I can post this now that the Superbowl is over. I think.
As a female, I stereotypically do not comprehend my brothers' and nephews' hysteria over sports. On any given Sunday (cough), the screen is lit up in Owen's house, flashing tomorrow's brain damage patients.
Yet, it would seem, rabid fandom can fade. (I call this "growing up.") Sridhar Pappu reported on this phenomenon last year.
You know when you were a kid, and you got really into something? A TV show, a toy? But then when you grew up, you put away childish things. Why shouldn't sports be along those lines?
My nephew is 14, and is quite taken with football. His mother is happy with his passion, because he needs an outlet to decompress after yeshiva, and this is a pretty safe one. It does not follow that he should be still relying on it when he's 44.
The men interviewed in the article said that they reached a point where they couldn't tie their emotions anymore to something as meaningless as sports. To be upset because some guys throwing around a ball lost? Pathetic.
Jeremy Gordon used to be bummed by his team's losses, but then realized how lame that was. He found a solution: Fair-Weather Fandom. He calls himself "the lowest of the low" as a "bandwagon sports fan," but "The cultural insistence on being a 'real fan' begins to seem deeply
silly — it isn’t as though St. Peter judges your bona fides at the
pearly gates."
What really matters?
1 comment:
Never been interested in sports. Still fanatically interested in Doctor Who, though, and have been since I was eight. Not to the exclusion of what really matters. But it still matters to me a lot, to the extent that I am trying to see if I can be paid for my interest in some way. We all need time to play, even adults.
Post a Comment