Confessions of a Ragebaiter: Why it’s easier to piss off Eagles fans than Arsenal fans

I have a confession to make… I am a ragebaiter. I post cutting remarks online about sports players and teams, attempting to provoke their fans into angrily defending them. In one of my masterpieces, I mocked the Philadelphia Eagles’ slogan of “Fly Eagles Fly” by changing it to “Cry Eagles Cry” after my favorite team, the 49ers, beat the Eagles in an important game. Truly Shakespearean. Interestingly, while I am a fan of both American sports and European soccer, I can only successfully ragebait American fans. I have found that American sports fans are much more belligerent and argumentative on the internet, whereas European fans are more civil and objective. I believe that the reasons for this difference in online sports culture trace all the way back to the structure of the leagues themselves. 

We can see the difference between fans of American sports and fans of European soccer in their reactions to their team losing. While European fans are willing to face the fact that their team was not good enough, American fans prefer to stay in delusion about their team having deserved to win but having lost due to some outside circumstance. For example, I was once discussing online the Philadelphia 76ers’ loss to the Boston Celtics in an NBA playoff game. I was arguing that the 76ers’ best player, Joel Embiid, had underperformed due to the pressure of the playoffs; however, the 76ers fan I was arguing with was certain that it was not really Joel Embiid’s fault that he had played poorly:

Rather than accepting that his favorite player had just underperformed, he claimed that the other team tried to injure him and succeeded. There is no factual or evidentiary basis for this claim. Because American fans are so stubborn, small arguments can turn into endless ones, as neither side will listen to reason or concede that the other side may have a point. This unwillingness among fans of American sports to acknowledge any flaws in their favorite players and teams makes them easy to draw in with ragebait. In this tweet, a fan of Lebron James is mocking Kevin Durant, who is one of Lebron’s main rivals:

The post is obvious ragebait. While there is some slight truth to what the poster is saying, he is exaggerating thoroughly to provoke fans of Kevin Durant. Despite the obvious motive, the post elicited a response from a fan of Durant, who rushed in to defend his honor:

It is easy to ragebait in a culture where fans are always ready to stubbornly defend their favorite teams and players. 

Online discourse around European soccer has a different tone. European fans are more realistic when talking about the quality of their favorite teams and players. They don’t defend their favorites until the bitter end and will generally acknowledge their team’s flaws, as in this tweet by a fan of Chelsea, a British soccer team:

The tweet is a reaction to Chelsea losing 4-2, and the man pictured in the tweet is Jose Mourinho, a successful former manager of Chelsea. Instead of trying to justify Chelsea’s loss, the fan sees that the team was not good enough and calls for the return of a successful manager in hopes of improving the team. This fan’s willingness to acknowledge his team’s flaws and practical call for change is typical of online discourse around European soccer.  

I believe that structural differences in the sports leagues themselves may explain this difference in online culture between European soccer and American sports. Firstly, there is a difference in the geographical connection between fans and teams. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, and the European Leagues have the highest level of competition, which draws players from all parts of the world. This means that the fans come from all over the world, too. The most popular soccer team, Real Madrid, has hundreds of millions of supporters, but there are only 47.5 million people living in the entire country of Spain, demonstrating that the vast majority of the club’s support comes from international fans. I personally am a fan of Chelsea in London, but I’ve never lived in England. American sports, on the other hand, are mostly supported by Americans. When people pick which team they support, it's often because they have some type of connection with the area in which that team plays. It may be where they grew up, where they live, or where their parents lived. This geographical connection causes American fans to be territorial about their teams. They feel that any insult to their team of choice is an insult to the area in which it plays and hence an insult to them. So when I insult the Philadelphia Eagles, Eagles fans interpret it as an affront to the city itself and react accordingly. 

The difference that a geographical connection makes in the way fans talk about their teams online can be illustrated by comparing how fans talk about their country’s national teams to how the same fans talk about their favorite European league teams. Two of the biggest soccer accounts out there: UtdTrey and CFCJanty are from Nigeria and South Africa respectively, but support teams in Manchester and London. Here is one of a string of 17 tweets that UTDTrey made during a game in the African Cup of Nations (AFCON), in which his home country of Nigeria was playing:

As you can tell by the number of tweets and the frantic tone of this one, his emotional investment in the game was intense. By contrast, this is one of UTDTrey’s 9 tweets during a Manchester United game. 

While he is confidently supporting his team, you can tell he isn’t as invested when talking about his club team as he is when talking about his national team. He cares about the team but not with the same level of territorial intensity. This difference between the tone of UTDTrey’s posts may reveal the reason for the difference in tone between online discourse around American sports and European soccer. American sports fans are more often charged with territorial intensity when talking about their favorite teams online and are consequently more argumentative. 

Another possible explanation for the difference in online discourse is that in European soccer there is a lot more objectivity in the relative quality of different clubs. The top teams stay at the top, and the bottom teams stay at the bottom. In American sports, teams rise and fall in different eras and pretty much any team has a chance of winning the championship at some point. This is because European soccer has no limit on spending. You can pay a player whatever you want and can buy them from another club for however much you want. This leads to the biggest, wealthiest teams utterly dominating. Whenever another team has a good young player, they are simply scooped up and bought by some bigger, more prestigious club. American sports on the other hand, have a salary cap and a draft system. There is a limit on how much teams can spend, and new promising young players are given to the worst teams in the league, so that those teams can become more competitive. This parity may lead to more arguing in American sports because pretty much every team has been good at one point and has the potential to be good in the near future. Even if you can’t argue that your team is the best now, you can make an argument based on your team’s history. For example, here is an exchange between a fan of the Denver Nuggets and a fan of the LA Lakers:

After the Nuggets beat the Lakers, a Nuggets fan bragged about how the Nuggets have been consistently beating the Lakers recently, including on some milestone nights. However, the Lakers fan is able to rebut because the Lakers have historically been better than the Nuggets. Each side has a valid point, which makes it easy to continue arguing. By contrast, take this Tweet by a fan of Middlesbrough, one of the teams in the British Second Division, after his team was routed by Chelsea, a first division team: 

This Middlesbrough fan doesn’t try to make any arguments about his team being better because that would be objectively inaccurate. Instead, he boasts about his club having more loyal fans. He may be right or wrong about the loyalty of the fans, but he is completely unable to talk about the quality of the teams themselves because of the fact that one is inarguably better. There is no real debate to be had, so no argument arises. US fans, on the other hand, will always have a talking point. Because of the variability in the quality of teams, a fan will almost always be able to point to the current state of their team or their team’s past achievements when arguing with another fan. 

I personally enjoy both forms of fandom and both forms of online discourse. I am a distant fan of a perennially good soccer team and a territorial fan of local US sports teams. Being from San Francisco, I’ve been lucky enough to grow up enjoying the incredible recent success of the Golden State Warriors, but even after Stephen Curry retires and the team is no longer what it once was, I will still insist that the Warriors are the best team and disingenuously argue online with anyone who disagrees. That is my duty as an American sports fan. Chelsea, my favorite European soccer team, has been struggling recently, but even in this period of hardship for the team, they currently have the top scorer in the league and are in a good position to return to their normal standing. I can debate in their favor, but I have to be more measured in my approach and use statistics and evidence. The nice thing about being a fan of both European and American leagues is that I get to pick the style of debate I feel like. If I want to do my research and bring forth evidence in favor of an argument, I log on to a European soccer forum. When I feel like exercising my trash-talk skills and carrying a debate to the bitter end, I turn to American sports.

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