I have noticed over the past week or so a certain irritation from my sports spiritual guides. When I am talking about sports with them – perhaps a specific game that was recently played or some historical event that happened at a game or a record set by a player, they might get annoyed
.
My knowledge of sports is rapidly building and the long dormant sports knowledge I had picked up here and there from my childhood is moving to the fore. Together with my ability to quickly understand and put into my own usage the jargon of sports I sound quite like an old sports fan.
Combine that with the general aesthetics of sports fandom – a cap on my head, some magnets in my cubicle, and a bumper sticker, and what you have is an indistinguishable sports fan. Indistinguishable from whom? Well, virtually any fan, of course.
This indistinguishability unnerves and annoys "true" fans because it reveals what an artifice their fandom is.
If any Joe Schmoe can arbitrarily pick a baseball team, buy a few pieces of merch, learn about the game, its history, and about the team’s players and suddenly be indistinguishable from lifelong fans then "true" fans are thrust into an existential crisis. What is the meaning of their fandom? Is it valid? Is it even real?
Sure, a “true” fan could say: “But UL is not a real fan. He is just a Johnny-come-lately!” Or they could say: “He is only doing this for one year. His fandom is fake; it is contrived!”
This may assuage their existential malaise but it can only do so on a service level. What my sports spiritual guides have seen in me becoming a fan cannot be unseen. The thoughts and feelings they had as a result of my fandom cannot be un-thought or unfelt. The best they can hope for is that I become a fan – a “true” fan – by the end of the year. This would sublimate and adequately rationalize their lifelong fandom. This would make their emotional and temporal and financial investments seem worthwhile. All in all, the only thing that can make them feel justified would be my continued fandom beyond Spring of 2019.
Thoughts?
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