Nowhere has the incipient madness of the Sevco support been clearer than on social media since the weekend. Celtic announcing a top class managerial appointment and Hibs defeating their NewCo in the cup were two shocks to the system they didn’t expect.
Their reaction has been hysterical, and occasionally that has bubbled over to become something hilarious, if not a little bit disconcerting, like antagonising an animal at the zoo where you laugh at its antics only because you’re behind the glass or the bars of the cage.
This is like that. You know these people are crazy, so you laugh at them. But you wouldn’t want to sit next to them on the bus.
This was originally intended to be quite a humourous piece, but events have overtaken it.
Today The Daily Record published a report from its journalist Jane Hamilton. She spoke to several police officers who said they were prevented from getting into Hampden to quell the on-field trouble by a “baying mob” of Sevco fans outside. She’s taken abuse for that, as you can imagine, but some of it is of the direst, most vicious kind I’ve ever seen on social media.
I mean that, so whilst I want to discuss other things I’m not feeling quite so cheery any longer.
The two things that I want to write about are, in their way, quite funny though.
The first is the petition to have Nicola Sturgeon resign as MSP for Govan.
I don’t know whether it’s dawned on them or not, but that would precipitate something of a crisis in Scottish politics; a few thousand goons deciding, over the heads of the electorate, who gets to lead the country because, of course, if she’s removed from that role she’s done, she’s gone, she can’t very well be First Minister.
That stuff’s not supposed to be decided by a petition!
And of course, it won’t be.
Because even if they got a million signatures on it, there’s a general feeling you get from reading those already there, amongst the 2266 which it’s garnered up until this morning, that many of them aren’t taking it terribly seriously.
In fact, when one guy talks about wanting to be there when it’s handed in, so he can demonstrate how ridiculous the whole thing is, one sees visions of a small group of serious minded men with blank expressions and the firm stare of those with few IQ points, surrounded by people in clown costumes and Celtic tops with “We’re No’ Wae Them” signs, just attending for the noise up.
Most of the signatories are openly mocking it, which is the only rational response.
There are a few familiar names in there, of people I know, who just couldn’t resist having a dig.
Mark Warburton features prominently, sometimes suggesting that his transfer budget was decimated by her failure to demand Hibs were kicked out of Europe, sometimes to say he thought she was doing a fine job and that the other signatories were a bunch of muppets.
It was ever thus for Sevconites.
Back when they were Rangers fans they often found their online projects hijacked by the green half of Glasgow. Their initial fund raising campaign in the aftermath of going into administration was characterised by the number of Celtic supporters who signed under funny fake names, pledging fabulous sums.
So it seems to be here.
All this because she chose to congratulate Hibs. Wow.
Their sense of entitlement has never been more corrosive.
Their self-pity, which is morphing into hate for everyone else, is like a toxic fume wafting out of Ibrox.
It’s not hard to imagine their reaction to the revelations, this morning, that the trouble inside the ground could have been a lot less but for the mayhem their fans were causing outside it, in indiscriminately attacking the police.
The journalist who wrote that story has been the target of some of the most vicious, hateful and virulent nonsense you could imagine.
To be fair to her, she handled it brilliantly, arguing the toss, making them look wholly ridiculous.
In the end though, she’s come off Twitter because of it, because her entire life was being sifted through and doubtless still is.
On some of their sites, the hatred of her goes beyond anything I’ve ever seen.
There are open calls for violence against her.
You have to see it to believe it, and I can only hope that stuff such as that is being investigated by the police.
If it is, I hope there are arrests.
There is undoubtedly worse, much worse, on those forums who’s comments aren’t publicly accessible.
Doubtless, however, their “fans” have a plan for such police action.
Vanguard Bears gave me my other big belly laugh of the week with the story that they are raising money for any Sevco fans who are arrested in the aftermath of the game. There’s no hint that, as with the boys raising money for the full page ads in national newspapers over on CQN, that any overage will go to charity or anything, and the funds they were looking for keep getting revised up and up, which convinces me that they are either planning on a large number of arrests, or they’re going on a big stag do somewhere.
The club has helped stoke this lunacy.
They’ve given it all the encouragement it needed with that inflammatory statement at the weekend, but amidst the mayhem I do find the humour in the most bitter element of their support appealing for help for their poor, put-upon brethren whose violent actions might result in arrest.
I half expect to turn the telly on at some point next week and instead of an Adopt A Jaguar campaign STV will be showing stirring footage of a wee ten year old ned in his 32 Red top giving the finger to the camera and swigging on his Buckfast.
“Do you know there are young defenders of the faith living in appalling poverty right now?” the voiceover will say. “His dad is doing time for chiselling the gas meter and his mum is on the game but needs the cash to feed her drug habit. Donate just a few pounds and you can help … by sending him to Linfield for his first pre-season game …”
It’s the inevitable direction of travel, after all.
In all seriousness, though, this started out being a light-hearted sort of piece but the treatment Jane Hamilton is getting online snapped me out of that mood pretty quickly.
We know a lot of journalists have been threatened over the years, of course, but there’s an ugliness about this today that goes well beyond what I’ve seen before, as if the weekend has unleashed something that had previously been kept in check.
It’s a worrying development.