Goddammit I love it so hard when people take themselves so fucking seriously on the internet. Case in point this week, inveterate contrarian taint Mattew Stewart of (wait for it) MATTHEW'S WORKSHOP. (God that title is too much for a website. And here I thought we had a dipshit name).
In it, he decides to basically deride Bills fans for cheering a shitty team. Normally I wouldn't get worked up enough to turn on my laptop to do this, but Stewart and the Deeg have history. In short, he's a baiting dickbag. If he graces you with the ability to follow him on the Twattage, you'll understand. I would provide examples of his unending condescension/shittalk/baiting/sanctimony directed towards Joe Pinzone and our very own Barrister, but he's protected his tweets because only those he deems worthy may listen to him (I hold the distinction of being blocked by him. Mike Harrington and this derp are the two people who've blocked me on Twitter. Sick company, bros). After reading his shitpile of a word dump, I decided to return to/blatantly steal the old Fire Joe Morgan treatment.
Without any further ado, here it goes after the jump:
Poorly FJM'd by El Yachtero
As a kid it started early in the morning, with The Sports Reporters and then NFL Sunday Countdown...
I can just imagine baby Stewie being weaned on George Will and Dick Schaap pontificating on the greatness of Kirby Puckett and Christian Laetner. MASTURBATE ME SOME MORE ON NOMAR'S SIGNIFICANCE IN THE AMERICAN FOLK LEGACY, DORIS KEARNS-GOODWIN. Watching that show at a tender age will guaranteed give you a skewed a-hole perspective on sports for the rest of your life. It's like 30 Rock's Sports Shouting but with an Ivy League vocabulary.
And like clock work every Sunday through the 90s — through the Super Bowl years and the not so Super years and Flutie’s magic — and 2000s (you know, those of a more dismal, more piercing, more immediate failure) I would sit in front of the television and watch 50-or-so men in blue and red and white fight against another 50-or-so men over a football.
Those of a more dismal, more piercing, more immediate failure also describes my early interactions with women, BUT I LIKE WHERE YOU'RE GOING WITH THIS STEW. I CAN FEEL THE SANCTIMONY BUILDING WITHIN YOU LIKE THE DARK SIDE IN ANAKIN.
Most Sundays, frankly, ended in exhaling or disappointment.
Frankly, all of my Sundays ended with exhaling. It's what I do, what can I say....I'm a breather.
Think about it Bills fans: In how many weeks in your years as a fan have you been anything besides: 1) disappointed 2) relieved (to get out of there with a victory). Has it ever really been all that fun? Is football really all that fun as a Bills fan? When the Bills were beating team after team to go back (yet again) for a Super Bowl appearance, was it really as much fun as it was relief — really fun to know that the team had gotten through another week with another opportunity to win a championship without it all seeming lost?
THINK ABOUT IT BILLS FANS. I love that we only have 2 choices here. Nevermind the exaltation of victory. Nevermind the great times had around the hobo barrel fire of Drive 5 drinking piss water Canadian lager out of a can with other people who exhale as well. Nevermind the togetherness of a football Sunday, when the women in my family are barely watching, three uncles are taking it way too seriously, and everybody cheers and hi-fives for a touchdown. What kind of a horrible experience did this guy have watching games the past 25 years? I picture him chained to a wall with a ball gag in his mouth being forced to watch the Ronnie Harmon drops over and over BUT THAT'S BECAUSE I'M WEIRD.
And once it all seemed lost, and Flutie came around and Rob Johnson and the end of an era in 1999 with the departure of Andre Reed, Thurman Thomas and Bruce Smith — when this all happened didn’t every win otherwise just signify that the team was still relevant, still competitive and for the time anyway staying put?
In the 2000s hadn’t it just been a relief when they won at all? The same for the 2010s?
Where is the *enjoyment* of it? What is it that you love about it?
WHAT COAL HEARTED SHIT STAIN DIDN'T ENJOY FLUTIE ROLLS!??! OR THE FEELING YOU HAD WHEN SHOELESS ROB JOHNSON HAD HIS ONE GREAT MOMENT......WITHOUT SHOES ON?!? Life is about moments, dildus (not a word). It's about enjoying those fleeting moments of greatness and capturing them and storing them away in the memory bank to offset the times when somebody friggin' dies or America's credit rating is downgraded (right guys?).
I read so many flowery posts, so much sepia toned remembrance of the good old days and how 70,000 people would hold hands in Orchard Park and sing songs and the movie ending with getting the girl. But did that ever really happen — did it really?
It was 80,000+ in the 90s before the renovations, dickweed. So if you're gonna insult the team and peoples memories, at least be accurate. And nobody gets the girl because it's football, the point is to win the Super Bowl. Stop mixing metaphors you hack. And yes we did sing a song. It was called "Shout" and it was awesome and we still do it to this day. And sometimes people would fight. And it was hilarious and stupid and childish and fun and glorious and embarrassing all mixed into one. I'm pretty sure you never experienced it.
