Firstly, very nice gameweek.
[[[BALE!!!!!
Having had an awful gameweek last week this really rescued my season, so I can indulge myself a little. I'm now back in with a realistic chance of a top 100k finish. So I'm quite pleased.
Gameweek Points: 71
Gameweek Rank: 111,510
Overall Rank: 123,415
Secondly though I'll have to address the social media blackout against online abuse and racism. Needless to say I didn't take part.
Personally I don't think it's about stopping abuse and racism - I think it's a cynical use of the issue of racism to promote censorship.
It's similar to the BLM issue. Black Lives Matter is a political organisation that pushes many political agendas - including for instance 'defund the police'. Now this means if you don't believe in defunding the police you're put in a very awkward position. Either you openly support an organisation that supports something you don't believe in and that you think is bad, or you don't support it ..and risk being accused of being a racist.
It's rather unfair, and completely shuts down genuine debate.
If you're more on the left side of politics and can't quite imagine being in this situation. Imagine an organisation comes along that's against racism - but that also wants to break up the NHS. Do you support this organisation? How unfair would it be to yourself if simply by pointing out that they wanted to destroy the NHS you were accused of being a racist, and the argument and your concerns shut down. If not completely censored.
With this online blackout it's a comparable situation.
Changes will be brought in, there will be no real debate about the actual consequences of these changes, and anyone daring to raise concerns will be labelled a horrible racist. Again, this isn't about stopping racism, it's cynically using race as a trojan horse to push through changes that people otherwise wouldn't support.
If we end up in a situation where by law people won't be able to open a social media account without providing full I.D. then what does that mean for personal privacy, for free speech, and for competition in the online world.
- Privacy - Recently there was a Facebook data leak where the information of half a billion users was leaked, including phone numbers. Do you really want these companies having more of your data? Simply in order to share pictures and memes and to talk to your friends?
- Free Speech - We're all against hate and abuse in principle, but who decides what is and isn't abuse? What if such powers are abused, or exercised with bias.
- Competition - It's easy for wealthy companies like Twitter to implement these huge verification systems. It'll be much harder for smaller start-ups to jump through these huge expensive hoops though -- imagine you're setting up your own social media platform and you have to, by law, implement a system that fully verifies every member and protects that information. Instead of just requesting an email address. Imagine how difficult and expensive this would be. Also would those users trust you, a small not-so-slick outlet, with their information?
- Choice - This leads us in turn to consumer choice. Currently if you don't like one platform you can move to another with different policies. If you want to use a platform where everyone has to give full I.D. then go and use one. In fact, why don't all these wealthy footballers and media figures set up their own. Surely if these changes are so popular there'll be a market for it. However, once all policies are set by law there'll be no variation. Everything will be the same. You won't be able to set up an alternative that operates according to your own values.
So these changes that undermine free choice will not be brought in by market forces, or indeed democratic processes (again, normally we discuss important potential changes to the law and vote for or against parties that do or don't support them). Here though everything is being brought through on pure emotion and media hysteria, with dissent and debate silenced and demonised.
Obviously racism and abuse is a problem, but the idea that it's getting worse is simply untrue. 99.99% of people are not racist. So we're doing all this for a tiny, tiny number of idiots that are sending the odd offensive or abusive message. Messages that can be blocked or ignored. On platforms we can choose to not use ourselves.
People may dislike what I'm saying here, but I think it's a bit rich for footballers and managers that spend their lives screaming at referees every time a throw-in goes the wrong way to be demanding law changes because they don't like something they've seen on a mobile phone screen.
My actual team..
Anyway, that said, let's get back to fpl 😅
I'm actually so distracted by the politics that I now have no idea what I'm doing football-wise. It was interesting to note that Phillips was on the team sheet for the abandoned Liverpool game, so that is now the issue that's giving me the biggest headache. I still have no Salah, and was going to move out Phillips to then somehow bring him in. However, now he's fit I'm pretty tempted to just leave him in there and make other moves.
The fixture rejig because of that abandonment complicates things too of course. So I'll probably need to get a handle on that first. My team's not looking too bad for this week, so it may be best to just stick with what I have and roll the transfer.
I think I've probably stole the attention of anyone reading a little too much by now, so I'll leave it at that. If I make any changes between now and the weekend I'll post them on Twitter, along with the odd cheeky tweet no doubt -
-- with so much group think in football these days someone has to be the fpl anti-hero :)
Overall Points: 2112
Overall Rank: 123,415
