Your Movement Doesn’t Need Your Favorite Publication
Socialism is a new and sexy Brooklyn thing, according to NYMag.
People are mad about this article! Why do they keep making it a trendy Brooklyn thing, they say. This makes socialism look silly. Why aren’t they covering the real, inspiring, sincere work of other socialists in Omaha, Chattanooga, and, other, less-hip parts of New York City?
When I see the reactions to socialism trendpieces, it reminds me of something I was an online fan of years before I became an online fan of socialism: American soccer.
Since I started following MLS and the US National Team, I’ve started to notice several types of fans. There’s one particular type who were more influential and dominant when I first became a fan: the fans hungry for more mainstream acceptance. The type who see full soccer arenas in the USA and say “That’s nice but can we get a cover story in USA Today?” The type who see their team come close to winning a championship and think, “Maybe if our local NBC affiliate gave us more coverage, we would have won.”
The underlying premise of this type of fandom is: I’ve been a fan since way before it was cool, and I’m sick of it. Can it be cool now?
I’ve always been a different type of fan. My thought about American soccer has always been that it’s growing, and it’s either going to become as popular as the NFL, which might make it less fun, or it’s going to remain exactly as popular as it is now, which is fine by me. If I ever want to pretend, right now, that it’s as popular as the NFL, I log on to social media and check the feeds of my friends who are soccer fans. They post about soccer all the time and share articles from publications that cover soccer. The lack of coverage from media outlets that typically cover the Yankees and Donald Trump just seems like a non-issue.
To people who are invested in the media coverage of soccer, there’s another situation that is about as bad as no media coverage. That situation is bad trendpieces. Maxi Rodriguez wrote a really good Medium post about bad soccer trendpieces. One of the many things I like about his article is that he doesn’t say that we need more good trendpieces, just that we need less bad ones. He lacks the thirst for trendpiece-based validation that so many writers (including myself, at times) often have. Soccer fandom, without bad trendpieces, is doing fine. It’s growing because of marketing efforts that have nothing to do with trendpieces. It’s also growing in spite of many failed attempts and missed opportunities to win over American hispanophone fans. That’s how strong it is.
At best, the bad trendpieces might encourage toxic types of soccer fandom while turning off a tiny minority of people who are interested in soccer but are not already fans. Mainly, they’re just obnoxious: obnoxious to fans who know that the trendpieces are full of shit, obnoxious as pure bad reporting, and also obnoxious because they seem to encourage the preconceived beliefs of our nemeses, the people who don’t like soccer.
The world just needs less bad trendpieces in general! But it doesn’t need more good trendpieces. American soccer isn’t going to change much based on the New York Times’ words on it. Nor is socialism going to win if NYMag covers the best rural socialist activist instead of another leftist urban cliche. Soccer is getting more popular without the NYTimes — it’s getting more popular due to smaller media outlets, social media, and the fact that it is inherently better than the NFL and nobody can stop that fact about it. Socialism, also, is getting popular off the radar of mainstream media.
Remember when AOC was just a primary candidate? Remember the days when AOC wasn’t the most-covered politician in America? Remember when, during the biggest electoral challenge that she had to overcome, the New York publications basically said nothing about her, and then she won?
If your liberal friends who just won’t accept that socialism is better keep reading trendpieces about how socialism is a bunch of thirsty hipsters, that won’t hurt you. If your NFL-watching friends who just won’t accept that soccer is the best sport keep reading trendpieces about how soccer fans are all a bunch of racially-stereotyped Spanish-speaking fans who constantly tell the goalkeeper that he’s gay, that also won’t hurt you. Be happy that you can still get soccer tickets on stubhub for ten bucks, and be happy that your favorite socialists still haven’t been nailed by spooks.