What does enjoying it really mean? I mean: crack heads and heroin addicts — some of them anyway — certainly enjoy what they’re doing because it makes them feel good. But it’s ruining everything else about their lives. And in a way, I feel like being a fan of the Buffalo Bills is somewhat a disease — an addiction, if you will — in very destructive ways.
I know when I'm hanging around with my friends watching football, checking my fantasy squads, shooting the shit, drinking some delightfully crafted hoppy beverages, playfully shit talking with friends who support rival teams, I think to myself "but what does it REALLY mean??" What a shit pile of sanctimony. Really?? The Bills are RUINING people's lives?!?! This is what happens when someone with a large vocabulary and a pseudo-intellectual grasp on human thought delves into the comments section of the Buffalo News and starts taking Twitter seriously. I love it.
The radio stations make money, the newspaper and television stations make money, the *team* makes money peddling you the same thing over and over, allowing you to react in the same predictable, frequently derisive and always unhealthy ways.
YOU ARE BEING MANIPULATED BY THE OVERLORD CORPORATE SAD MACHINE TO MAKE YOU UNHAPPY AND FROWNIE FACE. DERP.
What is the difference between calling about a quarterback controversy between Drew Bledsoe and JP Losman, or JP Losman and Trent Edwards, or Trent Edwards and Ryan Fitzpatrick and Tavaris Jackson? Isn’t it essentially the same thing, same stories, same arguments, same debate that has always been had? Isn’t it the same shitty reduction of emotions to insisting that one must be right with their opinion because that is the only conceivable way that a person could enjoy anything about this process?
You just named five shitty QBs. People don't like shitty QBs, especially after they've been treated to the likes of Jim Kelly. People are allowed to bitch about it. GOD YOU'RE SUCH A DICK ABOUT EVERYTHING.
You certainly aren’t enjoying the games.
No YOU'RE not enjoying the games. Stop projecting on everyone.
Sports can be a wonderful thing. They can be entertaining and they can make for a wonderful story. They’re almost incomparably rich in their popular history. But like a drug — like any addiction that brings enjoyment really — there is a cost to that. A burden, if you will. And when loved too much or relied on too heavily, it begins to have terrible results.
Says the guy who has 15,000 tweets mostly devoted to sports, plus a blog, plus a podcast, plus he tried to start another blog................glass houses and whosiewhatsit.
Is there really a need for 10 blogs to give 4 reactions a piece for a single game, not to mention on top of all the other traditional media coverage? Is it really necessary for people to make cynical observations about the ineffectiveness of any given player on any particular play for no apparent reason? How is it possible that fans can so routinely lionize and villainize the same person within a few short weeks?
1.) Because people are allowed to post reactions (albeit frequently shitty such as my own) on the interwebs because we live in a pluralist society where people are allowed to have their say. 2.) Cynical observations about ineffectiveness of a given player are made precisely because of the player's ineffectiveness. 3.) Because Leodis McKelvin routinely makes plays that are so poor that he deserves repeated lionization and villainy. Motherfucker was drafted in the 1st round, jackass.
And maybe, after all, it’s not the owner or the coaches or the players or the media who is entirely to blame. Maybe it’s us. Maybe we’re the problem.
Yep. Me, Dubs, Harts, and Jazz Hands get together with our idiot friends from home and make Ralph draft shitty corners year after year in the first round with a Ouigi Board. WE ARE. TO BLAME.
I mentioned today to some people that the feeling I have about the most common reactions from yesterday’s 48-28 Bills loss to the New York Jets is that, at their very best Bills fans just sound insane.
"Merp Merp Merp silly Bills fans reacting to their loss. What plebians. I can't believe they participate in such debase pursuits." YOU SOUND LIKE THE BLOODY SHART OF AN ELITIST NINCOMPOOP. /two poop jokes in one.
It’s a disease. I’ll call it the losing disease, and I think it has to do with when a single team holds such a high percentage of the national prominence to a region, such a level of perceived importance and when they fail spectacularly so often and when the people who follow that team become so emotionally involved in that entire situation that they are incapable of seeing the forest for its trees. They are incapable of having rational, objective, outside-the-bubble viewpoints on the team. And because the team is so bad so often, because they are so likely to disappoint you, it turns you, the fan, into a cynical and bitter person not just about the team, but about your city, your community, your life.
This is what drove me to write this. This fucking shit heel of a paragraph. WHO IS THIS MEATBALL?!?! Amazing. The pure lack of self awareness and dicknosed elitist sanctimony that bleeds through in this paragraph is appalling. How does one SERIOUSLY write a paragraph with this and then post it on their website with a straight face?!?!?! THE LOSING DISEASE!?!?!? "Derp, I just invented a disease. It's called The Losing Disease. Now let me fart and shit all over your life from my high pedestal perched upon Mount Dickface." Man I want to meet this guy just so I can pee in his shoes. /classy
Yesterday, I watched the Bills game and hung in there until just a little after halftime, until after the score was no longer in question and well after the game was no longer in question. I wasn’t surprised or shocked or frustrated or disappointed or remotely entertained. I was just amused because here it was: the same sarcastic, bombastic, “cutting myself is my therapy” reaction of Bills fans on the internet who were settling in to condemning themselves to another awful Sunday experience.
