I have always been fascinated by human behaviour, probably because when you spend enough time looking at online behaviour, you quickly realise that the words people type are only the surface of a much bigger picture. With regard to negative posts, we often focus on the comment itself, the insult, the threat or the nasty message/image/meme/video, but behind every piece of online abuse there is a person making a choice. There is a reason they chose those words, that target and that particular moment, and perhaps one of the biggest lessons we can take from FBI profiling techniques is that behaviour often leaves clues.
Now before anyone thinks I am suggesting that every person who sends an abusive message online is some kind of criminal mastermind, that is absolutely not what I mean. Profiling is not about putting everyone into a box or pretending that we can understand a person’s entire personality from a few actions. What behavioural analysis may give us is a way of looking beyond the obvious and asking better questions. Why does someone repeatedly target a particular person? Why do some people stop after one angry outburst while others continue for weeks, months or even years? Why do some individuals simply disagree while others feel the need to humiliate, threaten or destroy? These are questions that may be relevant when we look at online abuse in sport.
One of the concepts used in criminal profiling is the difference between organised and disorganised offenders. These terms were developed through the study of serious criminal behaviour, but the thinking behind them can offer some interesting insights into the way online abuse develops. It is not about saying an abusive sports fan is the same as a serious criminal offender, because that would be completely wrong, but it is about understanding patterns of behaviour and recognising that not all harmful behaviour happens in the same way. The organised offender is someone who tends to show more planning and intention. They may think about their target, choose the right moment and understand how to create maximum impact. In the online world, this can be seen in people who repeatedly target a referee, athlete, coach or public figure. They may follow someone across multiple platforms, create new accounts after being blocked, collect information about their target or wait for a specific event that gives them an excuse to attack. A controversial decision, a missed kick, a poor performance or a disappointing result becomes the opportunity they were looking for; at that point, it may no longer be about the sport, but about that person themselves and their own allegiances.
One small example of how quickly online sporting discussions can move from debate into dismissal happened recently on a rugby profile where someone asked which French player the national team could least afford to lose. As you would expect, the comments quickly filled with names, including LBB who has clearly been outtsanding for us on the wing. I added Thomas Ramos because, for me, his influence and ability to deliver conversions from the sideline area as well as under pressure make him one of those players with ice steel nerves under pressure. A few people agreed with the comment and it picked up some likes, before someone replied simply with “rubbish, he’s bad under the high ball.” I could have jumped straight into defending Thom, but that would turned into the usual online argument where nobody listens to anyone else, so I chose not to retaliate because everyone is entitled to an opinion and rugby has always been built around people seeing the game differently. The following day, someone else replied underneath that negative comment with “Are you drunk? Look at the Six Nations,” which made me decide to answer that person rather than the original criticism. I replied “yes, if I’m not mistaken,” (knowing full well that I wasn’t), Thom was the same player who kicked the winning penalty against England in the 2024 Six Nations, a kick that won France the match and secured the Six Nations Championship, and he had once again taken a penalty in the dying moments to beat England earlier this year and win us another 6N championship. It was a perfect example of how online conversations can become strangely selective, where one perceived weakness is highlighted while the bigger picture of a player’s contribution, mentality and ability to perform when the pressure is at its highest is completely ignored. A player can be reduced to one criticism, one mistake or one perceived flaw, while the moments that define careers, the ones where someone has the composure to deliver when everything is on the line, are conveniently forgotten.
Then there is the disorganised offender, someone whose behaviour is more impulsive and driven by the emotion of the moment. Sport is full of intense reactions: fans become frustrated, angry and disappointed. People shout at the television, complain to their friends and debate decisions. That emotional connection is part of what makes sport so powerful, but the problem begins when that emotion crosses into personal abuse. There is a huge difference between saying a referee had a terrible game and deciding that referee deserves threats, harassment or attacks on their character. There is a difference between criticising a player’s performance and targeting their appearance, family or personal life. The emotion may explain the behaviour, but it does not excuse it.
Another area that I find particularly interesting from profiling is the idea of modus operandi and signature behaviour. The modus operandi is how someone carries out their behaviour, whereas the signature is what they are psychologically trying to achieve through that behaviour. Online, the method might include a fake account, comment, a direct message or joining a pile-on. But the more fundamental question is trying to identify what need that behaviour is satisfying. Are they trying to get attention? Are they trying to feel powerful? Are they trying to gain acceptance from a group? Are they enjoying the reaction they create? Are they trying to make someone else feel as powerless as they feel themselves? The repeated behaviour is often where the real information is found.
