a particularly good episode of HankGames in which John talks about why he’s a Liverpool fan — may or may not have made me cry like a little girl. For years and years when I was little I’d sit on the sofa and watch West Ham play with my dad and sing I’m forever blowing bubbles and later, paolo di canio x4083980 and it’s just such an important part of my childhood. My grandpa was an Everton supporter and in Mexico everyone I know supports the Pumas — you have your team, you have your ties. I’d never really thought of that being one of my earliest introductions to fandom, fan history and so on, but I suppose it was.
(Thanks, Rosi.) I think one of the things that is underappreciated in fan communities like the HP fandom or Doctor Who or whatever is the extent to which it really IS similar to, say, the Liverpool fandom. Obviously, I’m not defending all of sporting fan culture, but to me it has been a way to connect to a story (the history of my football club) in a deep way that also connected me to other people (fellow supporters) and allowed me to feel like a participant in the narrative (In soccer, fan support really is the lifeblood of a club, because the club is not guaranteed to continue as a professional organization the same way teams are in most American sports.)
Anyway, in the end, my relationship with Liverpool is not so different from my relationship with Harry Potter.
As usual…
I am livetweeting soccer games over at sportswithjohn.
(Bayern Munich and Real Madrid are playing in the Champions League semifinal.)
Why We Hate Tim Tebow
It’s not really about his religiosity, or even the way he uses his fame to evangelize. People, including me, are put off by Tebow because he is SINCERE, and cynical people dismiss all sincere worldviews, whether secular or religious.
Tebow exposes our cynicism. He is unafraid to care deeply and unironically about things. Maybe some of those things—football for instance—are silly, but his passion and depth of feeling are something we all hope for. (I’d like to think I lack Tebow’s sense of certainty because careful examination of the universe does not lend itself to certainty, but I might be wrong, and even if I’m not I’d argue it’s an internet-wide character flaw* to ridicule sincerity.)
Basically, it’s not about Tim Tebow. It’s about the lens through which we view him.
*obviously I don’t mean that everyone who uses the Internet struggles with sincerity, but many of us do, and imho the culture of the Internet celebrates—and not without reason—investigation and interrogation (and silliness and irony)—over certainty and sincerity.
