Letters: 06/02/15

We don’t get many letters generally, but our recent feature on the rise of iPads at live sporting events seemed to touch a nerve, so we thought we’d open up the page once again. 

Please do remember to write to us. It doesn’t have to be about our features. It doesn’t have to be about football. We get lonely here in this tiny office, drawing pictures on the walls of the kind of friends we’d like to have. You complete us. 

 

YOU’RE WRONG ABOUT THE IPADS!

Do you know what really ‘boils my piss’ about ‘modern football’? It’s self-important ‘real fans’ who constantly bemoan what they see as the real evils of modern football, the sexless Victor Meldrews who whinge about half ‘n’ half scarves, players wearing gloves or, as seen in the Set Pieces recently, using iPads and smartphones at football matches.

These self-appointed defenders of all that is good and proper in the game of football are eager to judge, in between never-ending games of Football Manager and wanking over pointless made-up phrases like ‘false-9’, anyone who doesn’t live up to their view of what a football fan should be.

So, as for taking iPads into football stadia, so bloody what? If that’s what you want to do, if it helps you enjoy the experience even more, then good for you. It’s no-one’s business. Same goes for using a selfie-stick (a great bloody invention, actually), or spending the whole game texting or doing a particularly hard crossword instead of watching a dramatic penalty shoot-out. That’s up to you. And, if it irks the ‘football purists’ sitting behind you, even better. Indeed, I’m planning to take an iPad, iPhone, selfie-stick and half ‘n’ scarf to the next game I go to. I might even smuggle in a feckin’ vuvuezela. So shove that up your ‘zonal defence’.

Alan Duffy (@Bunny_Carr)

 

YOU’RE RIGHT ABOUT THOSE IPADS. AND SO AM I!

I couldn’t agree more with your iPads feature. I wrote a blog on the same subject recently and said things like, “That great footage you just have to record invariably ends up being shaky and out of focus, nothing more than a kaleidoscope of unrecognisable bright colours, with sound quality worse than the antiquated PA system at a non-league football ground.”

Jon Kershaw (@1jonkershaw)

 

YOU’RE RIGHT ABOUT THOSE IPADS. AND YOUR WEB DESIGNER IS A LEGEND.

This is what the Premier League is becoming. Soon the only people who will be able to afford to go will be those who don’t want to be there. On a more positive note, I’m on holiday using my phone on crappy wifi and The Set Pieces was by far the quickest site to load, so kudos to whoever built it. Top job.

Ben Parker (@parkji)

 

YOU’RE WRONG. BUT NOT ABOUT THOSE IPADS. THOSE PULL QUOTES!

I enjoy your site and the philosophy behind it, and there’s already some great content on it, but there is one thing that is starting to drive me nuts: the quoted sections in the articles.

To channel Mr Macintosh, it’s really distracting. I like to immerse myself in an article, to descend into a zen-like state of reading. When the article is broken up with a font sizing change it is a distraction that changes my focus, much as a phone lighting up in a cinema does.
It also detaches those words from the main narrative of the article, presenting them outside the flow as if they were a pop-up information box or other added detail. By stressing these words you effectively de-emphasise the others, not to mention that conventional usage is for quoted blocks to be an excerpt from the article rather than main body content, and so ignorable if you’re reading the whole thing
I appreciate that each site has to develop their own style, and it may be that I’m the only one that feels this way, but I find that it reduces my enjoyment of the site so felt it was worth feeding back to you.
Ian Childs
ED’S NOTE: HOW DO *YOU* FEEL ABOUT PULL QUOTES? ARE THEY ANY GOOD OR ARE WE DOING IT WRONG? LET US KNOW. 

 

 

 

Letters: 06/02/15
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