Watch 'The IT Crowd' explain perfectly how we feel about World Cup fever

Well put, since I am in fact tired of everyone going on about Game of Thrones but don’t whine about it for obvious reasons.

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Funny, I feel that way about baseball.

This is funny because I don’t believe I have ever raised my voice in cheer during any kind of sporting event. I am 40+ years old and I still don’t quite understand what motivates people to stand and yell at players tens or hundreds of yards away (let alone a tv!). I can’t imagine being so engaged in something I am not actually participating in. Also, I suck at team sports. That’s probably the real reason.

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Soccer. You saw one match, you saw them all. Same for hockey.

When a local hockey team arrived, hundreds of people greeted them on the airport. When a world-famous cardiologist arrived the next day, one person was there. Shows the priorities people have.

Why not at least half the fame and public recognition for scientists? Why so much interest in the I-can-kick-a-ball-look-how-awesome-I-am instead of those without whom the ball would still be a stuffed animal stomach?

Then we wonder we don’t have enough engineers to man the machines and enough scientists to keep up with the Far East. And instead of that we get reruns of that one match somebody recorded years ago, or so - they all look identical and replaceable. Not even mentioning the desecration of everything with the fullerene-like idolum, you can just not avoid that thing, it’s pushed down your throat and it gets irritating. And try to find a news station to watch on the background while working on something, that would not be polluted with at least a third of content related to the round nonsense, like it was something that is Actually Important. And it never ends; the soccer season ends, the hockey starts. The hockey season ends, the soccer starts. If it was just the World Cup… like the Olympics it could be ignored with relative ease as they don’t last for long - it is the unrelenting background barrage of sports coverage that is so unimportant and so everlasting and pushing out more interesting discourse from the news (why it is not confined to sports channels and has to spill out to the actual events?) that it gets outright maddening after a while. Maybe there’s something on not owning a TV.

I don’t mind e.g. baseball. Maybe because my local culture pretty much ignores it so I can do the same.

Because it is EVERYWHERE. Sometimes someone HAS to push back at least a little and reclaim a piece of space where the soccer madness would not be infringing upon and we could not care. Making fun of it is the best way.

…“Maybe he’ll kick the ball…” - Moss nailed it way better than I ever could.

The way Xeni feels about the World Cup is the same way I feel about Breaking Bad. …and the World Cup.

The difference is, the World Cup pretty much stops dominating the internet when it’s over.

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I don’t genuinely give a shit about Football, but every four (or two) years it is a fun diversion for the summer and a nice international and intergenerational shared experience.

There is no need to take it too seriously either way. Alternatively you can invoke as much irony as you need to feel comfortable (cf. Eurovision Song Contest.)

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I really thought I had seen all IT Crowd episodes. Can someone please tell me in which episode can we find the park scene above in the second BoingBoing embedded video? (http://youtu.be/msN7HNncHik)

Thank you.

I must say, that bit about the cranberry sauce pretty much clinches it as far as I’m concerned.

That said, the most significant positive point about this whole “ritualized tribal conflict as a less-harmful surrogate for war” dog and pony show is that it would be a pretty cool thing if it actually worked.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be panning out.

S3E2, “Are we not men?”, according to here.

Cranberry sauce: I like to cut to the chase.

Surrogate for war: just to clarify, World Cup month is the month when people can’t be all expecting things of me. That includes world peace. Right with you on that whole thing, and you can have my full attention for the next 47 months from July 14 onwards.

Exactly. I don’t have cable because the benefit wasn’t there. It constantly amazes me that people think it’s a some sort of judgemental indictment or protest where I somehow chose to be different by -not- doing something… as some sort of superiority ploy; that I am trying to say something about them whenever I consume different or fewer things than they do.

“People. What a bunch of bastards”

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@shaddack I am talking about the 1m39s bit in the park where Roy and Moss have trouble returning a stray soccer ball to a group of guys far away. That was not part of the S3E2 episode, as far as I know (plus, they don’t even wear the same clothes in that episode). Is it possible that this bit was cut for some reason when an episode was aired in BBC America?

When I look at collective humanity, it appears that being average is a crime against nature.

Oooh what an edgy weird thing to say.

I think it was just Xeni’s excuse to post that IT Crowd clip… Because, IT Crowd…

Also, comments on a blog bitching about the content of a blog post… kind of equally tedious.

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I get the same thing from my family because I don’t go to theatres that say the movie starts at seven, when it starts at 7:15 after a bunch of commercials, or restaurants that play radio, or stores that use PAs to announce offers every ten minutes, or places that go too heavy on the upsell. I only bring it up when they suggest it, and I say no thanks, and they ask why.

They seem to think I conclude every evening by perusing and caressing my big book of vendor enemies, updating it now and then with a quill and a cackle. In reality, I just don’t patronize companies that provide an unpleasant experience for me. I thought everyone did that.

I wouldn’t dream of urging them to share in my “boycotts”. It would be as if I thought they were too stupid to not do business with companies that don’t offer what they want.

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No, you fool! You’ve got us in an infinite loop!

Now it is tedious posts all the way down! :smiley:

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My dad is always like “Did you see that ludicrous display last night?”
And I’m like “For the umpteenth time dad, I don’t have a TV!”

It’s not all smiles and smugness when dealing with a generation that can’t grok not watching TV.

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It’s a perfectly sane observation, given a tiny elite have employed the mass media to brainwash the masses over the last century with great success, and that we’re quite evidently in the bread and circuses phase of a decadent civilisation.

That it’s greeted with sarcastic derision is a pity, but hardly surprising. Although, having taken a squiz at a few of your posts, it’s hard to see you disagreeing, so I guess you’re just trolling.

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