January 31
Tags
Sportsball Haters
Sportsball Haters: Leave the Fans Alone
By: Terra Clarke Olsen
Today is Blue Friday. But not just any Blue Friday- it’s the Blue Friday before the Super Bowl. I’m guessing that Washington state is a sea of blue and green today…and probably will be all weekend. (For those of you who are not familiar with what I’m talking about, Blue Friday is a day for Seahawks fans to show their pride.) Heck, I’m even wearing a Seahawks shirt (my first ‘official’ Seahawks gear), AND ate Seahawks Top Pot doughnuts. It’s been a good morning so far.
But there are a lot of people who hate football…in particular there are a lot of geek who hate football. And often refer to sports in a mocking manner, like so:
Confession: I think this is funny.
Now I am fine with mocking things. Yay humor! But when you start bullying the fans, that is a problem. A lot of people love sports, and their fandoms are no lesser than your own.
This week, I wrote an article for the Seattle Weekly about sports and bullies. If you’re interested, go check it out; if not, well here is what stuck out to me:
Turns out we are the bullies. Every single person I talked to said that at one point or another, a fellow geek had teased him or her for being into football. Curtis Chandler—Star Wars fan, comic-book collector, ex-football player, and host of the podcast Clinically Inane—recalls wearing an old football jersey to a con and getting accused of being a “fake geek.” Rantz and Lundell have similar stories: Geeks make fun of them for loving sports, while sports fans are either indifferent or share their nerdy interests.
Learning about the bullying my friends received for being enthusiastic fans was greatly discouraging. I often talk about creating an inclusive nerdy community and how we need to respect each other and each other’s fandom, well this is exactly what you should not do. Just because you don’t like sports and you’re a ‘super geek’ with all the ‘geek credentials’ in the world does not give you the right to mock someone else’s fandom. Especially other geeks! My friend Curtis’ story is just absurd since he’s an uber geek (I mean that in the best way possible), and yet someone had the audacity to call him out for wearing a jersey-which is hilarious and sad all at once. Even if Curtis wasn’t an super nerd, mocking someone for liking something you don’t like is exactly what the geek community complains about! The shame!
Curtis being a badass Hawks fan!
So geeks, let’s just cool it. It is okay to like comic books, Star Wars, and football. As long as your passionate and respectful, that is what being a nerd is all about, regardless of your fandom. It’s an exciting weekend for Seahawks and Broncos fans, so their is going to be a bit of fangirling. So show the sportsball fans a little respect, and leave your fellow nerds alone this weekend.
Note: I had some great interview answers from my nerdy Hawk loving friends, so I will be posting a few of their answers in a different post in the future. Keep an eye out! 🙂
As Chris Pramas (@pramas) said a few weeks ago, paraphrased: I don’t have a problem with the fact that you like sports, I have a problem with the cultural assumption that I must also.
I wouldn’t give anyone grief over liking or disliking sports, but I get very frustrated when people who know me, who know I’m disinterested, still ask me if I’m going to watch “The Big Game”. People like my mom, my mom-in-law, and friends for years still ask. (Strangely, my dad doesn’t, and you’d think I’d be getting the sports talk from the patriarchy.) After a while, it’s tough not to be a bit snarky.
But I’m still not, because seriously, don’t be an asshole. Let people have their fun. I’ll be playing Amber Diceless instead. 🙂
Like my Twitter bio says: I speak four languages; English, High Elven, Wookie, and Dug Out. I see shared universal truths in sci-fi/fantasy and baseball.
We all need to remember how we felt when someone mocked our love of Middle Earth/Dantooine/Oa etc. We have a way to go before we fully embrace David Brin’s concept of the “dogma of otherness”.
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