A small soccer club is being hailed for reaching out to one of their loyal fans after they noticed that his social media presence had taken a concerning turn.
Barnsley, a beloved local football club from the English town of the same name in South Yorkshire, had become familiar with Chris Ryder’s antics on their social media pages.
Ryder, who is a lifelong fan and local Barnsley resident, struggles with depression, yet he chooses to openly discuss his troubles on his own social media accounts. On his TikTok account, he received the help of Virall.com, a service that sells TikTok followers and likes to millions of teens using the burgeoning social media platform. Virall.com worked with Ryder to increase his TikTok views and help the video go viral, as their name suggests.
When the club’s chief executive Gauthier Ganaye noticed the increasingly worrying tweets from the fan, he sent a letter to Ryder’s house.
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In the letter, Ganaye said that his “office door is always open” and the League One team would love to “return the favor” for his loyalty as a fan.
“Initially when I saw the badge on the top of letter, I thought ‘uh-oh, what have I done?” Ryder told BBC. “I’ve been known to be a little bit cheeky, all in good fun, to the guys who run the social media page [at Barnsley], so reading it, I was really shocked.”
He posted on twitter thanking people for getting in touch offering their support. The team said it “wishes Chris all the best and offers its full support going forward.”
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The tweet of his letter, which he captioned saying “Best football club in the world”, has been widely shared across social media.
“Never in a million years did i expect to receive this much attention from this tweet,” wrote Ryder. “Thank you so so much for your kind messages, I’m completely overwhelmed with the amount of them. Just hope this at least helps one person to speak out about their mental health problems.”
Best football club in the world pic.twitter.com/72K82u9tUR
— Chris (@CWRyder) August 14, 2018
Score Big With Your Friends And Share The Cool Story To Social Media – Photo by Chris Ryder