My Arsenal buddy emailed me yesterday under the subject heading "so pathetic." I had not sent him the post I had written after Arsenal's breathtaking comeback win over West Ham. Nor, to the point, had he emailed me his happiness. I took the opportunity, therefore, to give him my opinion yesterday in a responsive email:
an observation. the west ham-arsenal match was the first, other than one of city's that i ever live blogged. arsenal fans were all over twitter in the first half--just utter hopelessness. unconsciously i kept the same google search query "west ham vs arsenal" through the match. so i wasn't getting only arsenal fans' reactions by switching just to "arsenal." in the second half after arsenal's three goals the arsenal fans disappeared. they weren't tweeting joy or resurrection or elation or even sheepish embarrassment, they just disappeared.
Pissed
Me
Off
that's a perversion of fandom, i don't know if it is an arsenal perversion or an english perversion but it is a perversion. its masochism. you only skeet when youre in pain. arsenal fans in the first half were professional victims like cleveland fans. it so turned me against cleveland that it turned me into a sadist. i LOVE when cleveland loses now!
He replied:
oh you are 1000 percent on to something both with England and arsenal.
...
with Arsenal they have a thing called arsenal fan tv where after every game this rather affable bloke named Robbie just goes out and speaks to the fans and everyone is just venting at how shitty the club is right now. it is so bad that they even have repeat fan characters that come on every
I am guilty of some of this, I suppose, but it has become really really hard to watch them these days and every game has a predictably awful set of facts, concede the first goal, struggle to even up, concede the second and then chase the game.
that said I still love watching arsenal and football. I have tried to tell my son, who gets really upset when his teams lose, that this whole enterprise of watching sports is meant to give our minds respite from all the truly awful shit that happens every day. watching arsenal lose but having that moment of hope, like yesterday when martinelli almost nicked a goal in the first 30 seconds, is just a lot of fun.
That is very well said by my friend.
an observation. the west ham-arsenal match was the first, other than one of city's that i ever live blogged. arsenal fans were all over twitter in the first half--just utter hopelessness. unconsciously i kept the same google search query "west ham vs arsenal" through the match. so i wasn't getting only arsenal fans' reactions by switching just to "arsenal." in the second half after arsenal's three goals the arsenal fans disappeared. they weren't tweeting joy or resurrection or elation or even sheepish embarrassment, they just disappeared.
Pissed
Me
Off
that's a perversion of fandom, i don't know if it is an arsenal perversion or an english perversion but it is a perversion. its masochism. you only skeet when youre in pain. arsenal fans in the first half were professional victims like cleveland fans. it so turned me against cleveland that it turned me into a sadist. i LOVE when cleveland loses now!
He replied:
oh you are 1000 percent on to something both with England and arsenal.
...
with Arsenal they have a thing called arsenal fan tv where after every game this rather affable bloke named Robbie just goes out and speaks to the fans and everyone is just venting at how shitty the club is right now. it is so bad that they even have repeat fan characters that come on every
I am guilty of some of this, I suppose, but it has become really really hard to watch them these days and every game has a predictably awful set of facts, concede the first goal, struggle to even up, concede the second and then chase the game.
that said I still love watching arsenal and football. I have tried to tell my son, who gets really upset when his teams lose, that this whole enterprise of watching sports is meant to give our minds respite from all the truly awful shit that happens every day. watching arsenal lose but having that moment of hope, like yesterday when martinelli almost nicked a goal in the first 30 seconds, is just a lot of fun.
That is very well said by my friend.