This is why I wonder if we sometimes could benefit from looking at patterns rather than individual comments; a single angry post after a frustrating match is very different from someone who spends hours searching for opportunities to attack the same person o team. Someone who reacts in the heat of the moment is different from someone who systematically targets and intimidates. I am no expert in the area of profiling, but perhaps the behaviour tells us the difference.
Profilers also look at escalation because harmful behaviour rarely appears fully formed overnight. In the digital world, there may be a progression where criticism becomes personal, personal comments become harassment and harassment can become threats. The earlier stages are often dismissed because people tell themselves that it is “just banter” or “just someone being passionate about sport”, but repeated patterns matter – this comes back to my repeated calls for people to raise an issue when they see it rather than just “let it go”…
The difficulty is that sport has always involved passion, rivalry and strong opinions. Nobody wants to remove emotion from sport because that emotion is part of what makes it special. The arguments, the debates and the disagreements are part of being a supporter; however, there is a line between passion and persecution, and social media has made it far too easy for some people to cross that line.
One of the biggest challenges I feel that we face is that online spaces can hide the person behind the behaviour. A username can make someone feel invisible and protected, even though their actions are still very real. The internet has not removed human psychology but it has created a distance between the person causing harm and the person experiencing it. It’s like being able to put superglue on the seat of a teacher you hate without being called to class detention because you went bright red when the incident was called out. This is particularly important when we look at victim selection. Criminal profilers also study and speak to offenders as to why certain people become targets, because the choice of victim can reveal a great deal about the offender. In sport, referees are an obvious example: they are visible, they make decisions in real time and they often have very little opportunity to respond. They become the easiest person to blame because they represent a decision that someone does not like. These days, referees has the support of the TMO and yet critics still have their own lens on a match with its own multiple camera angles, slow-motion replays and hours of analysis…
Another example close to my heart is targetting great players; and yes they have been targetted on the field just as they have been in countless online discussions I have seen and those will just be the ones in english or french!
Young athletes are another example; An Under 20 making a mistake in front of thousands of people can suddenly become the target of adults who have completely lost perspective. When an English U20 head butted an opposing player in the rugby World Cup this month, I saw several calls for him to be banned for life – somewhat harsh no? The question we should be asking is not just “why did this person say this?” but also “why did they choose this target?” Because maybe that could be where understanding begins? If we want to tackle online abuse in sport properly, perhaps we need to move away from simply reacting to individual incidents and start looking at behavioural patterns. We need to recognise the difference between a moment of frustration and a sustained campaign of harassment, we need to understand how groups amplify behaviour, how people become emboldened when others join in and how repeated small actions can create a much bigger problem. There are countless online accounts that manufacture outrage and post clickbait solely to boost engagement – we also need to ask ourselves whether we’ve become too accepting of accounts that exist purely to generate clicks, outrage and engagement. In the real world, we’d never applaud someone who deliberately caused disruption simply to attract a bigger audience. Why should we reward the digital equivalent?
The lessons from profiling are not about labelling people, pretending we can read minds or prevent a negative outcome, but about observation: recognising that behaviour leaves a trail and that people often reveal their intentions through what they repeatedly do because every comment, interaction and attack creates part of a behavioural footprint – the challenge is whether we are willing to look closely enough to understand if what those footprints are telling us can result in preventing harm. Maybe this is already being done and I’ve just not heard about it – I hope so because if we genuinely want safer online environments in sport, we cannot only focus on the abuse after it happens. We need to understand the people, the patterns and the behaviours that create it in the first place so we can talk about it in the open.
I’ll end on a slightly darker note: perhaps the uncomfortable question we need to start asking is whether bullying that drives someone to their death should be viewed differently simply because the weapon used was words rather than something physical?
