this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2025
348 points (97.8% liked)

Greentext

7148 readers
834 users here now

This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

Be warned:

If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] belastend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 34 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

As someone who was born into the ball chasing cult, there are three things:

  1. The social aspect. It's the one thing that brings my family together, each week, to watch the game. For away games, you have a cookout with some family friends, buy some drinks and then you watch the game. If it's in the evening, then you go out afterwards. For home games, you gather the same group, but now you're gonna meet more people in the arena, people you know because they're also in the cult. You have a drink, you have a laugh and you catch up with them. Our team is a second division side with some okay players and a great goalie, so the game is almost relegated (heh) to play second fiddle.

Oh and don't get me started on the choreos.

  1. Hometown pride: This team has been here since the 19th century and for me, going to the games or even having just a passing interest in the team is part of being from that town.

You tag lamp posts in your town with their stickers and you do the same in the surrounding smaller cities. By looking at the stickers in any given town, you can see to which city their youth gravitates, which tickles my brain in ways I can't explain.

  1. It's fun to watch: Arguably the weakest reason, but God damn, sometimes even second division footy just looks so good! When you see someone pull off a sick trick or make a clean tackle or catch, you get that sweet dopamine kick, it's insane.

I'd never beat someone because of their allegiance. Those people can kick rocks.

[–] scytale@piefed.zip 6 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Hometown pride

Do you also refer to your city’s sport team using “we”, “us”, and “our”? I’ve always found that weird, because while I’m a fan, I don’t consider myself being a part of what the team accomplishes. I’m just a spectator. I just refer to them as the team name.

[–] rooroo@feddit.org 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Not the person you replied to but yes I do. I used to think it’s weird but there’s a few things that made me change that feeling.

One, I’ve been at games decided by fans. Players said they couldn’t hear anything on the pitch. Home sides shat their pants during warm up. I wasn’t on the pitch and didn’t touch a ball but I was part of one of the reasons we went home happy.

Two, and more importantly: when I think of the club I don’t think of the players and the managers. I think of my friends, I think of the crowd in the stands. My team has a crazy successful time right now (Football fans will surely be able to guess by now) but it wasn’t much different when we were playing 2nd division. Players leave all the time—currently my team has like one player who was part of the team for the whole successful run—but the club isn’t defined by the players, but by the people in that stands. They don’t change. And while football is certainly an enjoyable sport to watch, I wouldn’t care about it half as much without the fan culture surrounding it. Over the years I’ve become part of that as well, so fuck yes I say “we”.

[–] belastend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I am with you: I've been there when we played in the 4th division, outside of professional football and within my lifetime, we made it back into the top flight, with one player scoring in each division on the way. He was the first German player to do that, and while I know of another German who got there 2 years later, I don't know if this happened anywhere else.

[–] rooroo@feddit.org 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Now I’m curious. It sounds like SVD?

[–] belastend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 42 minutes ago

Nope, I'll give you another hint: we had the most chaotic promotion match in the history of the Bundesliga

[–] belastend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 hours ago

I have pretty deep roots within the city, and I could not imagine not rooting for my team (within limits, I wouldn't tolerate bigotry, but as of now, they behaved pretty good on that front), so yeah, I use "wir" and "uns" :)

[–] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 12 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Fair-play to you for a thoughtful answer. Much appreciated and it certainly matches my personal experience.
As I said somewhere else : seeing my mates being all up in arms about ManU when they live in fecking Donegal was always funny to me, but I totally see the social aspect.
So much banter at the pub! If there is a thing the Irish love, it's a good banter.

Shame about the assholes who use it as an excuse to get into fights. Fecking idiots the lot of them.

[–] belastend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks for the kind words, I really have to take every excuse to practice writing in English ^^

Yeah, I definitely forgot about the banter and storylines.

I think what contributes the most to the sports ball hype is that a lot of people play sports ball themselves. And just like gamers watching streams of people playing the games they want to play or are playing, ball cultists wanna see guys do the shit they do on some backwater pitch. You know, for the "damn, I know that's difficult" or the "I could do it better" - factor.

[–] LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Man, the "damn, I know that's difficult" is strong in every sport. I can appreciate a sport so much more if I did it myself, even just a few months. Fencing? No idea, people waving some sticks around. ~~Soccer~~ football? Sick volley shot, man, I saw a mate to the same thing back in 2006...

[–] belastend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 hours ago

Yeah, I think it's also "I saw like 10 of my mates shit the bed trying to do that".

Thanks for avoiding the s-word btw ^^

[–] TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I appreciate the summary and I think i get why people like sports ball.... but I really enjoy having a sports ball free space to talk about how absurd it is the way our society obsesses over it. on the internet, you're the weirdo, not me!

[–] belastend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 hours ago

It's weird to be both somewhat of a nerd and a sports ball person since birth, so I get your comment :)