The fear of being perceived

A few years ago I read an article about why young people are drinking less alcohol than previous generations. These things are always multi-factorial but one of the key theories the piece addressed was ‘the fear of being perceived.’ In an increasingly digitised world where young people film one another as a matter of course and have access to websites where they can upload those videos and circulate them widely in seconds…well, you can see why young people are anxious about being intoxicated in that scenario.

I am very happy that my drunken antics were confined to a small group of friends and live on only in our fading memories. I always had this theory that social media was causing western society to go through a second dandy phase. Dandyism was a Victorian phenomenon where men began to dress far more exotically.

The invention of photography was the midwife to this sartorial craze, put simply photography made people far more aware of how they looked and men began to dress and groom themselves more performatively. I always felt that social media in particular had created a sort of emotional dandy phase.

Publishing all our opinions for an audience of strangers invites us to perform our opinions and exaggerate the emotions that we attach to them in a bid for attention. I hadn’t really considered that it might be working in reverse too, that people were becoming more anxious and more inhibited about expressing themselves through fear of ridicule.

What does this have to do with Arsenal? Well, let me segue with an anecdote. At Liverpool away in April 2023, when Arsenal were top of the league and raced into an early two goal lead at Anfield, a chorus of ‘we’re gonna win the league and now you’re gonna believe us’ began to echo from the back of the Anfield Road End. I joined in.

The chant was quickly shut down amidst a sea of irritated ‘ssssshhhhhh’ing. Fans were incredibly anxious and irritated about the idea of this chant, which had been a staple twenty odd years ago when Arsenal were last routinely part of the title race. I fully understand the reasons why people were so irritated, even if I wanted the song to boom out lustfully.

The fear of being perceived. Of being ridiculed. Of Arsenal fans singing such a presumptive song and somebody uploading a video of it onto social media and laughing at us when we inevitably did not win the title. This idea that fans of other clubs, total strangers, might make fun of us on the internet was incredibly pervasive at the forefront of people’s minds.

I remember thinking it was a shame really, ‘now you’re gonna believe us’ is a great chant and you don’t necessarily get to sing it every year. I was at White Hart Lane in April 2004 as the travelling Arsenal fans absolutely boomed it out as the players waited in the tunnel to clinch the title on the turf of the enemy. It remains one of the most energising memories of my life. I swear every single fan was singing it, that was what it felt like, and the claps were perfectly in time.

It’s the closest I have ever felt to energy feeling like a tangible force that I could reach out and touch. Obviously that Liverpool game in April 2023 and that particular title race turned out badly, so of course it is just as well that the song never really got going. I didn’t want to sing it because I felt over confident, I just wanted to transmit that feel good energy to the players and because it is a fun song.

I still think it is a bit of a shame that, as a collective, on that day as supporters we chose to succumb to the fear of being perceived. I felt like we chose anxiety over positivity, fear over love etc, etc. But I am not here to judge anybody, I understand it and I cannot pretend that the fear of being perceived doesn’t linger somewhere in the recesses of my brain too.

It certainly did on Saturday against Wolves. I admit that the fear of being perceived was as much a driving force for my anxiety as the potential dropped points themselves. What would people say?! We all knew what they would say and, worse than that, we would hardly be in a position to deny it. A generation ago this would be mere water cooler chat with colleagues and friends and crucially, people we valued. Now it is played out online in front of the whole world and we cannot escape the opinions of people we do not value.

I think it’s the first time in a long time that the players had a similar fear. Theirs was not borne of social media algorithms or of the shrunken heads of Carragher and Neville pontificating across our screens and timelines for a week. But I did detect a pungent whiff of ‘oh shit, if we don’t beat Wolves at home that is going to be really bad.’ I think it was opponent specific and I detected significant stage fright.

Clearly there is additional context for Arsenal and their fans, after finishing 2nd three years in a row and because we feel that we have a really good team, with a deep squad and a talented coach, we are all so desperate for the cards to fall right this season. At times early in the second half on Saturday, I felt the nervous energy of the crowd and had to keep checking the scoreboard for the time elapsed.

As early as 55 minutes it felt absolutely fraught and I just don’t think it would have happened that early against pretty much any other opponent in the league. But we were all anxious, not just about dropping some home banker points, but for what people would say about it all. This was us getting drunk and falling asleep against a nightclub speaker with a damp patch around our groins uploaded to TikTok.

It could well be recency bias but this era of ultra connectedness seems to be driving an additional anxiety around being in the title race. Obviously the time that has passed since Arsenal lifted the Premier League trophy is a hefty old cherry on top of this anxiety cake. I would also never suggest that title races in the early 2000s did not come with a significant dollop of ‘the fear.’

On the day that Arsenal lost their record breaking unbeaten run at Old Trafford in October 2004, I vividly remember a gentleman in my vicinity unwittingly alerting everyone around him to just how tense he was pre-match. The scent of his anxiety, expelled from a specific orifice, hung thick and heavy on the air as the teams emerged from the tunnel. Squeaky bum time, indeed.

As I have already said, this title race clearly has weighty caveats around it- the pain of three runners-up finishes, the pregnant pause since our last title an entire generation ago (and for me, about four stone ago too). But I also think that fear of being perceived is driving a lot of the nervous energy around the Arsenal fan base.

Many of us are probably experiencing fever dreams that feature the floating heads of Carragher, Neville, Cundy  et al, of bored teenagers on Twitter mocking us (in many ways, life was better when it was easier to avoid people who have the IQ of a house plant). I try not to judge, to be an insufferable old bore or to preach, because I understand it totally and I would be lying if I said I didn’t experience it too. I do think it is kind of a shame, though and takes some of the fun out of it.