In the real world, if someone’s deliberate actions directly contribute to another person’s death, the law has mechanisms to examine responsibility, intent and consequence. Yet when that same harm happens through a screen, through sustained harassment, humiliation, threats or campaigns of abuse, we often struggle to apply the same level of accountability. The internet itself is not the problem; it is a tool as I have rambled about before, but like any tool, it can be used to create or destroy. In the wrong hands, a platform designed to connect people can become a mechanism for psychological harm, and the question legislators must eventually answer is whether online abuse that knowingly and deliberately contributes to someone taking their own life should be treated with the seriousness of any other act that results in a fatal outcome. The challenge is not restricting free speech; it is recognising the point where harmful behaviour crosses the line from expression into deliberate destruction. Because if a person can use a digital space to systematically break another human being, we need to ask whether we are still looking at “just words or pictures”, or whether we are looking at something that needs much further discussion.
There is a difficult conversation I feel we need to start having when we talk about bullying, online abuse and the point at which harmful behaviour becomes something society can no longer dismiss as simply “words”. A comparison that often comes to mind is the way we already treat other things that have the potential to cause serious harm. Fentanyl is a good example because, in its legitimate medical form, it is not an illegal substance or something inherently without purpose. It is a powerful opioid used in controlled medical environments to manage severe pain and support medical procedures where strong pain relief is required. In the right circumstances, prescribed by professionals and administered responsibly, it serves a genuine and important purpose.
The problem comes when something powerful is removed from those safeguards and placed into the wrong hands. Illicitly manufactured fentanyl has become one of the most devastating examples of this, with criminal networks producing and distributing substances that are often mixed into other drugs or sold deceptively. Tragically, people, including young people, have died because they believed they were taking something else or because the substance they received contained a lethal level of fentanyl that their bodies could not withstand.
The law recognises that when someone knowingly places a dangerous substance into circulation, there is a question of responsibility. In the United States, those involved in fentanyl trafficking can face severe criminal penalties, including mandatory minimum sentences depending on factors such as the quantity involved and the circumstances of the offence. The principle behind this is that society accepts there must be accountability when someone’s deliberate actions create a foreseeable risk of serious harm or death.
This leads us to a very uncomfortable question when we look at online bullying and toxic behaviour, namely: if a person repeatedly targets another individual, encourages others to join in, humiliates them, threatens them or deliberately creates a campaign of abuse that causes serious psychological damage, at what point do we stop viewing it as simply online behaviour and start examining it through the lens of responsibility and consequence?
A medical substance can help someone in the right circumstances and become deadly when deliberately misused. A digital platform can connect people, create communities and provide incredible opportunities, yet the same platforms can also be manipulated by people who want to intimidate, humiliate and harm others. The fact that psychological harm cannot always be seen does not mean it is not real. We already understand that actions have consequences when harm happens in the physical world. Our legal ssytems examine intent, behaviour and outcome, asking if someone knew the risks, whether their actions were deliberate and whether the consequences were foreseeable.
Yet when that same harm happens through a screen, we often struggle to apply the same level of seriousness – I do not mean this to be an argument against free speech or allowed to be used as a rationale for curbing our freedom of speech, nor is it suggesting that every unpleasant comment or disagreement should become a criminal matter. A healthy society must allow debate, criticism and different opinions. The issue is where behaviour crosses the line from expression into deliberate cruelty, where someone is no longer simply sharing a view but is actively participating in behaviour designed to damage another person.
The question legislators will eventually have to confront is whether our understanding of harm has kept pace with the digital world because just as we accept that a substance can become a lethal threat when deliberately misused, should we not start to recognise that technology can become a weapon of harm when someone uses it to systematically target and destroy another human being? Because I believe that the internet, in the wrong or uneducated hands, can amplify abuse on a scale that was previously impossible. A single person can reach thousands of people and a cruel comment can become a pile-on, a private moment can become public humiliation or worse within minutes. Children are growing up with the knowledge that private images shared have been used in revenge porn or worse…
The distance provided by a screen can make people behave in ways they would never consider acceptable face-to-face; I hope more people will start to address the issue that powerful tools require responsibility, and that the absence of physical contact does not mean the absence of consequences. When online bullying and toxic behaviour contribute to someone losing their life, we need to be willing to ask difficult questions about accountability. We need to examine whether “just words” is still an adequate description when those words are used repeatedly, deliberately and knowingly to cause harm. Because sometimes the most dangerous weapons are not the ones we can see: a sustained campaign of taunting or hatred which, as a parent you may not even be aware of, could one day take your child away from you.
All this needs to be aired in public, without accusations – having honest conversations would be a good start…
