Thierry Henry and the Social Media Tsunami of Hate
Wow. If you want to know how quickly news is traveling these days, and how social media is fueling this wave and shaping public perception, read on.
Not three hours ago, superstar soccer player Thierry Henry of France dealt Ireland a crushing blow when he assisted in the go-ahead goal in their World Cup qualifying match. During the play, Henry employed what appeared to be a blatant handball to set up the assist, and cries to the referees from the Irish team fell on deaf ears. The game eventually ended, the French fans cheered, the Irish players sat crushed — and Henry sat among them, appearing a bit conflicted, and probably wondering if outright celebration might be inappropriate.
Fast forward one hour, and the video of the handball is already up on YouTube. Twitter is aflutter in tweets — with the top trending topics including “Thierry Henry,” “France,” “Irish,” “Ireland,” “Handball,” and “World Cup.” It’s rare to see multiple trending topics that relate back to one news item, but here we have six of them.
On Facebook, not three hours after the match’s conclusion, the following group pages have been established and drawn legions of fans:
- We Irish Hate Thierry Henry the cheat (12,063 fans) *(33,102 as of 12 hours later)
- Thierry Henry Is a Cheating Bastard (5,226) *(15,633 as of 12 hours later…)
- Thierry Henry Should Apologise to Ireland (2,341 fans) *(7,546…)
- La Main de Thierry Henry (”The Hand of Thierry Henry”) (2,433 fans) *(19,878…)
- La Main Gauche de Thierry Henry (”The Left Hand of Thierry Henry”) (2,071 fans) *(10,144…)
- We Hate Thierry Henry (444 fans) (1,539…)
These numbers will have increased by the thousands come morning, when the French and Irish — and Henry — wake to a new day. Also, these above groups don’t take into account dozens of other similarly-named groups that have fans in their hundreds or thousands too.
How else might Henry feel the backlash?
Let’s look at Twitter again. One other topic you’ll find is #boycottgillette, which users believe will hurt Henry where it hurts most: his sponsor. Gillette is well known as one of the superstar’s main sponsors. How will they react to this?
Better yet, how will Henry react?
What will happen tomorrow?
For what it’s worth, Henry didn’t do anything technically wrong — nothing that doesn’t fall out of the confines of the game. You can blame the referring for the no-call(s). But that’s sport. Referees don’t catch everything.
Much worse is the actual extent to which Henry used his arm to control the ball, which brings his character into question. You can forgive a slight reaction sometimes, but Henry’s play may have been more than a slight reaction. There appeared to be a deliberate aim to control the ball.
It’s a shame that it happened.
But as far as entertainment value, I haven’t been this hooked to Twitter in months.
*Stats updated 7:45 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time
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