So I turned off the TV, took my wife and dogs to Lake Georgetown in Central Texas, and went for a walk. It was the healthiest thing I’d done on a football Sunday in a long time, and I’ll probably do it more.
"I was just amused." diarrhea'd the shitmouth as he dropped berries into his facehole from his Roman Chaise Lounge, laughing condescendingly as the urchins 'neath him sniveled away at their childish lives. /stabbing self in face at the utter asshattery of that paragraph.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say it felt like breaking out of some bird cage; like freeing myself from the shackles of something which, while familiar and in some ways adored, was also incredibly depressing and limiting. For me, I was standing up to the idea that any sports team was owed from me anything except my attention when they are entertaining.
YES, MR. DUFRESNE, TELL US HOW YOU FREED YOURSELF FROM OPPRESSION AGAIN! SING IT TO THE HEAVENS! WE CAN ONLY HOPE TO ONE DAY WALK FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST!
I imagine him accentuating each "if you're" sentence with a Louis XVI effeminate dip of the wrist. "This I will buy. This I will not. This I will buy. This I will not." Christ where's Larry's Guillotine when you need it?
In gauging the reaction to other thoughts from other writers about this, there are usually two camps. First, the camp that applauds the idea: “Good for your, way to have some perspective.”
Second are those who think that anything short of unquestioning loyalty is somehow breaking some sacred code of the sports fan.
AAAAAAAND THERE IT IS. It's buried way deep in there but here it is. It's not about him breaking some sort of perceived losing cycle. If it truly was I'd have a shred of respect for this article. But it's not. It's him up to his old shitheel contrarian for the sake of contrarian tricks. He doesn't care about the cycle of losing, the years of no playoffs, the psyche of Buffalo fans, or any of the vomit he just spewed over the preceding paragraphs. All he wants to be is the guy with the "other" opinion. He's the shitty Skip Bayless of the Buffalo sports blogosphere (a term which makes me shudder). Whatever is the prevailing sentiment on the internet, Stewie has to be the voice of dissent.
THE BILLS SUCK! - everyone who watched the game this weekend.
/Waits five minutes.
NO YOU SUCK BECAUSE I WANT TO BE DIFFERENT - Stewart
It's so fucking obvious. It's like a telegraphed Fitzpatrick pass (NAILED IT WITH THE SHITTY METAPHOR).
And in Buffalo, where losing is routine, where the borders are low and everyone is leaving and the city is small and opinions mean more than outcomes, these reactions are only amplified. Only made to seem more intense.
So maybe the Bills *should* move. Maybe they should go to Toronto or Los Angeles or San Antonio or Portland or somewhere where people with a different perspective would have the opportunity to grab onto a more realistic understanding of the team and its sport. And maybe for Buffalo, that’d be good too, to finally end an abusive, unhealthy relationship with an entity that has taken for granted its loyalty and falsely deluded people into believing that anything less than that is a shortcoming.
Here it is. Cue the shitty "outsider who left and then turns the barrels back on his hometown" Thomas Wolfe You Can Never Go Home Again bullshit. God this schtick is so tired I don't even have the energy to go over it. Shorthand: you're bad because you're passionate about your team, you should be passionate about something else because I said so. Go fuck yourself, you lazy hack. You make Ex-Pats look bad.
I still love sports and will still watch the Bills with a passing interest. But nothing more. And it’s not the losing that has anything to do with that. It’s the extracurricular nonsense that drowns out the fun. It’s the hangover after the next hit, taking us to inconceivable lows. For the Bills, they’re better without Buffalo. For Buffalo, they’re better without the Bills.
YOU JUST WROTE AN ENTIRE PIECE ABOUT THE LOSING PENETRATING OUR BEINGS AND SOULS AND RUINING EVERYTHING AROUND US AND TURNING US NEGATIVE. And then you close with a conclusion about how the team and city are both so fucked they'd be better off without each other. God you can't even maintain a salient point in the course of a single post. Eat a bag of dicks. You're on the odious taint list, too.
Sunday, after I teased BuffaloWins.com editor Joe Pinzone about the Bills loss and alluded to my passing amusement about the team, he referred to me as a “turncoat” in a mocking fashion. He’s referred to me as that often since I’ve adopted this outlook. What Joe Pinzone — nah, what Buffalo forgets is that this isn’t war. Football isn’t war. It’s just football.
And that’s what happens when you having the losing disease.
"My passing amusement" sums up everything about this dicknose. You're not clever. You're not different. You're just a douche. Go Bills.
/cue the Hunchback of Notre Dame limping across the parapets, screaming "SANCTIMONYYYYYYYYY! SANCTIMONYYYYYYYY!"