Room 101 - what single aspect of modern life should be consigned to oblivion?

[cloughie]

but generally there are no guns, landmines , or government sponsored violence at the footy.

usually just a lot of people who perhaps should know better, spending their hard earned and their Saturday afternoon in a one way, inexplicable, love affair with a bunch of footballers and a concrete stadium.
Bonkers.But mostly harmless. In fact TOO harmless if anything, as our time might be better spent righting wrongs.
But the government like it this way.

oh, and footy contibutes a fortune to the treasury.........check the VAT element of a premier league ticket !!

I notice enjoyment wasn't a word you used, you live it, but it involves also a lot of loyalty, heartache, optimism and disappointment. Only the good weather fan will change allegiances from the club they support from an early age. There is violence at the fringes of the game, but between fans there is ardent banter, camaraderie and great deal of alliance in adversity.

[vinteuil]

camaraderie

God, how I loathe camaraderie!

[cloughie]

God, how I loathe camaraderie!

That's your choice, sunshine!

I'm off for a bit of camaraderie and a sing down at the pub!

[teamsaint]

God, how I loathe camaraderie!

oh yes, english cheese is best !

[Lateralthinking1]

God, how I loathe camaraderie!

I like both being on my own and camaraderie and dislike being with people without camaraderie. Does this make me weird?

[Mr Pee]

Very much what people say about wars.

This makes me question the sanity of some contributors to these boards.

Get a grip, for Heaven's sake......

[EdgeleyRob]

it involves also a lot of loyalty, heartache, optimism and disappointment. Only the good weather fan will change allegiances from the club they support from an early age. There is violence at the fringes of the game, but between fans there is ardent banter, camaraderie and great deal of alliance in adversity.

Tell me about it!

[cloughie]

I like both being on my own and camaraderie and dislike being with people without camaraderie. Does this make me weird?

Sounds perfectly normal to me.

[Nick Armstrong]

oh yes, english cheese is best !

[cloughie]

This makes me question the sanity of some contributors to these boards.

Is that wise. You're talking about contributors to this board. Nuff said surely.

[Flosshilde]

I notice enjoyment wasn't a word you used, you live it, but it involves also a lot of loyalty, heartache, optimism and disappointment. Only the good weather fan will change allegiances from the club they support from an early age. There is violence at the fringes of the game, but between fans there is ardent banter, camaraderie and great deal of alliance in adversity.

It's not football as such that I dislike, but the way in which it has become hugely commercialised, with clubs flogging fans overpriced shirts (which change every season) when a scarf & woolly hat used to be enough, and also dominates the front pages of newspapers & lead items in radio & TV news, giving it far more importance than it deserves & making it difficult to avoid, when it used to be confined to sports pages & easy to ignore. As for the fans, if you live near a football ground you find pavements blocked as they spill out of pubs, cars parked where they shouldn't be, people pissing in your front garden, & daily life generally made more difficult.

[teamsaint]

It's not football as such that I dislike, but the way in which it has become hugely commercialised, with clubs flogging fans overpriced shirts (which change every season) when a scarf & woolly hat used to be enough, and also dominates the front pages of newspapers & lead items in radio & TV news, giving it far more importance than it deserves & making it difficult to avoid, when it used to be confined to sports pages & easy to ignore. As for the fans, if you live near a football ground you find pavements blocked as they spill out of pubs, cars parked where they shouldn't be, people pissing in your front garden, & daily life generally made more difficult.

Football's over inflated importance, (especially of the premier league) is certainly nonsensical.but even most football fans, I suspect, are happy enough to read about their own team on the back pages, and couldn't care less about the front page drivel.
Perhaps the press would increase circulation if they concentrated less on who Ryan giggs is meeting up with, and more on real issues like unnecessary wars, NHS Privatisation, tax scams for the rich (including footballers), toxic lifestyles, etc etc. Just a thought. I might even buy one.

As for bad behaviour, the kind of thing you describe used to happen a lot, but I honestly don't see much of it now. Perhaps i am in the wrong places. Bad fan behaviour has reduced substantially, (though it does still go on and bad behaviour near your home is very upsetting), and parking near football grounds nowadays, in my experience, means legal or ticket/clamping.

[Serial_Apologist]

Football's over inflated importance, (especially of the premier league) is certainly nonsensical.but even most football fans, I suspect, are happy enough to read about their own team on the back pages, and couldn't care less about the front page drivel.
Perhaps the press would increase circulation if they concentrated less on who Ryan giggs is meeting up with, and more on real issues like unnecessary wars, NHS Privatisation, tax scams for the rich (including footballers), toxic lifestyles, etc etc. Just a thought. I might even buy one.

As for bad behaviour, the kind of thing you describe used to happen a lot, but I honestly don't see much of it now. Perhaps i am in the wrong places. Bad fan behaviour has reduced substantially, (though it does still go on and bad behaviour near your home is very upsetting), and parking near football grounds nowadays, in my experience, means legal or ticket/clamping.

Being taken down Stamford Bridge by Dad as a nipper, when the team was people from the locale, more-or-less, and the only identity the team scarf, and that not obligatory, support once seemed to have some point to it, though I could never really get my head around rooting for something my actions had no hand in, apart from as one voice hollering among thousands. Eventually I came to see football fandom as a religious substitute or adjunct: belief or hope in something about which one can do nothing, a form of mass psychological assuagement by group identification, and a way of spending money on something functionally useless and ephemeral.

[aeolium]

Eventually I came to see football fandom as a religious substitute or adjunct: belief or hope in something about which one can do nothing, a form of mass psychological assuagement by group identification, and a way of spending money on something functionally useless and ephemeral.

Of course it's possible to see operatic 'fandom' just like that:

"a religious substitute or adjunct": worshipping at the Bayreuth shrine
"belief or hope in something about which one can do nothing": the almost invariably shattered hope or belief in the possibility of a tolerable production
"a form of mass psychological assuagement by group identification" : the Covent Garden crush bar and the Glyndebourne lawn (uniform de rigeur)
" a way of spending money on something functionally useless and ephemeral": I rest my case, m'lud

Still, people enjoy football and opera so they're both OK in my book

[scottycelt]

Being taken down Stamford Bridge by Dad as a nipper, when the team was people from the locale, more-or-less, and the only identity the team scarf, and that not obligatory, support once seemed to have some point to it, though I could never really get my head around rooting for something my actions had no hand in, apart from as one voice hollering among thousands. Eventually I came to see football fandom as a religious substitute or adjunct: belief or hope in something about which one can do nothing, a form of mass psychological assuagement by group identification, and a way of spending money on something functionally useless and ephemeral.

There's a great deal of truth in that. There is little doubt that, as far as many fans are concerned, they do appear to 'worship' the team they support, and local and national tribalism is also an obvious factor.

However, it's not all as silly as it may sometimes seem to the outsider. A football match can allow normally passive people to 'let off steam' in a relatively harmless way and some do have, you know, enough brains to appreciate the finer points of the game!

There are a lot of things in life that, on reflection, might seem pretty pointless maybe even life itself to some poor souls. Any form of art or sport might be described by those who lack appreciation as 'useless' and 'ephemeral'. Personally, i consider political marches and demonstrations to be very much in that category, but that seems to be an activity that others here positively relish.

Whatever turns one on, as they say, S_A ...