Raleigh, NC - Soccer fan Victoria Albright found everything that she needed in the sport of soccer over the years including friends, passion, teamwork and a lifelong obsession. However, her turn into writing about the game that she loved skewed a bit dark as she found out how deep the idiocy is in the world of online banter, criticism and negativity that flows towards women who write about soccer.
JILL ELLIS -- JILL ELLIS -- JILL ELLIS
"Well, I knew it was bad. I mean it usually always is with the backhanded complements or the explaining of things that I've known about for nearly my entire life. However, I couldn't have predicted what would happen when I started writing about women's soccer, specifically the United States women's national team."
Albright started covering the team for a personal website project on the Women's World Cup and found that what she thought would be a respite from misogynist comments ended up being a vitriolic hellhole of personal attacks because of her opinion on United States National Team players.
"My god, the response to me writing about Chris Wondolowski was nothing compared the hate I received when I wrote about Alex Morgan, Sydney Leroux and Christen Press. I was flooded with Morgan and Leroux fans who, at best, called me un-american, hateful, unattractive and an idiot. Of course many of these missives were written in emoticon format and the vast majority were from accounts that seemed to be set up in a bizarre stalking ring of United States players; but I never knew that the obsession with our players was this bad."
Albright continued, "I mean it is positively scary sometimes at the level of devotion that these women and men have towards the team. You compare things about ex-players like Briana Scurry and Mia Hamm versus the current team and you are the devil. You say a critical thing about Abby Wambach and you are the devil. You say a critical thing about Alex Morgan and you might as well up the bandwidth on your site because people are coming for you. Cult of personality doesn't even begin to touch the obsession."
Albright stated that while this side of United States Women's soccer has been bad that it only pushes her to continue writing about the team as a whole. However she did say that she had one piece of social media in which she wasn't interested, "Tumblr, fuck that shit. It's scary."