England’s loss to Croatia, as told by fans’ use of the f-bomb online
Analyst Guy Peters’ findings give a novel take on the World Cup defeat.
A social media data expert has produced a novel way of reflecting upon England’s defeat to Croatia in the semi-final of the World Cup – by tracking uses of the f-bomb.
Guy Peters, who works for The Honey Partnership in London, analysed over 40,000 comments from a thread on Reddit dedicated to the match and plotted the use of the word “f***” over time on a graph.
“The most interesting thing here is you can follow what’s happening in a game so clearly and notice what the key moments are just by picking up on one word,” Guy told the Press Association.
Other spikes annotated include “general moaning about the referee”, “general whining and pleading” prior to the final whistle and “post match hatred”, which Guy said add a more “comedic story” to the data.
“If you scroll through the data you can see that actually a lot of these peaks aren’t because England fans are saying “oh for f*** sake” but it’s fans from other countries saying ‘f*** you England’.”
“Considering that almost 4% of all comments contained just the word f***, doesn’t take into account those that contained other swear words.
“Looking at the word ‘f***’ showcases that animalistic side to football, the aggression between countries and the ferocity of national pride.”
