Surfing the Trollscape
Arsenal fans get trolled online more than any other football fanbase. Are the victims to blame?
Every fanbase thinks the referees are against them and they have the worst injuries and everybody hates them. Well, not every fanbase. Fulham fans live a fairly cordial existence. But Liverpool fans believe they get the worst decisions, Manchester United fans think they’ve got the most haters. Everybody thinks they have it bad.
But you gotta admit that Arsenal fans get more shit than anybody.
Yes, I am biased as one of that tribe. But the ritualized trolling of Arsenal fans in online spaces is well beyond a social phenomenon. It’s big business. If you throw up an Instagram post about how some football luminary said the Premier League is worse than ever—that it’s boring and no fun to watch—of course you are going to use a photo of Arsenal at a corner kick. The people who do not like Arsenal will respond, and so will the Arsenal fans.
Because the Gooners always engage: arguing in the comments section, railing against the meme page admin, rage-sharing with others so they, too, can get enraged. Those are the clips that always pop off, where some ex-pro-turned-pundit says this Arsenal squad would be “the worst team [ever] to win the league,”1 because a lot of people will at least say they agree just to get a rise out of Arsenal fans. For the hobbyist trolls in comment sections, it’s the brief thrill of triggering someone on the Internet. For the media players involved, from fan creators to Serious News Outlets2, it’s an easy way to get reach and—somewhere down the line—make money.
For plenty of fans, the disdain for Arsenal is real and personal. They’re from up the Seven Sisters Road, or they don’t like Mikel Arteta, or they don’t like the way the team plays3, or some player pissed them off 16 years ago. Or, God forbid, they support Chelsea. But a sizable number of people are—in ways large and small—engaging in the performance of hating Arsenal for fun or financial gain, and Arsenal fans bugging out at them is the secret sauce that makes their businesses so successful. This is not a moral statement but a simple reality.
What Arsenal fans will choose to do with this information is, of course, their choice. But when they spend their time arguing online with fans of other clubs about whether some winger is better than Bukayo Saka, they are feeding the big, hulking anti-Arsenal content machine.4 We live in a world of vibe-based informational ooze, where half the people commenting on a post didn’t watch the match it’s talking about anyway. Everyone who participates is getting into the Content Business—which now seems almost entirely detached from watching and enjoying football—though only some are getting paid.
I just stopped engaging with them. This is not to say I’ve entered some Zen mind state as a fan: I am wracked with anxiety about whether Arsenal will end their trophy drought this season. But I’m just not going to participate in Declan Rice v Moises Caicedo, or the spirited debate around whether corner kicks are evil now. What does it matter that somebody thinks somebody is better than Saka? I wouldn’t rather have that player in an Arsenal shirt. I support Arsenal, I support Saka. The end.
Which is not the approach many Arsenal fans have taken, and that’s fine. Everybody’s got their own journey and their own battles to fight. I will join them in the Flame Wars on one day only: The one where Arsenal win the league. All the trolls will get their comeuppance on one glorious afternoon, and I will do my part. Hell, who am I kidding—it’ll go on at least until the World Cup kicks off 17 days later. These haters have had their fun for 20 years after all. It’s the least we can do.
Then other people write stories and record TikTok reactions to that.
In a podcast clip posted to Instagram earlier this season, a writer for The Guardian compared Arsenal’s playing style to that of Tranmere Rovers in League Two.
I guarantee you that most of the people yelling, “Haramball!” do not watch Arsenal on a regular basis. My guess is they watch them in some big games and consume content. In fairness, the run-ins with Manchester City are often a godawful watch, and the Haramball memes are some darkly funny Internet nihilism.
And in some cases, they are feeding legitimate anti-Arsenal grievances by being very annoying.
Does it really matter what other fans think of you, though?