Those of you who know me, know that I'm a massive Arsenal fan. Having grown up in Highbury there's only one football team for me.
So as you can imagine i've always been very unhappy with a certain slanderous chant (which I wont dignify by repeating on here) aimed at Arsene Wenger which is sung by small pockets of Manchester United fans. There is always a media uproar when racist chants are levelled at black players but for years nothing (either from the FA or the Media) was being said condemning the chant against Mr Wenger.
The chant was given free reign. To the point where Amazon and Play.com sold it as downloadable MP3s and as part of albums.
However prior to the United away game this season a few arsenal related blogs such as Arseblog and Gunner Blog started making a bit of noise about it. Twitter, forums etc were also being used as a mechanism for Arsenal fans and Bloggers to get their voice heard about the subject. With all this noise being made the media finally picked up on it with The Mirror and Guardian.
Now I must reiterate that this was a subject that had been ignored for years and years but with the power of Social Media finally we were getting some sort of reaction. Frankly its quite unbelievable it happened for this long a time.
Amazon and Play.com weren't to be left alone. Play.com stopped selling the album almost as soon as it was receiving so much negative press on Twitter.
Amazon kept it up there citing that it was up the individual user to purchase the album, so long as people wanted to buy it, they'd stock it.
However Amazon is an interesting case as the product was being filled up of pages and pages of negative reviews. Arsenal supporters flocking to the site in mass numbers venting the feelings and frustrations on Amazon selling such a product.
Eventually Amazon took it down, however this was due to Arsenal taking a legal approach claiming the product was defamtory. You cant help but wonder how Amazon might have been pleased with Arsenal doing this. They couldnt make exceptions to the policy and Arsenal asking them to take it down ensured they wouldnt feel anymore rage from supporters of the club.
Overall a victory for supporters of Arsene Wenger. People needed to be told that what goes on at Old Trafford is horrible and it must be stopped.
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