Barbelith Underground > Conversation > The World Cup: J'accuse!

Okay, let's do this properly.

Look, it's very simple: Barbelith is not, in general, a place wherein one can start a thread wherein there is a rule that everyone must agree with the proposition put forward in the first post or the title. I thought this was taken as read - instead, this is a discussion forum.

The only exceptions to this I can think of are:

a) In (for example) the Music forum, there have been a couple of threads specifically to discuss a band's new album, and people who want to say why they don't like the band in general or on principle have been directed to a thread that already exists debating the merits of the band in general - however, this still falls within the general policy, as there has been no requirement for people not to express the opinion that the new album is crap once they've heard it.

b) Where what might be called the fundamental principles of Barbelith are concerned - i.e. opposition to sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. This is an ongoing process and, once again, there is plenty of room for dissent here - nobody can start a thread saying "x is an example of racism" and assume that they will not be challenged - however it is broadly agreed that it is a Barbelith fundamental that sexism is bad, and that therefore if a thread is started with the specific intent of not being a place in which sexism is welcome, it will not be welcome and Barbelith moderators will ultimately back that up. Mind you, I'm pretty sure we all agree that no thread is exempt from that one, eh? The point is, as yet it is not a broadly accepted point of consensus or fundamental principle of the board that football is bad. Who knows, maybe it will be one day - have at it.

c) I suppose there's a third type of example which would be things like "This is the thread in which we pretend to drink tea". Well, I've never been a huge fan of those kinds of threads in general, and as far as I'm aware they don't get special protection on the board. If people started posting to the "describe how your hangover makes you feel" thread telling me and others about how we were only getting what we deserved for drinking and why not stop drinking, it might annoy me, but I wouldn't delude myself into thinking I had the moral high ground.

But c) isn't really a fair comparison: I maintain that threads about hating things are a bit different. For example, even in the 'Untamed hate and anger' thread it is accepted that if any member of the board thinks something mentioned therein is NOT deserving of hate, we can say so. Wanting a thread to talk about hating the World Cup and then wanting nobody who enjoys the World Cup to post in it is exactly like wanting - to reference a) - a thread to talk about hating Tool or Girls Aloud and then wanting nobody who enjoys that music to post in it. Which to me would make a nonsense of the whole board. And I'm afraid the "ah but the World Cup is really popular and dominates the media" argument doesn't hold any water - firstly because by that rationale it would be okay to have a thread exclusively about hating popular bands but not exclusively about hating obscure ones (I'm sure there are people here who'd like that, but no), and secondly because the extent to which the World Cup does dominate the media is not an uncontested issue, in fact it's one of the main bones of contention.

For example, sleazenation gives as an example of "football saturation" the fact that "live coverage is on radio". That sounds pretty bad, if it is displacing The Archers - but wait. The live coverage is mostly on, am I wrong, or is it mostly on... radio stations already specifically devoted to sport? On what other radio stations does the World Cup impinge? I suppose it might get mentioned a lot on Chris Moyles' show, but I have no idea, as I don't regularly tune in to "Moylesie", and frankly if you do, then football is the least of your worries.

No doubt if this thread had been entitled "World Cup football - a good or bad phenomena" it would have demanded and produced a higher level of debate on both sides. But it was not: it is described as "an especially high snark thread" and originally had a title referring to "bobbing in on a dead dog's cock", and the rest is history.

(Happy to cross-post or move this to a new thread, perhaps in the Policy, if deemed necessary.)