To those of you who are unaware of recent events and slightly confused by the title of this post, there was an incident between myself and West Ham Fan TV the other night and I’m taking this opportunity to attempt to clear the air with them.
It wasn’t intentional and believe me, I wish it had never happened. But it did, and this is my attempt at trying to clear the air with them after watching/listening to their comments on their Post Match Pint show, which I’ll post at the end of this article…
I was at the Football Blogging Awards at Old Trafford on Thursday night because the company I work for were one of the official event partners. West Ham World was not nominated for an award, but I was there representing both this site and another football site, of which I am editor-in-chief.
I had spent the evening chatting with a number of bloggers/podcasters/vloggers/fan channels, all of which were cracking people. I had intended to make my way over to West Ham Fan TV’s table to introduce myself and get to know them a little more, perhaps suggest we find a way we could work together. The awards evening was also a very good networking event, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity.
Unfortunately I didn’t make way round to their table during the evening, but I did end up amongst them as we were leaving Old Trafford.
A few of them were chanting ‘Irons, Irons!’ as we approached the escalators, so I joined in. One of their crowd, who was in front of me, turned and asked me who I was with. I explained I was with West Ham World, to which his reply was along the lines of: “Yeah, whatever, you’re Spurs!”
Obviously I’m not, so I protested. I then shook his hand and said: “No, on a serious note, I’m West Ham and I’m with West Ham World, it’s nice to meet you.” He still shrugged me off, didn’t look interested in speaking with me, which I found incredibly rude.
Of course lots of beers had been had and the awards had finished, but I felt as if the response I got from one of them was un-called for and quite frankly rude. I don’t know who the guy was, I don’t know his name, but I had recognised him and assumed he was a member of the West Ham Fan TV team. It turns out that he wasn’t and he was in fact a friend of theirs.
It didn’t realise this until I’d made the decision to tweet about how rude he was. After a few beers you lose some sense of reason and judgement, so at the time I thought it was the right thing to do. Having watched WHFTV’s videos on the past, I was of the belief that they were a nice, friendly and approachable bunch of lads, so I was pretty confused as to why the guy had spoken me in the way that he did.
What happened after was unexpected. Each of the WHFTV guys started tweeting me from their personal accounts, asking me who it was who was rude and mostly claiming that it wasn’t them. The wording of my tweet made it seem as though each and every one of them was rude to me, which is not true. It was just one guy who, for whatever reason, seemed as though he had no interest in speaking to me.
One or two of them had sent me some pretty abusive messages, but my intention was to come and find them in the bar they were in to explain what had happened and try sort it out. However, I was with work and could not find an opportunity to do so – I simply couldn’t leave the night I was having with my colleagues.
The abusive tweets continued, a few of which were quite threatening. I get that what had been said had upset them, but at the time I felt equally upset to have been brushed off by a fellow Hammer when introducing myself.
I realise I should not have made my concerns public, particularly to a Twitter following of over 15.5k followers, but I did and I have apologised for doing so.
The following day, I woke up to a handful of tweets and a few messages from the WHFTV guys. I’d like to say that most of them were pretty reasonable and were happy to let it be water under the bridge, but I then received a messaged from the WHFTV official account sending me a picture of myself, taken from my personal Twitter account, asking whether it was me or not.
I found this incredibly intimidating and proceeded to tell him that I would not stand for my picture or any derogatory comments made about me on any of their shows – I had apologised to them and deleted the tweet, albeit 24 hours after it had initially been sent.
I then asked for an apology in return for the abusive messages I had received – I was told there would be no apology because I was making the whole thing up.
But why would I make this up? I enjoy the work the WHFTV team do and have watched several of their videos in the past. I was looking forward to meeting them on the night. I particularly enjoy their Post Match Pint shows – there is absolutely no reason why I would go out of my way to accuse a fellow West Ham account for being rude to me if I didn’t feel it was justified.
On their show below, I am accused of being attention seeking, thinking I’m far more important than anyone else and generally not a nice person. These claims cannot be further from the truth.
I am not in any of this for myself, nor am I attention seeking. I have collaborated with a number of other West Ham blogs and YouTube accounts in the past, including the likes of exWHUEmployee and Hammers Chat, and I run this site for the exact same reason they run their sites, Twitter accounts and You Tube platforms – because we love the club and we love providing fans with great content.
I have been running this site for four-and-a-half years now and I’ve enjoyed a good working relationship with several accounts and have built up a very loyal readership, not to mention a fantastic team of writers.
I’m also accused for trying to tread on their toes, which is also far from the truth. I support the work WHFTV do and, as explained above, enjoy their work. They provide great, fan driven and engaging video content to a very passionate and engaged audience of fans. I want to see them succeed and grow bigger.
As someone who only provides editorial content to my readership, trying to tread on the toes of a video account is of no interest to me whatsoever, particularly a West Ham video account.
So to finish this all up, I regret the events on Thursday night but I do stand by the fact someone was rude to me. He may not be a member of the WHFTV team but he was with them on the night, which is where I must’ve got my wires crossed. I should not have tweeted publicly, for which I have also apologised, but it was a spur of the moment decision, my judgment clouded by copious amounts of beer and red wine.
I do hope we can now put these unfortunate events behind us and both continue to provide fantastic content on our respective platforms. I regret what has happened and hope we can move on.
I wish the lads at WHFTV all the best and hope that one day we can meet, shake hands and potentially have a beer together in the future.
Irons.
