THESIS:
The rise in Formula 1 popularity has led to a growing issue of toxic fan culture on social media platforms like Twitter. It can lead to misinformation spreading, pressure on official accounts, pervasive awareness in the F1 community, and unhealthy obsessions with drivers and teams.
Keywords: Formula 1, “#f1twt,” toxic fan culture, social media, Twitter (X) platform, pervasive awareness, unhealthy obsessions, F1 community, barbaric fandom, misinformation, fan pressure, monitoring F1 drivers, invasion of privacy.
Abstract: Twitter has benefited the Formula 1 community but also created a toxic fan culture and caused pervasive awareness. This motorsport community is a third place where it is known for its passion and dedication. Recently, with the significant rise in Formula 1 popularity, “#f1twt” became popular on Twitter. Unfortunately, it has a lot of negative aspects, as there is a large number of barbaric fans who spread negativity and behave disrespectfully online and in person when they attend races or meet the drivers.
Some fans misuse technology and social media platforms to invade their favourite drivers’ privacy. They are not afraid to spread misinformation about them due to their unlimited access to information online. They would also go to the extreme to find and leak confidential information where the official accounts of the drivers and teams have to make announcements to confirm or deny the allegations.
INTRODUCTION:
While Twitter has benefitted the Formula 1 community since its popularity, it also causes pervasive awareness, leading to a toxic fan culture. There is pervasive awareness in the sports community, which acts as a third place. As a result, monitoring or acting as surveillance has become easy, and there is a rise of barbaric fans in the F1 community and how they choose to express themselves online. Even if the F1 community does not reflect pervasive awareness, a good chunk of fans are considered barbaric. They have the qualities of pervasive awareness in the way they present themselves in an online community. The F1 world is a captivating blend of abundant passion and adrenaline. F1 fans are known for their dedication and support for their favourite drivers and teams. Unfortunately, behind this thrilling and cheerful sport, some negative aspects of the F1 community will be explored. Even in a virtual world, negativity and disrespectful behaviours can spread rapidly. One of the main concerns is the spread of false information; the pressure on official Formula 1 accounts to deliver exclusive announcements tends to create a tense atmosphere and can have negative repercussions. Extreme fans may develop an unhealthy fixation on a particular driver or team and exhibit obsessive behaviours, ranging from belittling other drivers to personal attacks.
THE FORMULA ONE COMMUNITY, AS A THIRD PLACE:
The third place in this article is the Formula 1 Community, which engages on the microblogging platform X, formerly Twitter. A network is a social structure of people gathering as they share a common interest in sports to form a fan community. In this community, it is most likely that they will form weak connections with the mass community compared to a few other families, where they will develop a closer bond (Mastromartino, 2022). Since the rise of virtual communities, face-to-face communications have decreased significantly. Modern technology connects people in the virtual world more and makes them feel “a sense of belonging” by distancing themselves from those around them. The communities in the physical world can overlap with those in the virtual world. However, the virtual community (e.g., Formula 1 Community) can rarely overlap with the physical world. Even if online platforms and social media have positively shaped social interactions, community building, and social networks, there is a downside.
For example, in the F1 community, the “og” members (who have been fans for a long time) tend to be mean towards the new fans and females in the motorsport world. Each person has one social network and is part of many communities, which gives them a sense of belonging to people with shared interests. Communities can vary in origin and culture and be formed based on individual personalities and interests. Virtual communities, on the other hand, are loose, thin, and not strong, as people may not know each other well despite shared interests. As Taylor Dotson mentions in the article “Technically Together” (2017), social media on mobile phones is a technological device used for socialising. It enables an alternative, thick community with distinct and unique personalities online. For example, Twitter uses hashtags, and people with the same interests will see the very same tweet and can communicate. This community is formed by people interested in particular topics who want to build an environment that reflects their personalities. Virtual communities on Twitter express many forms of belonging in an imagined community. The imagined community is the third place for new techniques to engage with people and establish new interactions in which people may help one another even if they don’t know each other.
BARBARIC FAN BEHAVIOUR: Acting as a Surveillance
With online communities, spreading awareness about monitoring someone’s life has become easy. However, the term “surveillance” highlights that the users intentionally planned to share this information in the digital world. People are used to constantly accessing data at any time, like digital technology, which provides pervasive awareness (Hampton, 2016). A part of a strategy to deal with an issue with the public on social media platforms is pervasive awareness. The problem is how challenging it is to transmit messages from person to person across networks. Even if it is easy to link this approach with surveillance, it is similar to the communities in the past, where they would be watched in a casual setting. The characteristics of pervasive awareness are both “sousveillance” and “surveillance,” meaning that the users are being watched as much as they are watching others online. Hence, it goes back to the traditional way of being watched in a social circle, where “surveillance” was introduced. Another characteristic of pervasive awareness is the production of collective knowledge, where other people’s information is considered necessary for the audience to know (Hampton, 2016).
The fans act like they have the right to see every detail of the drivers. For example, on Twitter, when a fan spots a driver and takes a picture with him, they will post about it online, and most of their pictures will go viral because the other fans want to know where the drivers are at any moment of the day. Also, one of the most common searches on Twitter is “Driver name + recent” or “#DriverName,” where the F1 fan would constantly like to keep up with their favourite driver. Another observation is that they invade the drivers’ privacy; recently, they leaked a picture on Twitter that someone had taken of an F1 driver in the bathroom. Also, the partners of the Formula 1 drivers, also known as “wags” in F1 terms, have been victims of their private data being exposed to the public. On Twitter, some users collect data and even post “threads” about private details of the Wags’ lives that they do not want the public to know, such as their past relationships, friends, childhood, and family pictures.
