Imaginary Feuds

Never has it been so easy to indulge in celebrity feuds.  I don't necessarily mean the sort enabled by social media, where you can Tweet abuse at a celebrity until they, (or more likely their management team that actually runs their Twitter account), finally get so bored with you that they block you.  Although they are symptomatic of the sort of pseudo-feuds I'm thinking about. Because the whole point of the non-celebrity/celebrity social media feud is all about the illusion of empowerment.  By hurling abuse on what appears to be a level playing field, it enables someone who is, in essence, a nobody, to feel that they are as important as the celebrity they are shouting insults at.  Except that it isn't a level playing field.  The celebrity has far more followers, a legal team and much more 'clout' with the service provider.  So once you've been blocked, suspended or banned, then you are back to being a nobody. If you are really unlucky, you might just find yourself on the end of a defamation action and facing financial ruin.  But hey, you'll have had your fleeting five minutes of fun - which will be quickly forgotten about by everyone else.

The sort celebrity 'feuds' I'm thinking about, though, are those one-sided affairs where a celebrity of, let's say, lower magnitude, very publicly berates a celebrity of higher magnitude, in the hope of generating some attention for themselves.  Attention that will, they hope, help boost their own celebrity magnitude. Of course, their subject doesn't respond or acknowledge them in any way - they probably aren't even aware of this 'feud'.  But, if you have the right contacts, you can get it picked up by the media and it can play well, for a while.  The obvious current example is Piers Morgan's 'feud' with Meghan Markle - whereby he keeps making very public statements about her, warning her, for instance, that while she 'might have won this round, it isn't over yet'.  Except that she hasn't won anything, or even engaged in any discussion, let alone argument, with him.  He is currently unemployed due to the fact that he chose to walk out of his TV presenting gig, live on air, when challenged by a colleague as to his attacks on Markle.  I doubt very much that his 'opponent' is even aware of Morgan's existence, let alone this 'feud'.  But it keeps him in the papers and the public eye while he is, at least for now, deprived of his usual media platform.

So, I was thinking, maybe I should get in on this racket.  Generate some completely undeserved attention for my completely insignificant and unnoticed web empire by starting a non-existent feud with somebody famous that I don't like, but don't know and who has definitely never heard of me.  How about thug, sorry player, turned football pundit Roy Keane?  I mean, I can't stand the prick - he's still stuck in the glory days of Manchester United when Alex Ferguson was at the helm.  Every other club or current player is shit in comparison to that 'golden' era.  At least, that's what I take way from his bullying punditry.  So Roy, you Irish prick, if you hate us English so much (something else that seems apparent from his 'punditry'), why don't you fuck off back to Ireland and blight their football TV coverage instead?  Yeah, that's right, I called you a prick - so what?  If you think you are hard enough, come round and have a go!  There, that's a good start - I can guarantee that he'll never know I said any of this, but it doesn't matter as I've started an honest-to-goodness one-sided feud with a celebrity!  Fame and fortune must be just around the corner!