Save Your Fandom for Meaningless Things

What I’m about to write is deeply hypocritical and shows me to be quite a pathetic human.

First, an admission, I’m a 35 year old South Londoner who lives in Amsterdam whose weekly mood is impacted by a company based in Manchester that has no idea I exist.

In many ways I’m normal, if you’re six years old with a dad who’s not a big football fan, you would be mad not to fall in love with Eric Cantona. And I really loved him. I cried when he retired and still think the collar is better worn up than down.

Now the more pathetic part. Man Utd still controls my mood, my feelings, my media habits, how much I look at my phone.

When they lose I don’t watch the highlights and I actively avoid the podcasts. This is not atypical. It’s a normal story of sports fandom (the most socially acceptable of the addictions).

But this isn’t a story about sport, it’s a realisation about politics. I recently noticed I do the same with politics. I tune in with glee to hear how much the Tories had fucked up (very much my Liverpool) or how Boris Johnson (insert Pep/Arteta) was getting battered in the press. But when it came to Kier Starmer being rightly criticised for having a crap first 100 days. I skipped those pods.

Just like I took a pass on the harsh analysis of Rachel Reeves‘ latest budget and avoided the criticism of Kamala Harris’ poor economic arguments.

I have stopped being an observer or critic of politics, and become a fan of one of the sides. And that is really fucking stupid. Because fans are dumb.

Being a fan of Man Utd is one of the most fulfilling and enjoyable things in my life, but in my role as a United fan, I (like every other fan on earth) intentionally lose my objectivity and embrace remarkably dumb behaviour.

A study found that the more slow-mo fans see of a potential foul the more likely they are to think their own view was right to begin with…. This is true in bars watching games and even truer with political ‘fans.’

Fans are objectively divorced from reality… another study found that on a scale of 0-8 where 0 is 'not at all' and eight is 'massively' fans believed their own sporting ‘superstitions,’ (like wearing the right socks or sitting on the correct sofa) influenced the result of real life sporting events, to a level five!

If you think sports fans are idiots right now, trust your instincts.

That doesn’t make us bad. Sports fans on average donate more, are more interested in culture and are happier. But we just lose our minds and our senses around the sport we love.

And here’s the thing. That’s fine with sport. It’s silly. It’s over the top. It’s amazing and the most incredible thing on earth but essentially it’s meaningless. But politics isn’t. We have to be able to see the wood from the trees. To not be our ‘fan’ selves but our actual, objective selves.

This isn’t about being less passionate. It’s about not letting the team overrule the real thing.

Being a fan is awesome, save it for the meaningless stuff.