Tag: abuse

Problems with fandom

~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

Ever since I first got access to the internet, way back in the High School library, I would look up the bands I loved. A lot of band sites, would have their own forums, where you could speak to fans from all over the world. Disecting albums, and lyrics, comparing collections of scrapbooks and merchandise. It was so much fun. Then MySpace, where you became ‘friends’ with bands, and even learned coding to make your profile look cool.

Over the years, social media has become such a huge part of most of our lives. Musicians, actors, tv presenters, politicians, you can be ‘friends’ with them all. Doesn’t even need to be a person, companies send messages to followers, and build up a familiarity. So, people feel connected with people they’ll never meet, and companies feel like friends. Sometimes people need a reminder that they don’t actually know these people they may chat to on social media, as they begin to feel personally involved.

My time on social media at the moment, seems to circle around Formula 1. It is a sport I have loved since I was a child, where the only contact you had with the teams and drivers was through magazines and the TV show around the race. The content we had to consume, then, was nothing compared to what we have these days. And social media is a massive part of that. As said before, connections are forged between fans and their favourite drivers and teams, and these connections can feel very personal. Which is all great, fantastic for advertising, and often creates great promotion for the sport. The communities are filled with people disecting races, and press conferences, talking about livery releases. It can be a lot of fun. Until it is not.

Because people feel so personally connected and affected by the goings ons and offs around the track, things can get a little tense. People can take it upon themselves to ‘defend’ their hero, and do so by attacking other fans and drivers. Doesn’t sound too bad, folk say, ‘just click off social media’, ‘go outside’. But it can escalate very fast. It becomes less about a person defending their favourite driver, and more attacking the drivers they don’t like. Which starts creating whole other problems.

Lance Stroll from Aston Martin, is a driver which attracts a lot of negativity. His father owns the team, and helps keep his son’s position in Formula 1. And whilst drivers have maintained positions on teams in similar circumstances, some fans have taken to heavily dislike Lance. The issue isn’t people throwing comments into the obyss of the internet, it is people sending Lance fans abuse. Sending death threats. Inundating people with abuse. Last season, a Lance Stroll fan I was friends with over on Twitter, attempted to take their life, because people were sending so much abuse. I don’t know on what planet that is okay. Ever.

It’s like, whilst the lines have blurred, and people are closer to their heroes than ever before, they are also so close it’s become abstract. We are so close that nothing seems real, and people have no attachment with what they say and who they are saying it to. It is not just fan on other fan crimes, either. Earlier this season, French driver, Esteban Ocon, had to release a statement about abuse that was sent to him, his team, and his family. It got so bad, that the hashtag of his name, has been banned from TikTok, due to risk of abuse. There has been racist abuse angled at Yuki Tsunoda and Zhou Guanyu. Lando Norris has had abuse sent to him and his team, including his esports team Quadrant. Last season Max Verstappen and his partner recieved a lot of abuse. Sky sports presenter, Karun Chandhok, has had racist abuse sent to his social media, as well as sent to Sky Sports socials.

Criticism about driving and opinions is one thing, abuse is another. It is not just restricted to formula 1. K-pop bands, movie franchises, boybands, tv series, there are fandoms for almost anything. Situations like the ones I have mention above happen others. Actors and actresses leaving TV shows due to abuse, because the fandom didn’t like their character. Someone speaks poorly about a certain band member, they’d better not sign online.

The point I want to make is that behind every account, whether it be a famous personality or a business, there is a person. A person with feelings and a life. A few years ago someone told me that if I was angry, write down the negativity, if on social media write the comment and save it to drafts. Then, go do something else. Come back in at least 30 minute, 95% of the time, you will simply delete whatever you have written. I find that it stops any angry over-reactions.

Hate Mob

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Today a post has been made online by Kelly Piquet, the girlfriend of Formula 1 driver and current champion Max Verstappen. It is in relation to the hatred, and rumours spread by many people on social media.

People have been spreading accusations about infidelity, photoshopped conversations, and more. Things, that can affect the lives of real people and their families. And it is awful, and as a formula 1 fan, I would like to believe that most people don’t want such bullies to be a part of the community.

It’s a thing that seems to be on the rise. People hide behind anonymous accounts spreading hatred and bullying people. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t anything new. I remember having to change Twitter accounts a few years back because I was getting dogpiled on, and every message was telling me to kill myself. Now, fortunately I was mentally capable at the time to close my account, and start again. There are times in my life, where such comments would have been enough to push me over the edge. Because one or two you can ignore, but when it’s hundreds of accounts, it’s horrific to try and deal with.

Now the problem is that a lot of well known people (sport stars, musicians, politicians, etc) and their families are being targeted. They get that hate that normal users do, and get the added issue of people using things like AI to generate fictional content. It has been warned about previously, with the rise of AI, but no one took it seriously. Now people are creating fiction where they allege known people are cheating on their spouses, sometimes with ‘fans’. They can make A-list stars say whatever they want. And it is very scary. Or I imagine it is for anyone with any kind of public image.

The truth is, as it always has been, that you never really know who you are talking to online. As as much as we can build true friendships online, some may act maliciously. Protect your online space. If you see negativity and ‘rage farming’ block the accounts doing so. If people react angrily and try to start a fight, block them. These people who are hateful online, usually hide behind anonymity, and are not worth your time. Report and block when you see abuse occurring, don’t turn a blind eye. Don’t engage, because these people, crave engagement. It all seems like a game because it is online.

