Not everyone appreciates the passion of fandom
Everybody’s got a hobby. Yours might be screaming at the top of your lungs while a group of teenagers play hockey. It might be filling in a scorecard at a baseball game. It might be playing hockey, slo-pitch or curling. It might be weekly poker games among friends or a trip to the casino to dump $100 into a slot machine. They don’t have to make you smarter and they don’t have to carry any great meaning. They are usually cathartic, and while some of them aren’t healthy physically, they sure are good for your mental health.
Some people enjoy these distractions, the bread and circuses of their lives. The joy of being a hockey fan is often the debate. Is Stuart Skinner a greater Lethbridge Hurricane than Jamie McLennan? Is Ben Wright the best captain ever or is it Tyler Wong?
I have always envied sports fans for that. They throw everything they have into it. They do not hold back on opinion, emotion or volume. Fandom is a hobby, like playing board games or video games or fixing a muscle car.
I do not denigrate people for their hobbies. I may not understand all of them — seriously, chess as a hobby escapes me — but I appreciate that other people pour passion and time into it.
That’s why I was upset on Monday when I saw one of those left-wing wannabe intellectuals contemptuously looking down his nose at the wrestling fans attending a World Wrestling Entertainment event in Calgary.
“There must be a lot of trailer parks in Calgary,” he opined after seeing wrestling trending on a social media site that allows companies to buy their way onto a trend list. Ignoring his ignorance of this, I was hardly surprised to see he doesn’t understand the appeal of wrestling, considering the bulk of his social media presence is impotently screaming at conservative clouds.
It does explain why the condescension of his ilk is galling. I mean, at its core, the WWE is scripted sports. Many sports fans also enjoy the bizarre, overblown morality plays of professional wrestling. To find out many liberal elites think they are above such passions is not surprising. Of course, he jumped to a defence of his position by mixing up the current American president and a group of Canadian sportsentertainment fans. That the WWE’s ludicrous storylines are the Shakespearean dramas of their day isn’t important to him.
See, the WWE is popular. Heck, professional wrestling is doing OK judging by the 200 people who packed a gym in Taber on Friday to watch the local PPW wrestlers hit the mat. It’s ridiculous, sure, but then so is a misunderstood mutual poisoning between the Montague and Capulet children.
Wrestling at its worst is sexist, violent and stupid. At its best, it is high drama and pure emotional release. Mostly, it’s a fun hour or two a week. Smelling what The Rock is cooking beats another flaccid online diatribe about politics from a know-it-all who lacks perspective or empathy.
I do not watch WWE Wrestling. It’s not my cup of tea and not as fun as watching a local restaurant manager get thrown through a table live and in person at the Fritz Sick Centre. I support local sports at all levels because I love to see people get together in common purpose. They put aside their differences to celebrate a similar passion. They laugh, roll their eyes and when the event or the game or ✦They the match is over, they go home.
probably walk past bills separated into “pay” and “pay now” piles. They remember their son’s bad kidney or the bathroom renovation that needs to get done. They might jump online and grouse or cheer about what they saw. They might do it enough to get it trending on Twitter. They might just enjoy being fans. I think this guy should stop in at a high school basketball game or a play or a ‘rassling event and pull up a seat.
He might enjoy himself. Or it might be a nice break from that high horse he was riding on Monday night.