[omgitsthelazor]

I decided recently to sign up for a Northern Irish football forum. Why? Because I was interested to see what they were saying on the James McClean twitter stuff. I LIKE LURKING FORUMS OK, don't judge.

The one I found from google was called "our wee country", all posts weren't viewable by default so I registered an account.
During registration it asked me where I was from from a list of NI, ROI, England, Scotland or other. I picked ROI
They asked me to wait for an administrator to approve my account, I waited a week and nothing. Eventually I couldn't log in, the administrator had apparently rejected and deleted my account.

I made another using a northern Irish proxy and lied that I was from NI, this one was approved. And what I see there, my gosh the bitterness, bile and hatred would put even the After Hours hardcore to shame.

Just some examples.

-> They refer to the club "Derry City" as "Londonderry City". That isn't its name.

-> In discussion of an article involving a poor lad getting beaten up in Derry for wearing a NI shirt their collective response to the article is complaining that the media didn't report this enough but report Loyalist led violence a lot. Strangely I didn't see any discussion of loyalist violence in 3 years worth of threads.

-> In a thread advertising an RTE program on football the spend its duration ranting about how RTE supposedly is the broadcaster for the "free state" but continuously ignores the 6 counties. On the 5th and last page one guy asks "so did anyone watch it?", to which there was no reply.

-> Language is seemingly a big thing, in a lengthy and non-political thread about the recent world cup bid a nationalist slips a reference to Ireland and NI as "both Irish countries" to which the thread was derailed with much disapprovement and political rebuttal to his utterance. The guy defended it as his beliefs, he was seemingly banned.

-> The forum claims to welcome NI fans of any background yet it one of its forum categories for Scottish/English football is entitled "the mainland".

-> Their description for the "other sport" forum is "Rugby, Cricket even GAA!". Why "even" GAA?

-> They describe NI born players who play for the republic as "defecting". I guess the GFA never happened.

-> On Darron Gibson closing his twitter account 2 hours after creating it, one of them admits to being responsible for deluging him with abuse. He is promptly congratulated by the rest of them.


Sorry if I'm not explaining it well but for a sporting website the serious cynical and political tone was a real eye opener for me. They really do appear to attempt to see everything in a nationalist/loyalist light and everything, absolutely everything is about scoring points against one another with a real with/against attitude.
I thought we'd moved past this kind of thing.

[Undercover FBI Agent]

Meh

Tossers all over the world unfortunatly

[TouchingVirus]

When you see Stormfront you'll shít yourself

[Lumbo]

I was in Belfast at the weekend. Nice little city. Walked past the South Belfast Northern Ireland Supporters club at one stage. Decided it wasn't the best place to nip into for a quick pint.

[IzzyWizzy]

I can't believe anyone in Ireland is naive enough to think there AREN'T a lot of Northern Irish people like this. Narrow mindedness and bigotry are far from uncommon. I was forever meeting friends of friends with views and attitudes like that.

[admiralofthefleet]

was it anything to do with that bigot willy frazer?

[omgitsthelazor]

Oh they also have a thread about bars which are blacklisted. Their reasoning for blacklisting includes "a bouncer asked me to take off my NI scarf".
They were let in and everything, just not allowed display something that could have offended people. Why is that unreasonable or reason to tell a forum that the place is "scum" and nobody should ever go there?

[Latchy]

Smallminded , insular ,island mentality was always one of the worst attributes to the Norn Irish .Sad to think that it took the events of 9/11 to blow that part of Irelands woes away from the front pages to .

[omgitsthelazor]

Originally Posted by IzzyWizzy

I can't believe anyone in Ireland is naive enough to think there AREN'T a lot of Northern Irish people like this. Narrow mindedness and bigotry are far from uncommon. I was forever meeting friends of friends with views and attitudes like that.

I was of the impression things weren't as bad as they once were, certainly here I see and hear a lot less bigotry towards protestants nowadays than when I was growing up. I assumed there was similar progression up there

[golden lane]

please don't think that the majority of ni people are like that......they are just people trying to make their way in this life....

[Kidchameleon]

Man if we win the Euro's that site would be troll heaven for me...

[Ghandee]

OP doesn't understand the sit-you-ation up there


Seriously though,v there are good and bad on both sides.

Let them at it.

[krudler]

they're an odd bunch up there.

[wellboytoo]

I see the Lazor is still hopping balls....... carefull now lads!

[Doc Ruby]

Originally Posted by golden lane

please don't think that the majority of ni people are like that......they are just people trying to make their way in this life....

I think its fairly safe to draw a distinction between the "ulster scots" and the Republican camp up there. Of course the whole shambles was set in motion, typically enough, by the english, so credit where credit is due. The likes of Ian Paisley fanning the flames of intolerance and hatred for decades have left their mark on what could have otherwise been quite a nice place.

Whats the URL of this forum by the way?