In your opinion, is this a good or bad thing?
I don't have an opinion.
Just an impression how Barca's social impact is way lesser than before.
Barca still has a shitton of social media presence on YouTube and Instagram. I think it's a generational thing, forums are just not as popular these days as they used to be in the past. Real Madrid forums are also not that active even though they just won a bunch of CLs. It seems that only PL club forums are bustling with life, might have something to do with England
Teens are fickle.
My first favorite club when I was like 7-8 years old was Ac Milan.
Why?
Because when I watched CL finals in 1989 and 1990, Ac Milan was the winner.
And every kid wants to cheer for the best side out there.
So, Milan (Van Basten, Gullit, Rijkaard) weas my first love. Maybe this is why I am always leaning towards strong, tall, more result oriented football than Barca's fans. (The same as how Pep's football flows in majority of our fan's blood).
During the 90s due to Romario, Stoichkov and R9, I started to love Barca, even though I still also loved Milan.
But hear this: as Ac Milan was dying in late 90s and early 00s, compared to their glory days = I moved to Barca as my no1.
But then during Gaspart's days, since Barca was sooo bad (something like today) and there wasn't La Liga matches in my country back then (only Seria A and EPL), so I had a short fling with AS Roma around 1999-2003 when they had young Totti, Batistuta and Cafu.
But then when Ronnie came to Barca, I moved back to Barca's camp.
I guess that today's teens are even more fickle since they have even more options/streams/matches/favorite players/social media than we do.
In that sense:
1. we were on top of the world. We are around the 10th place today in strength probably (in the last few years).
2. we had GOAT Messi and ultrapopular Messi-Cr7 rivalry. They are both gone, we don't have that rivalry anymore
3. we had MSN and Neymar, who was quite popular in Brazil and among kids. He was supposed to be the next big thing, and majority of 6 year old kids in my area back then had a jersey of either Messi, Cr7 or Neymar. We don't have that anymore.
Today I see jerseys of Neymar, Mbappe and Haaland. Or some old Barca's Messi jerseys. No one, for example wears: Dembele or Fati in my country.
4. about social media on Instagram and similar, sure, Barca surely have millions of followers, from the past. But I guess the trends of growth would show that City, Psg, Real or even Arsenal/Man Utd surely had bigger growth than Barca in the last 2 years.
I mean, when you look at it from the outside, there is absolutely nothing interesting at Barca currently.
When Instagram or Facebook offer me random football reels, it is always: Messi from the past, CR7 from the past, R9 from the past. Or: Haaland, Mbappe (for some reason, I don't want to step into racism territory, but it seems that Mbappe is by far the most popular footballer among black people), Grealish, jokes about Maguire. That's it.
I don't know when was the last time when I have seen a reel or a joke/troll football post about Barca.
This is why we bought Lewa. To bring back the relevancy. But he is extremely old and 13 year old kids love younger crazy dudes with crazy haircuts and jokes, like Haaland, Mbappe and Neymar. 13 year olds are not impressed by 34 year old Polish granny with a normal haircut and without any tattoos.
Barca was as equally as boring/irrelevant pre-Ronaldinho.
Then we got back star power, beautiful play and top results. And it continued with Messi.
And again, today: we don't have any star power, pop-stars/teen idols. Our football is meh and our results are atrocious.
Remember how I changed clubs as a teen based on their popularity. And then ask yourself: how many 13 year olds from Nigeria or India will follow Barca after 8:2 vs Bayern and 2 straight group stage KOs.
Kids want winners and idols. Fati, Dembele and Pedri are not their idols and heroes.
Haaland and Mbappe are.
