Digital Media - Is it killing special Celtic goals?

The year is 2005 B.Y (Before Youtube) and you need to find a goal you have remembered fondly for a while. What do you do? In fact, this is a genuine question, what did you do? Make sure you didn’t throw out every VHS and DVD season compilation you had bought, or pray that your da taped Scotsport ? At a push, Kazaa or Bearshare might have had it, in amongst a bundle of malware and viruses that sent every website you visited to your family.

Step forward Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. VL’s they may have been but they would go onto become extremely wealthy ones when they created, and eventually sold, streaming site Youtube, which you may be vaguely aware of.

During the 2006 world cup, this website would change everything. No longer would we be forced to watch tedious news in the hope we would get the goals at the end in a lazy two-minute segment, having to wait until the highlights came out a few days later, we could search it all there and then, in real time, and we could watch that specific goal, rammy, or manager meltdown as much as we wanted, when we wanted!

At the risk of patronising anyone reading this, I won’t go on any more about Youtube, we’re aware of what it is and what it does and at no point did I ever feel it would end up being a bad thing.

However, in my view, with Youtube now having the ability to be embedded into social media platforms, I do think it has become a problem recently, and my own personal experiences of fantastic Celtic goals over the years has been somewhat diluted due to the constant exposure they have had on the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

If you had said to me in August 2000 after the 6-2 game that at some point I was going to roll my eyes and groan occasionally at seeing Henrik nutmegging Bert Konterman and chipping Stefan Klos, I’d have stuck the nut on you and demanded that you apologise to me immediately. Seventeen years later, I’m now starting to sigh at the sight of that goal. It isn’t Henrik’s fault of course, however it’s the oversaturation of it that has caused me to question digital media to an extent. It’s not some full-fledged war against it, it’s simply a small concern.

On Twitter, you have the dedicated ‘on this day’ accounts which have pros and cons.

Pros: You realise that on a special day, like your birthday or the day you had your first fight in school, Celtic won a very important game and it becomes something more to add to that experience in your life. For myself, the biggest moment was on my 18^th birthday in 2003 when Celtic beat Liverpool in the UEFA Cup at Anfield. I know better than anyone how brilliant that feeling was when John Hartson smashed the ball past Dudek to put us 2-0 up on the night, the problem is, and here’s the cons of these accounts, I’ve honestly seen it over fifty times this year already, without searching for it, and one greying hair at a time, the sight of him running away into our fans behind the goal is losing its touch for me. Secondly, that was fourteen years ago, this year. Next year, what will we see? The same goal, only adding that it is fifteen years ago, I don’t know about you, but it terrifies the life out of me, and I don’t want reminded how quickly the years go past from those glorious days when Tony ‘The Big Dog’ Blair was cheering us on in Seville! If I want to remind myself I’m getting older and turning into ‘yer da’, I’ll look at my baldier head and pathetic frame, I don’t need the reminder on a yearly basis!

Then there’s the patter. I remember in 2011 when Lawwell made that jibe at Jelavic. There must have only been one or two videos about it, but that was enough, and we could go back them repeatedly to smile at Billionaire Ped’s wee dig. Can you imagine that now? At least thirty videos, and then getting quoted, the Banter Lad accounts getting in on the act as well and ruthlessly shutting down any decent patter in the space of half an hour. Some going!

On the other hand, I know that there’s people who follow Celtic out with the UK, who can’t get live feeds to our games, and these goals accounts are extremely handy for them, and taking that sort of service away from fans overseas would be the actions of an abhorrently selfish individual.

'Oi Blog, who are you to talk you posted up that Man U-Celtic friendly video for numbers you clown' - man from internet.

Well remembered brother! Of course, even I use the embedding now and then, and for certain games etched into my memory I’ll post up a clip from a date that I can remember us winning a vital game, or scoring a memorable goal, but I’ll always screw the nut with it and do it sparingly. I’m already well aware that the occasional clip I’ve posted on the POD account has been shared to death and people are probably sick of seeing them, hence why I think the odd occasional one is alright, not constantly.

This isn’t a dig at how people ‘do’ social media by any means and if you disagree with this article, get in touch and you can respond to it with your own views and defend the overly streamed medium if you like. We’re more than happy for people to come on and have their say.

The digital media monster is here to stay and the Buzzfeedification era will never be abolished, and all I can do is try and ask; ‘Tone it down a wee bit lads eh’.