COMMENTARY: Twitter war over football
Kuala Lumpur (The Star/ANN) - First, congratulations to the Malaysian football team for their victory in the Asean Football Federation (AFF) Suzuki Cup.
But, I have to make a frank admission: this "tukang cerita" does not like football. I am not a fan and never have been.
Given the heat of the AFF two-leg final between Malaysia and Indonesia, this confession is probably going to make me one of the most hated columnists in all of South-East Asia!
When I was studying in the UK, everyone supported a football club -- except for me. ManU, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool, they're all the same to me.
At the same time, the year-end coincides with my annual holiday rituals. This now includes a vow to stop playing around on my Blackberry: mainly to give my Carpal Tunnel Syndrome-afflicted wrist a well-earned rest. My twitter followers may have noticed my silence.
Anyhow, I pretty much missed the mounting excitement over the Asean-wide football competition.
However, I still remember a Filipino Cabinet Minister telling me firmly when I quite naively asked him whether sports could unite people.
"Karim, it often achieves the opposite. People end up hating one another."
These were prophetic words, as I later discovered. I was shaken from my Twitter-free slumber on Sunday evening during the first leg of the final as friends started inundating me with agitated SMSes.
On one hand, Indonesian friends complained about unsporting Malaysian behaviour (those wretched green-colour lasers) and on the other hand, Malaysians were telling me that Indonesians were sore losers.
Uh-oh. This was a recipe for disaster. At that moment, I really I wished that I was living in a less football-mad region.
Moreover, the angry rhetoric seemed to gather momentum. When I turned, albeit reluctantly, to Twitter, I discovered that it was swamped with comments linked to the just-concluded match -- ranging from the frustrated to the downright furious.
I winced inwardly as I read the venomous comments, especially from a good portion of 15 million Indonesians on Twitter.
In fact, four topics (those marked by hash tags): "#malaysiacheaterlaser", "#Hate Malaysia", "#Love Malaysia" and "#Love Indonesia" were trending worldwide on Twitter at that time.
The latter three topics trended throughout the week, joined by "#harimaumalaya" and "#malaysiaboleh" as the Malaysian team were crowned champions on Wednesday night. The rest of the Twitter-world must be thinking that we were on the verge of war over football! American comedian Andy Borowitz tweeted: "Got to the bottom of today's Twitter war: Malaysia is into Bieber and Indonesia isn't."
Well, there are a few lessons to be had from this phenomenon.
First, my Filipino friend was all too right. Sports, especially competitive team sports, can be deeply divisive at the national level. Indeed, in Latin America, countries have gone to war over football.
Second, the immediacy and the volume of activity on the Internet (especially Twitter) demonstrates the extraordinary power of social media.
We, South-East Asians, are major users of both Twitter and Facebook. Indonesia has the third largest Twitter community after the United States and Brazil while Malaysians are reported to have the most Internet "friends" on Facebook, averaging 233 "friends" per user.
Consider for a moment the fact that the combined tweets of Indonesians and Malaysians (but mostly Indonesians) managed to surpass perennial favourites such as Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga and you'll see what I mean.
Indeed, social media has become the proxy for public sentiment. This "flattens" and opens up public diplomacy in much the same way that WikiLeaks has debunked the notion of diplomatic "secrecy".
We are now forced to scan the Internet to gauge how people think and feel. Political and business elites will have to manage this new and volatile reality -- limiting the ability for high-level, back-room deals.
However, there's also an increased blurring of the distinctions between the real and virtual worlds.
Indeed, the Internet has emerged as a parallel universe of sorts. What transpires on the Internet "becomes real"; our tweets, blogs and e-mails seem to be more reflective of what's happening than the actual events themselves!
So, in conclusion, the recent "Twitter wars" have demonstrated both the ugly and the positive sides of our two countries. Malaysians and Indonesians have both been shown to be full of suspicion and xenophobia, along with severe inferiority/superiority complexes.
However, it has also shown our creativity, humour and deep abiding passion for our respective homelands.
In short, it's showed us how, some superficial differences aside, we really are very much alike. We're all very sensitive: we hate losing and love winning!
Lastly, I hope it's not too late to wish all my readers a Happy New Year!
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