In one short week, the controversial former footballer and manager, Joey Barton, has gone from ranting against female pundits to placing football at the centre of our culture wars.
His all-out X assault on “wokeism” has sparked ITV into speaking out in defence of its employees, created a maelstrom of starry media names’ outrage and once again raised the hoary subject of whether social media giants have a duty of care towards both the victims and perpetrators of their rants.
The current furore began with Barton (a former Newcastle, Manchester City and Glasgow Rangers player – among others – and ex-manager of Fleetwood Town and Bristol Rovers) slamming the female pundits on ITV’s coverage of the Everton v Crystal Palace FA Cup tie: “Eni Aluko and Lucy Ward are the Fred and Rose West of football commentary”.
Later, he repeated his belief: “Women stick to women’s football. Men stick to Men’s football. Simple.” Unusually, this provoked an ITV Sport statement criticising Barton for targeting its pundits with “vindictive remarks based on gender” and his “contemptible and shameful” invoking of “the names of serial killers”.
Barton could have simply apologised for inappropriate remarks. Instead, he doubled down, attacking ITV over the Phillip Schofield affair. “I don’t care any more,” he asserted, “we’ve all had enough of your ‘woke’, ‘DEI’ bullshit”, lambasting his critics, including the pundit Gary Neville.
To a neutral observer, Barton’s public meltdown not only makes it unlikely he will ever work in football again, but gives cause for concern about his mental health.
The TV presenter Jeremy Vine suggested unhelpfully that “genuinely, is it possible we are dealing with a brain injury here?” Cue another Barton tirade.
The powerful reach of individual social media accounts is still wildly underestimated. As I began writing on Sunday morning, Barton (with 2.4 million X followers) saw his latest tweet, posted at 5:55am, viewed 1.4 million times already. It was a threat to reveal the hidden sexual and other secrets of his critics. With pundits like Georgie Bingham urging ITV to resort to lawyers, Barton bit back, citing his “deep pockets”, threatening legal action too: “I suppose the far-left is just going to keep coming now. F**k it. Let’s go ya c***s”.
Barton is infamously belligerent. He once served 77 days in jail for assault; has been banned from playing or fined for respectively detaching a team-mate’s retina in one training ground assault and stubbing out a cigar in a youth team player’s eye at a party. Inevitably, his lack of physical and verbal restraint makes him the kind of controversialist who attracts social media followers. This is surely dangerous. Not many mainstream media outlets can muster a fraction as many views of most of their posts, but the point is that behind their more restrained content are layers of checks, balances and vigilant in-house lawyers.
As I conclude, Barton’s morning tweet has now been viewed 1.9 million times (he’s added 400k followers). He has thanked Elon Musk for “allowing us to speak freely on here” (X). This scale means he can monetise tweeting. But to use the old adage, with freedom of speech comes responsibility. And, surely, that means social media giants’ responsibility towards not only trolled victims, but those like Barton himself, whose self-sabotaging may be a signifier of more deep-rooted problems.
@stefanohat
Joey Barton's public meltdown is being enabled by platforms like X
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07.01.2024
In one short week, the controversial former footballer and manager, Joey Barton, has gone from ranting against female pundits to placing football at the centre of our culture wars.
His all-out X assault on “wokeism” has sparked ITV into speaking out in defence of its employees, created a maelstrom of starry media names’ outrage and once again raised the hoary subject of whether social media giants have a duty of care towards both the victims and perpetrators of their rants.
The current furore began with Barton (a former Newcastle, Manchester City and Glasgow Rangers player – among others – and ex-manager of Fleetwood Town and Bristol Rovers) slamming the female pundits on ITV’s coverage of the Everton v Crystal Palace FA Cup tie: “Eni Aluko and Lucy Ward are the Fred and Rose West of football commentary”.
Later, he repeated his........
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