Hashtag Heros

They call it 'duel screening'. Let me rephrase that; marketeers taking a leaf from the digital book of socially challenged Californians who began to refer to sitting in front of a web-connected computer as ‘surfing’, call it duel screening. It is the love-child of Twitter and reality TV combining to produce a single subject chat room experience in the palm of the viewer/chatter’s hand. Inevitably it soon came to live football and it has remained with us since.

Honestly, I am in two (duel) minds about it. When I’m watching a game and if it is a good game I shouldn’t need anything else to occupy me. Except perhaps a glass of something alcoholic if I’m watching England. If it’s a bad game that is different but, even then, for every genuinely funny gag that pops up there are a dozen stinkers; a dozen more badly spelled and very unfunny insults directed at whoever; and weirdos, nothing to do with the game, riding on the hashtag.

Am I a luddite? Maybe but since I’ve no problem watching a game in a stadium surrounded by strangers or with friends indoors I prefer to think of it as a quality control issue.

Midfield General (ret.)