Today I have been on TikTok and threads, and I honestly have never felt so detached from an online community. It’s been building over the last few months, in the formula 1 community. Last week I posted on Threads thatl wanted Lance Stroll to get points at his home race, and I had r*pe threats sent to my Instagram inbox, with others telling me to die. What kind of person does that? Obviously there were from ‘bob3482’ kind of bot accounts. It’s horrible. And every person who uses online environments to make friends and build communities should be in agreement.

Report abusers. Block haters. DO NOT ENGAGE. And most of all, support one another.

Girl’s World

~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

I am a huge Formula 1 fan, and over the last few years there has been a push to include women more in the sport. From the female-only grid in the F1 Academy, to female mechanics. Not to mention, that it is estimated that women watching the sport is nearing 50/50 with men, with a lot of young girls watching races. This makes sense, because I remember when I was at High School, during the Michael Schumacher/ Ferrari era, all of my group of friends loved f1, and it was really popular amongst a lot of girls in my class. Over the years, with the shift to online, that has only helped the audience get bigger. And, that is without even mentioning the Netflix f1 documentary, Drive to Survive.

Recently, news broke that Christian Horner, the boss of current champions Red Bull Racing, was being investigated over inappropriate contact with a female member of staff. This happened about 3-4 weeks ago, and the news just keeps getting bigger and bigger, with this week it being leaked that the female complainant was suspended from Red Bull. This has lead to the volume of gossip that I have never seen involved in F1 before. And the female fans, who are incidentally the largest growing market for F1, are understandably peeved at the lack of transparency provided by Red Bull. This has lead to many questioning whether F1 is actually really about equality between genders, or is it all just a cover story, whilst everything that matters, stays the same.

This bad feeling has increased, when the teams arrived for media day in Saudi Arabia last week, and some of the drivers were a bit dismissive of the ‘Red Bull’ situation in their comments. With the drivers who were quizzed on it saying things like ‘it doesn’t affect me, I am concerned about what happens on the track’. This, angered a lot of fans, because it felt that they were treating the issue of sexual harassment or abuse as something trivial, that can be thrown away. Which, for victims of such abuse, is completely not true. For generations, women have struggled to get somewhere in their field, without men of a higher position trying to take advantage. You can think of Hollywood, and the idea of the ‘casting couch’, where women were expected to deliver certain ‘favours’ to get roles they desired. Whilst the idea of the ‘casting couch’ has bitten the dust, it is still common occurrence that men take advantage of women in lower positions that them, and then threaten their careers or even life, if they were to tell anyone. It happens with business leaders, politicians, celebrities, even senior members of someone’s own family.

I have had discussions with work colleagues, friends, and family over sexual assault and abuse. And there is a pattern that has formed. I don’t think that people want to believe that such crimes are so widespread, so they don’t believe them. It’s always ‘they are looking for money’, or ‘they are a homewrecker’. Whilst comments like these seem to come from a place of malice, I believe that they instead come from a place of ignorance. Sexual crimes are a very hard thing to understand unless a person has personally gone through it, or knows someone who has. Especially when it comes to harassment, where someone has said something that crosses a woman’s personal boundaries, and makes them feel devalued and uncomfortable. From my own experience, I have been told that I am ‘too precious’ if I let silly comments upset me. And that is from other women. Just because one person felt okay, doesn’t make things okay with every person.

I don’t really know how F1, the FIA, and the teams, make this right. It doesn’t help that the head of the FIA is getting investigated for a cheating scandal, which is being hidden behind the news and upset of the Horner scandal. Is it that the powers that run the sport want the focus to be on the fracturing state of Red Bull Racing, rather than themselves, no matter the consequences? That the issue of female safety is being trivialised as a scapegoat for the FIA to get away with cheating on their own races? It’s an ever changing situation. But I believe the powers in charge of F1 know exactly what they are doing in stretching out the Horner scandal. The situation has been manufactured to be so big that it is an insult to every woman who has anything to do with F1, the FIA, and all its parters.

Hating for hatred’s sake.

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

It doesn’t take any effort, nor time, to hear about hatred. It isn’t necessarily about there being more hate, just that it is publicised more. It is in the newspapers, on the TV screens and strewn across social networks. It is reported, as well as boasted about by some.

I believe that hate is an adequate emotion to feel, despite how strong it appears to be. But because it is such a strong emotion, it evokes a strong reaction from other people. If someone can’t relate to the hatred that the see before them, then they react in an equally angry way, which can add fuel to a situation.

Anger and hatred, seems to incite anger and hatred. If you express what you feel in such a manner, it could come across as aggressive. That may not be intentional, it’s just that the emotions connected it are so strong, that they could be deceived as being aggressive.

So when we see more highly emotive attacks or intolerances being commited or reported in our vision, we can get angry. Intolerance is something that I dislike, so when I see people hating for no reason than their own lack of understanding, I get angry. I think that people need to take a step outside of their personal ‘bubbles’, and be aware that other people exist. Because, I don’t think some people seem to realise it. It is what they do and think, and that it is it. No-one else’s feelings or thoughts even come into the equation.

People need to become a lot more considerate. Before anyone says or does something to another person, they should think about how they would feel in the other person’s shoes. Not enough people do that.

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Uch, this has been one of those blog posts where I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to. So sometimes, it is a good idea just to type my thoughts and see what comes out. So, if something makes sense it is awesome. 🙂