I don't enjoy writing about professional football anymore. I used to. A lot. I think I've had 3 or 4 blogs dedicated to writing about (mostly) the Browns, and there were even occasions when people would read these things I wrote. But I stopped for lots of reasons. The most important reason? Because of the Browns.
Years ago I would write about how the Browns were terrible and they were actively putting out a crappy product and telling fans to buy it, so I was done buying it. Time passed and they got worse. Then they raised prices. That is not a consumer-friendly sequence of events.
I love Twitter. I get most of my world-news from Twitter by seeing people talk about something and then looking for details about it. Watching a sporting event alone on the couch while refreshing Twitter is more fun than watching a sporting event with two friends who aren't funny. You might think this is stupid, or you might have Twitter and know that this is the truth - it's just more fun to get everyone else's opinions and jokes about Tom Brady's Ugg's campaign because they're mad he's winning a Super Bowl again.
To a lesser extent, Facebook serves a similar purpose. The difference, of course, is that people take time to write whatever they're going to write on Facebook and often don't just update it moment-to-moment (those of you who do update moment-to-moment are terrorists and should be treated accordingly). The downside to this is that many of you put long-winded rants on Facebook and I don't care to read them.
Every Sunday around 4:00, Twitter is overflowing with snark and Facebook is blowing up with angry Browns fans talking about who we should fire and who is not getting a fair shake and blah blah blah. The snark is fine. The Facebook stuff though...man, it's brutal.
So here's an alternative:
Do something else. Literally anything else. Go to a park. Go to the lake. Go to Home Depot. Go to your parents house. Go to lunch. Go to Cuyahoga Valley National Park (but be careful). Read a book that hasn't been a terrible book by a terrible author for the last 20 years.
If you're going to let a bunch of millionaires playing a game ruin your Sunday and dictate how you feel, you deserve to have your Sunday ruined. I'm not telling you to stop being a fan, I'm telling you to take control of your own goddamn life and have some say in your own happiness. Do you realize how insane it is to let *The Browns* decide how you feel on Sunday afternoon and (sometimes) Monday?
Have you ever been sitting at home on Saturday afternoon and thought "Man, I hate that one guy we went to school with. He just pisses me off every time I see him: He talks shit about my family, he curses too much, he smells bad, he always spills stuff on me, he's constantly in a bad mood, he just...sucks. I'm currently having a pretty good day, so maybe I should invite him over for four hours and feel terrible for the rest of the weekend."
No, of course you haven't. If people constantly make you feel like garbage, you don't hang out with them. You don't watch movies that make you angry, right? How often do you listen to an album and think that it sucks, then listen to it once a week for the rest of your life? You don't do that because that would be idiotic.
In case you haven't noticed, the Browns haven't changed much over the past 20 years. They come in, suck, fire everyone, start fresh, suck, fire everyone, start fresh, and suck again. Many of you have anointed each of the past 8 coaches as the answer before jumping ship and telling the rest of us how you've always hated them and how they ought to be fired or are the worst of any of the coaches the team has had before.
Perhaps the reason the team can't get a competent coach or competent players is because the fan-base gives a grace-period of about six hours before everyone turns on everyone. Part of that, surely, is the aforementioned immediate-feedback generation that we live in. Part of that is the need to constantly be on the front of the movement: By the time everyone has agreed that something is good or something is bad, no one cares anymore because everyone is moving on to the next thing that's surprisingly good or surprisingly bad.
Of course, I know, this is all just human nature. We see, we react, and then we tell others. There probably is no solution to this little situation.
Oh, and you're all hidden from my Facebook news feed.
Years ago I would write about how the Browns were terrible and they were actively putting out a crappy product and telling fans to buy it, so I was done buying it. Time passed and they got worse. Then they raised prices. That is not a consumer-friendly sequence of events.
I love Twitter. I get most of my world-news from Twitter by seeing people talk about something and then looking for details about it. Watching a sporting event alone on the couch while refreshing Twitter is more fun than watching a sporting event with two friends who aren't funny. You might think this is stupid, or you might have Twitter and know that this is the truth - it's just more fun to get everyone else's opinions and jokes about Tom Brady's Ugg's campaign because they're mad he's winning a Super Bowl again.
To a lesser extent, Facebook serves a similar purpose. The difference, of course, is that people take time to write whatever they're going to write on Facebook and often don't just update it moment-to-moment (those of you who do update moment-to-moment are terrorists and should be treated accordingly). The downside to this is that many of you put long-winded rants on Facebook and I don't care to read them.
Every Sunday around 4:00, Twitter is overflowing with snark and Facebook is blowing up with angry Browns fans talking about who we should fire and who is not getting a fair shake and blah blah blah. The snark is fine. The Facebook stuff though...man, it's brutal.
So here's an alternative:
Do something else. Literally anything else. Go to a park. Go to the lake. Go to Home Depot. Go to your parents house. Go to lunch. Go to Cuyahoga Valley National Park (but be careful). Read a book that hasn't been a terrible book by a terrible author for the last 20 years.
If you're going to let a bunch of millionaires playing a game ruin your Sunday and dictate how you feel, you deserve to have your Sunday ruined. I'm not telling you to stop being a fan, I'm telling you to take control of your own goddamn life and have some say in your own happiness. Do you realize how insane it is to let *The Browns* decide how you feel on Sunday afternoon and (sometimes) Monday?
Have you ever been sitting at home on Saturday afternoon and thought "Man, I hate that one guy we went to school with. He just pisses me off every time I see him: He talks shit about my family, he curses too much, he smells bad, he always spills stuff on me, he's constantly in a bad mood, he just...sucks. I'm currently having a pretty good day, so maybe I should invite him over for four hours and feel terrible for the rest of the weekend."
No, of course you haven't. If people constantly make you feel like garbage, you don't hang out with them. You don't watch movies that make you angry, right? How often do you listen to an album and think that it sucks, then listen to it once a week for the rest of your life? You don't do that because that would be idiotic.
In case you haven't noticed, the Browns haven't changed much over the past 20 years. They come in, suck, fire everyone, start fresh, suck, fire everyone, start fresh, and suck again. Many of you have anointed each of the past 8 coaches as the answer before jumping ship and telling the rest of us how you've always hated them and how they ought to be fired or are the worst of any of the coaches the team has had before.
Perhaps the reason the team can't get a competent coach or competent players is because the fan-base gives a grace-period of about six hours before everyone turns on everyone. Part of that, surely, is the aforementioned immediate-feedback generation that we live in. Part of that is the need to constantly be on the front of the movement: By the time everyone has agreed that something is good or something is bad, no one cares anymore because everyone is moving on to the next thing that's surprisingly good or surprisingly bad.
Of course, I know, this is all just human nature. We see, we react, and then we tell others. There probably is no solution to this little situation.
Oh, and you're all hidden from my Facebook news feed.
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