Bad Boycotting Behaviour.

This afternoon I was procrastinating on Twitter when I saw that someone had retweeted a tweet from The Sun about how overweight people could consume the Earth’s supply of food rendering us all to wallow in what they dubbed an ‘armaglutton’.

Pretty standard stuff from The Sun and the word armaglutton is pretty funny so why not retweet it, you’re well within your rights as a free citizen to do so.

This person did just that and was quickly told off by someone for retweeting the ‘vile’ newspaper that is The Sun asking them in no uncertain terms what was wrong with them. You may have already guessed but this person was indeed a Liverpool fan…

Liverpool fans of course boycott The Sun because of the untruths it published about the Hillsborough disaster all those years ago. Finding a copy of The Sun on Merseyside is a bit of a rarity even now as steadfast fans stand together in opposing the daily paper. This is all well and good, I can certainly see their argument, but I don’t really believe that they should demand others to boycott the newspaper too just because their opinion is that it’s a terrible paper published by the devil himself!

The strange thing about the way The Sun handled the Hillsborough story is that we don’t yet know where their sources came from and recently it seems that Merseyside police themselves are one of the sources. I’m still a little confused as to who is actually to blame for the untruths published after the event and I suppose nobody will know until there’s a proper enquiry into it.

What I find even stranger though is the boycott against The Sun by Liverpool fans. These fans are happy to boycott The Sun yet many still get Sky installed and watch Sky Sports. Both The Sun and Sky are owned by News Corporation so what’s the difference?

So they don’t have Sky? Well what if they watch Sky Sports at the pub, they’re not paying them then are they? Well actually they are, in attending the pub and buying drinks they are actively taking part in funding the pub’s subscription with BSkyB. Ah! But what about those who watch the match at the pub but don’t buy anything from the bar! Not even a bag of peanuts! Nope they don’t get away with that either because as soon as they’re in the pub they’re co-creating value for the establishment with the atmosphere they’re helping to create.

How far can I go with this? Well let’s see, those Liverpool fans who buy a Liverpool shirt from the club shop or JJB are technically funding The Sun. Their money goes to Liverpool Football Club who contribute towards the Barclays Premier League who sell their television rights to BSkyB who are owned by News Corporation who in turn own News International of which The Sun is a part of! God help them if they have a Barclaycard…

This is where boycotts become a little clouded, it's incredibly difficult to boycott a consumer product because for one reason or another you end up giving them your money anyway either directly or indirectly via the big global machine that is consumerism.

Liverpool’s fans can bemoan The Sun all they want but every time they go to Anfield, or buy a replica shirt, or buy the FIFA 12 video game, or log into their Yahoo email account, or buy a Ford Ka, they are technically, in a very roundabout way, putting money into the News Corporation coffers.

Merseysiders boycotting The Sun is a great symbolic gesture that is brilliant for showing solidarity amongst a widespread community, however if they think that their boycott of this newspaper is in any way affecting the bottom line of News Corporation then they are sorely mistaken.

It is up to individuals to choose what they want to consume and lambasting other people with abuse just for consuming something that you don’t agree with is rude, absurd and incredibly hypocritical. I don't like skinny jeans, I think they're horrendous to be honest, but there's a market for them and if some other bloke wants to wear them then fine go ahead, he'll look ridiculous but that's his choice.

If you’re seriously offended by someone’s innocuous retweets then you should really consider just unfollowing them instead of hurling abuse towards them. If you want to tweet about how much you hate The Sun, more power to you, but don't persecute someone who tweets in favour of it!

This particular retweet was neither favourable or unfavourable, the poor girl just liked the word armaglutton for crying out loud!