you on the terraces. We were just not subjected to a torrent of opinion from strangers and it had been like that for ever. Now it's a way of life.
It would have been impossible to conceive of today's state of affairs and had we been able to imagine it, we'd have said it sounded like a Hieronymus Bosch style nightmare; thousands of people coming up to you one after another saying something/anything,
'We're signing Harold Wilson as manager,'
'Beckenbauer is coming to the Boro as club tap dancer, '
'I punched that hole in Asa Hartford's heart with a pencil, me'
'Hickton's really a woman called Joan you know, he is, honest'
'The Who have bought Darlo'
'My dad is Alan Foggon's wife,' one after another, ad infinitum.
But unlike Tony, who is suspicious of anything post 1977 with the exception of a few Motorhead albums, I love modern technology and when it comes to football, the proliferation of every form of communication has entirely changed the whole culture of the sport in the last 10 years With email, web sites, digital TV etc, there's much more football-based entertainment to be enjoyed. However, the big downside is that in amongst all the good stuff are acres and acres of rubbish which infects our every day lives.
I know what Tony means about message boards and blogs. They do seem to have become a home for a certain sort of person who loves asserting their own fantasies, opinions and lunatic ideas with a conviction so extreme you'd have thought they had come across the Truth Motherlode. You can tell these people because they are ones who write FACT in block caps as though that makes it more true.
Check out the postings in response to Charlie Brooker's piece on conspiracy theories in the Guardian last week. Regardless of the subject matter, it is a perfect illustration of this modern phenomenon. The blogosphere in full cry is an awesome sight if not exactly uplifting.
And you often can't get the good stuff without being exposed to the bad stuff. For every good post on a forum there are a couple from knuckle-draggers and bitter nutters. In short, you end up having to deal with the attitudes, notions, and rantings of the kind of stupid people you have spent your life avoiding any contact with. So it's not hard to see why a hedonist like Tony would find it all a downer. It angers up your blood sometimes even if you don't want it to.
That being said on balance, even allowing for the sad and mad people, I'd rather this state of affairs than return to the days of relying on the local paper for news or having to sit through Bob Wilson's Football Focus. The 21st century culture of football maybe very different but it is liberating and can be very democratic. Handling the freedom it gives us all is still a work in progress though. That is a FACT!
