Sports is a polarizing area to discuss, no matter which way your approach the subject. On whole people generally have three different reactions to the very existence of professional sports.

1. Fans: People who follow at least one team, diligently if not fervently
2. Casuals: People who will watch a game if its on, or support a local team if they’re doing well. But its not a high priority
3. Disinterested: People who either can’t understand the fascination with the pastime, or lament the wasted money and energy that goes into their enjoyment.

As with anything there is a good deal of gradation in each of the categories. Fans can range from the mild cheering if they catch a game on TV to the incredibly devoted who have mortgaged houses to pay for season tickets. The disinterested can also range from those who h0nestly don’t care a lick one way or another, to the violently and boisterously opposed to the very existence of the organizations.  As with most things the bulk of the population finds themselves as casual or moderate on the scale.

Digital Self vs Tactile Self

Depending on the social network you travel in in real life you may or may not have a chance to interact with groups of people cheering during a sporting event. It can be quite an experience and the noise of the crowd can sweep normally calm introverted people up in its wake. You need not be a super fan to yell scream and boo with reckless abandon, you just have to have a couple people near you leading the way.

Online there can be two schools of thought as to how people show their affiliation, some people find themselves more open about their devotion, while others are afraid of alienating other teams fans. Sports is about conflict and on some level most people understand this and relish the chance at an encounter with an opposing fan. Online anonymity only extends so far, and the more people become familiar with you the less likely they are to behave badly. Notice on Bulletin boards and blogs where anonymous or un-moderated comments are allowed there is a much higher frequency of trolling, ie people lurking beneath the surface of a discussion only to pop up to spout incendiary comments.

However in Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace the level of civility in the conversation is raised. You interact with these people and choose to friend or follow them based off of the value they add to your conversation. the more value you place in the conversation as a whole the less likely you are to go off message, spouting obscenities or derogatory comments, if that is something you wouldn’t normally do.

More and more our Digital selves are becoming extensions of the tactile selves.  Online actions have repercussions in real life, and while you may be excited that your team is doing well, most people who recognize the long lasting legacy of online content withhold the true comment gems  for offline use only. As a result the dialog between fans of different allegiances stays cleaner, and in the end more fruitful for all parties involved.

The one thing left to consider is how you appear to those who have disdain for professional sports in general, more often than not they will remove themselves from the conversation, by unfollowing or ignoring you until such time as you regain your sanity. If you provided enough value in your interaction outside of the contest then they might come back. If you were an obnoxious boar as a fan, then they are probably a little less likely to come back around.

The disinterested have a low threshold for acceptance of fans, more often than not they feel put upon that their tax dollars go to fund stadiums they don’t want, their media coverage is canvased by millionaires they don’t care about and their town swept up into frenzies by a pastime, that is alien or even wasteful to them. These people are much less likely to deal with your fan foibles in virtual space, when they can cleanse their content stream by eliminating your chatter about topics uninteresting to them.

Sports as a whole has been reduced through explaination as a way of controlling the masses through distraction and escapism, or on the other hand has been identified as a unifying force in civic pride. Love them or hate them they seem to be here to stay along with their inflated salaries and opulent venues. The one thing that you can’t argue is that love them or hate them they can change the way people interact and observe each other a good deal. Be conscious of that fact, and enjoy the ballgame, or not. Its your choice.