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It’s July 2026 and World Cup fever is going through the roof. For anyone watching the competition you’ll know that this fervor is caused not just by the players but also by the fans. And the fans of the fans.
Let’s start with the fans: World Cup soccer fans are individuals who choose a team to cheer on in the planet's largest sporting competition. Some of us watch online, some at the pub, others go to experience the game live. We turn up for different and multiple reasons: fueled by national pride, by admiration for one special player, because fandom is central to our identity and social life, and of course, for the love of the ‘beautiful game’. However, there is something that the majority of fans have in common: We don’t personally know the players on the pitch and they don’t know us. It seems obvious doesn’t it? But, given the amount of passion we show, you could be forgiven for thinking that we personally know the people kicking the ball about – but we don’t. We are anonymous to them and to any depth they are unknown to us, too. This mutual anonymity is really important as it allows us to participate how we want in order to maximize our entertainment. Being entertained is our raison d’être: We spend time with other fans sharing stats and stories, and drinking, wearing the team’s colours, singing its songs, booing its foes and cheering its friends. We get involved well before the ref blows the whistle and continue to care far into the future, often for life. All this time we enthusiastically give attention to our team on and off the pitch, displaying it, chanting it, and tweeting it, stridently to them and other audiences. We get so involved in entertainment making, that the wins and losses feel personal. In fact, for fans, it feels profoundly personal precisely because we give the competition so much of our attention. We emotionally, financially, and psychologically collaborate with the contest before, during, and afterwards. If it is passion that drives people’s actions not reason, as David Hume an 18th Century Scottish philosopher thought, 21st century soccer fans are not immune. The extent to which we are willing to go to is barely logical; the huge expense to travel, the commitment to organise private and professional life around the sport; and all the years of dedication that each fan variously gives leading up to the decision to go to North America; or to wake up at 1am on a workday to watch a match. Unsurprisingly, when we arrive, we are ready for a very, very good time. While soccer fans make all this effort, there is also another group of spectators at the World Cup – the fans of the fans. Fans of the fans post news, tweets, and videos about the crowd’s shenanigans and specific supporter's stories. If you’re on social media right now – it’s hard to miss them: The Norwegian fans rowing up escalators and down streets; the Scottish fans singing, “No Scotland, no party!” while teaching the police to play bagpipes; the Japanese fans tidying up the stadium after themselves, and the comparative, judgmental videos of the mess left after English fans have been drinking and carousing all night; or the emotional scene of the young son of a Cabo Verde player consoling his father after his debutant team nearly defeated Argentina, the reigning champions. If like me, you enjoy soccer, or are fascinated by human behaviour, you’re probably appreciating these posts and the endless comments beneath them. Thousands of us are reading the commentaries of the fans of the fans (and the anti-fans of the fans) to see what they see. Usually, these observers offer contradictory, often tribal, opinions, proffer witticisms, and make friendly or nasty banter about fans’ behaviour and tomfoolery. This other level of spectators — the self-ascribed judges of other soccer spectators — demonstrate a primary characteristic of most fans; that we will do, say, and write exactly what we want, or can get away with, to make our own entertainment with what we see – and we do it intentionally. Fans of the fans deliberately do it to entertain their very own audiences online. Audiencing the audience and crowd commentating is now a global sport – and you thought the World Cup was all about the soccer.
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3 minute read Friends are very special audiences: we attend to each other for little reason other than because we like them. Love them even. We turn up because we care, to watch their lives, their shenanigans, and their mistakes and beyond these observations we carry on being their friend. And they, ours. Of course, audiencing is not the entirety of what we do when we are in a friendship but it is a useful way to think about friendship. Friends choose to audience each other. We are intimate audiences – watching the small and huge things happen in life, building a view of the person we observe and as their familiar audience we gain particular insight – or so we think. Old friends observe each other over decades. You may know this for yourself, right? I have friends who have watched my life unfurl from teen to adult. Some have dipped out of view at times when lives became busy but they have returned to see me again. Old friends see in a distinctive way. They watch us make repeat choices or hear us complain about the same things, and only they can say, “hang on, you did this (or said this) before when you were in your 20's….!” When they tell me this, I know they saw me then and they see me now. They react and remind me of who I have been and who I am today – attending to me over time. New friends see the up to date you; where you are now in your life, and from there the friendship grows. I made one such friend at work. Our friendship began as he seemed impressed by me and wanted to be around me, and I him. He observed me at work, and watched as I wrote, with great encouragement. He made friendly suggestions about how I could further my work. I audienced him too – seeing his struggles, helping him finish his studies, and supporting him as he develop his business idea. For a number of years, we attended to each other’s lives, asking critical questions and cheering each other on. That was until he no longer wanted my attention. The moment it happened was explosive: We were having after work drinks, when he told me that he was leaving his business partner, and was planning on make a financial killing. I saw his belligerent doggedness and I heard his cynicism. In that moment, I could not applaud his intention as he hoped I would as his friend-as-audience, instead I raised an ethical question about it. It should not have been surprising, as it was not unlike me to raise critical questions. Yet in that instance he reacted angrily and ended the friendship there and then. Abruptly, I was de-audienced. From that minute on, I was no longer his audience, nor he mine. So what happens when friends stop observing your life, and ask you to stop audiencing theirs? New friends or old? People who once chose to generously attend to you, your art, your sport or your work, or just to your daily well-being, ruminating over a beer or coffee? What happens when they stop audiencing you, and you are no longer wanted as their audience? My friend had given such a particular quality of audiencing that his absence felt like loss. I have no idea if he felt the same, as what I said (and he thinks I saw) made me an unwanted audience of his life. Was my de-audiencing unwittingly my fault? Yes, in fact it was, but naturally so. In the typology of audiencing – intimate audiences can be unthinking: friends will offer unwanted advice, or raise questions in my case, that are unrequested – and that is actually a trait of the known audience. We think we know those we see, and comment. We think too that we are trusted enough to share those insights or queries. If my friend had understood that this is a characteristic of my audience type would he have done something different? Perhaps, he would have laughed it off, or snapped at me and said, “not really your business”, or trusted that it was a critical friend observing his life so take it as a fair question and say, “I’ll think on it”. Intimate audiences do mess things up, so both the person observing and the one being observed do a lot of relationship management to maintain friendships – we often soften criticism, we gently lie about their idea or book, or whatever they are showing us, because we care about audiencing them more than the thing they ask us to see. Sometimes we don’t and overstep the unspoken line of observation. It is a tricky art – the art of audiencing friends. Being de-audienced is part of life. A friend’s departure can feel like grief, and at the same time a relief. Conversely, de-audiencing someone from your life can sometimes feel like the only option. They have seen something that cannot be unseen. |
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