Barbaric Fan Behaviour: Spread of Misinformation, Fan Pressure, and Invasion of Privacy
The barbaric F1 fans on Twitter made the community toxic and hateful since they have unlimited access online. People are used to constantly accessing data anytime, like digital technology, which provides pervasive awareness. New communication technologies allow people on social media to connect and interact with people anywhere. The growth of social media has resulted in always being in contact with people and having broad knowledge about anything (Hampton, 2016). Hence, the toxic fans would spread misinformation on Twitter and pressure the official accounts to make announcements to confirm leaked information or to end rumours. An example of this issue was on February 1, 2024, when some of the fans leaked a document that stated that a driver would leave his team for another one the following year. During the day, more concrete proofs of images and videos were circulating on Twitter to confirm this rumour. The fans were putting so much pressure on the official pages on social media, such as F1 and the concerned team and drivers, to announce that the rumour was accurate and the leaked documents were proven true. Hence, this is one of the recent examples where the fans have pressured them to release official statements.
There is also another F1 term called “silly season,” which usually happens during summer or winter breaks, and the fans would share their best theories and “proof” of why a particular driver would change teams and go to a specific one. They will try their best to collect “proofs”; later, it will be confirmed true. When the fans do that, they will sometimes bombard the drivers’ social media to the point where they have to reveal their plans. Barbaric fan culture acts like an intrusive paparazzi, displaying unhealthy fixations on drivers. These F1 fans do not love the teams and drivers, as they are obsessed with them in a harmful way. For example, some fans entered a hotel lobby last year and wanted to go to the driver’s room. The driver was pressured to make an official announcement and talk about how some of the fans tried to come to his hotel room and that we should respect his privacy. Also, these fans will make fun of the drivers and discourage those they do not support. The consequences of these behaviours on the overall F1 community are not okay, and intervention is needed to foster a more positive and respectful environment. It would be valuable to highlight the importance of promoting a healthy fan culture, emphasising respectful engagement, and creating spaces where fans can express their passion for the sport without toxicity.
FANS SELF-PRESENTATION AND ONLINE INTERACTION:
When using social media, the users choose how they want to appear in front of others and what information they want to share online. Keith N. Hampton (2016) said there is a general belief that new communication technologies significantly impact how people communicate with their close ones and strangers. Pervasive awareness leads to short, unplanned text or photo exchanges on platforms such as blogs, microblogging (like Twitter), and other social media sites. Social media platforms allow users to convey their connection with other users, share any information they want about themselves or others, and interact online with other users. It is also possible when people are connected online to communicate for a long time. It also results in constant communication between users virtually and low social interactions in person. In a media-driven world with various online communication modes, many people like to curate an image for themselves to maintain an acceptable identity for multiple audiences. For people to maintain a connection online, there is a tendency towards balance, where the users express their bond with others online. Sharing information online may promote openness when people express themselves and collaborate. However, it may also decrease the diversity of freshly developed information. Self-censorship is crucial these days to control information online and avoid sharing content with audiences who are not appealing (Hampton, 2016). When interacting with people, it is the perception that they fabricated and curated the profile they are interacting with. From observation, the most popular aspects of Twitter’s online identity are authenticity and pseudonymity.
Since they communicate online and can be anonymous, people can say whatever they want without facing the consequences. Hence, it will enable them to keep being mean and bully others, resulting in a toxic community. For example, a boy was a fan of one of the drivers last year. He was always spotted with his favourite driver, but the other fans got jealous of him and bullied him. He then had to make his account private, and to this day, he has not shared another photo with his favourite driver online. Even if anonymity is present where they hide their real identity and are here to observe, the most common ones are accounts that seem genuine and “fan accounts.”. Fan accounts are usually finstas, aka fake accounts, where only the close friends of a person know that this account belongs to them. They usually add the words “F1, Ferrari…” or their favourite drivers’ numbers (e.g., 16, 55, 4…) in their usernames.
CONCLUSION
Hence, in the sports community, there is pervasive awareness, which acts as a third place where surveillance is quickly done, barbaric fans have increased, and they have different ways of expressing themselves online. The rise in Formula 1 popularity has led to a growing issue of toxic fan culture on social media platforms like Twitter. Pervasive awareness can lead to misinformation spreading, pressure on official accounts, and unhealthy obsessions with drivers and teams. It is crucial to foster a positive and inclusive environment for all fans, address these challenges, and promote a positive atmosphere. It is vital to talk about the negative aspects while also recognising that most Formula 1 fans are supportive and passionate in a positive way. The supporting arguments and ideas highlighted the harmful effects of the toxic fan culture above. However, this behaviour does not represent the entire Formula 1 community, as many fans are supportive and would always avoid all of the toxic discussions online and instead focus on the positives rather than belittle fans, drivers, and teams. Formula 1 fans will keep increasing now and in the future, mainly because of its Netflix series “Drive to Survive” and because of the social media platforms where the admins keep up with the latest trends and keep improving the quality of their content.
REFERENCES
Dotson, T. (2017). Technically Together. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262036382.001.0001
Hampton, K. (2016). Persistent and Pervasive Community: New Communication Technologies and the Future of Community. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(1), 101–124. https://www.mysocialnetwork.net/downloads/offprint/PersistentandPervasive_Hampton.pdf
Mastromartino, B. (2022, October 11). Instant Fan Community: Utilizing Social Network Theory to Understand Sport Fan Community Building. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364310462_Instant_Fan_Community_Utilizing_Social_Network_Theory_to_Understand_Sport_Fan_Community_Building_International_Journal_of_Sport_Management
FEATURED IMAGE REFERENCE
Kew, M. (2024, January 28). Big changes to F1 teams’ form in 2024 would be a “surprise” – Aston Martin. Autosport.com; Autosport. https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/big-changes-to-f1-teams-form-in-2024-would-be-a-surprise-aston-martin/10569368/
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