Bamba wrote:
Side bar: I'm drunk as shit right now so it's much more than possible that my opinions expressed above are either inappropriate or obvious horseshit (or, more likely, both at the same time). It's certainly a 100% certainty that I'm being a needless dick to Gaywood at the very least.
Not in the slightest. I totally agree that there's an uncomfortable overlap between football fans and toxic male culture -- much more so than other sports, even (the famous quip about how you can police a rugby match with a little old lady and her poodle springs to mind.)
But that's why I specifically said "performative dislike." There's valid reasons to have mixed feelings about football fan culture; but I don't think there's valid reasons to make a big song and dance about it on Beex minutes after England are knocked out of the World Cup. At worst, we're talking about a small but noisy minority of fans who cause trouble. I'm not comfortable suggesting the majority of the people who had an emotional stake in the game last night fall into that category -- how could it? Half the country watched it! Furthermore, I'm very comfortable saying that absolutely no-one here is in that category. And hence posting this:
Agent Starling wrote:
*explodes with utter joy*
Normal service is resumed. As you were.
See you all in four years (though we’ll probably all be dead from Brexit by then).
in this thread, minutes after the game ended, is just bloody rude.
Furthermore, there's a countercurrent of intellectual elitism that can creep in here that I don't much care for, which is why I drew the analogy to people who don't own a TV and sneer at those who do. Ignorance or dislike of popular culture doesn't make you smarter, but that is an assumption some make. And boasting of your ignorance or dislike isn't laudable. This is a bugbear of mine so I get a bit jumpy around it. I don't care for football or watch Love Island but that doesn't make me any better than Grim..., who does both those things. (I
am better than Grim..., but for differnt reasons, like how I have never set fire to six square feet of pigskin and called it "barbecue.")