Tin Foil Hats
I am a fan of Arsenal FC. The word fan is generally positive, due to the fact that fans are the life and blood of entertainment. There are fans of Harry Potter, fans of Trump (ugh), but there are no fans quite like sporting fans. And it’s a bit shite, honestly.
#meditativefanaticism:
I don’t really feel that being a fan is a bad thing, and most people wouldn’t. Still, the word is short for ‘fanatic,’ which is undoubtedly a bad thing. A fanatic is often associated with cultish, one-sided (one direction?) attitudes, which really is not conducive to what you’d call model citizen behavior.
And yet we have sports fans who will start fights on the basis of results which have absolutely no bearing on their lives, other than the fact that they want it to. But that’s our role as fans - we give value and importance to the actions of things and people which are inherently unimportant.
There’s a wonderful episode of Black Mirror, which really takes this issue into it’s own interpretation, where the rights and purpose of a few individuals are wholly trampled on by the herd, the sheeple, and essentially, fans who are manipulated by a select few in the media.
By making the insignificant, important, by crafting values where none exist, we give credence and importance to our own association with such a trivial thing. Sports are trivial. No argument about it, and yet there are trillions of dollars spent worldwide on those very things.
As an Arsenal fan, I’m out for the blood of Mike Dean, but at the same time, I cannot, for the life of myself, understand why I should be. He’s a poor official, no doubt, and yet he’s more than 3000 miles away from me - other than through the channel of Arsenal, he will never affect my life.
And I certainly take some comfort in that thought.
