Self-Loathing Tech Fans

vapspwi

vapspwi

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I've got a friend who is a little younger than me, around 40, married with a couple of kids. Husband and wife are both Tech grads; I'm friends with them on Facebook, and I've met some of their other friends in real life and online. They're Tech fans - they have season tix for football, go to some road football games, go to some basketball games. Probably slightly above average in engagement, as Tech fans go.

The thing about this bunch is that they all seem like what I can only describe as "self-loathing Tech fans." Different from the bandwagon fans that are barely fans in the first place and looking for a reason to hop off, different from the irrational fans who expect us be Alabama and fire everybody if we're not, sort of different from the chronic "throw it to Calvin" know-it-all complainers.

It's a weird sort of preemptive pessimism. A bad season (2015) isn't an aberration, it's the fact that we made a bowl for the previous 19 years that's the aberration and the bad year is how it's supposed to be and forevermore will be. No opportunity to take a shot at Tech is passed up (for example, tonight's soccer sellout prompts a snarky comment about the fact that we don't fill the stadium up every week). Losses are never seen because if we get behind, that means it's time to leave to beat traffic; wins are just a set-up for future disappointment.

Is this common among other fanbases, or is it some oddity of the Tech psyche? I find it really annoying - I'm generally pessimistic, but nevertheless, I'm able to enjoy and celebrate wins. I'm more likely to defend our school and team than I am to join the media or the opposing fans at taking shots at our shortcomings. I just don't get it - anybody else encountered this type?

JRjr
 
vapspwi said:
I've got a friend who is a little younger than me, around 40, married with a couple of kids. Husband and wife are both Tech grads; I'm friends with them on Facebook, and I've met some of their other friends in real life and online. They're Tech fans - they have season tix for football, go to some road football games, go to some basketball games. Probably slightly above average in engagement, as Tech fans go.

The thing about this bunch is that they all seem like what I can only describe as "self-loathing Tech fans." Different from the bandwagon fans that are barely fans in the first place and looking for a reason to hop off, different from the irrational fans who expect us be Alabama and fire everybody if we're not, sort of different from the chronic "throw it to Calvin" know-it-all complainers.

It's a weird sort of preemptive pessimism. A bad season (2015) isn't an aberration, it's the fact that we made a bowl for the previous 19 years that's the aberration and the bad year is how it's supposed to be and forevermore will be. No opportunity to take a shot at Tech is passed up (for example, tonight's soccer sellout prompts a snarky comment about the fact that we don't fill the stadium up every week). Losses are never seen because if we get behind, that means it's time to leave to beat traffic; wins are just a set-up for future disappointment.

Is this common among other fanbases, or is it some oddity of the Tech psyche? I find it really annoying - I'm generally pessimistic, but nevertheless, I'm able to enjoy and celebrate wins. I'm more likely to defend our school and team than I am to join the media or the opposing fans at taking shots at our shortcomings. I just don't get it - anybody else encountered this type?

JRjr
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We have a lot of those, and I do think that they are a special (if excruciating) facet of our fanbase.

My theory is that engineers and other analytical people like to be correct, and that by being generally negative, they are just playing the odds. Beyond that level, in a certain subset of the negative-Nancies, you get people who likely got involved, or stay involved, with GT fandom specifically for the bad moments. The blowout defeats. The building of lynch mobs for embattled coaches. The cathartic release of anguish at close losses to rivals. The poignant taste of "I told you so" rolling off of the tongue. I have encountered more of these trolls at GT than in any other fanbase that I have associated with.
 
gtyellowjackets said:
You should've been around in the 80s after the bottom fell out in the 70s if you think it's bad now.
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I used to go to games all the time where somebody would hand me tickets because I was wearing Tech gear.
 
I work with several Tech grads. of the same age, and they share the same attitude. It must have been something in the campus water supply. :dunno:
 
gtyellowjackets said:
You should've been around in the 80s after the bottom fell out in the 70s if you think it's bad now.
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But this isn't just about bitching and complaining - that's obviously a big part of the Tech culture. This is a particular strain of "put Tech down at any opportunity" sort of self-loathing. Like, after the soccer game last night: "give them credit, they got 55K in the stadium without help from Clemson or UGA."

JRjr
 
GATechAE07 said:
I work with several Tech grads. of the same age, and they share the same attitude. It must have been something in the campus water supply. :dunno:
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It's weird. I mean, these folks maybe missed the '94 season and basically came in at the start of the bowl streak. That's a pretty good time to be a Tech fan. Even with the bad losses from time to time, it was more good than bad for a long time ('97 to '14), and it was good again in '16. I don't understand having so little pride in your alma mater that you'd go out of your way to find a way to put it down.

JRjr
 
vapspwi said:
It's weird. I mean, these folks maybe missed the '94 season and basically came in at the start of the bowl streak. That's a pretty good time to be a Tech fan. Even with the bad losses from time to time, it was more good than bad for a long time ('97 to '14), and it was good again in '16. I don't understand having so little pride in your alma mater that you'd go out of your way to find a way to put it down.

JRjr
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Yeah I've met them too. It's because they know deep down that they are very weak. And they project their weakness onto the team they root for. They probably have uga family or friends who talk öööö to them throughout fall and eventually they cave and start agreeing with them on how pathetic they are. They're like Meek from Game of Thrones.
 
I think this attitude is the natural result a combination of a couple of truisms about Ma Tech and her brood.

1) The aforementioned need to be right. Engineers need to be skeptical. If you build a bridge on nothing but optimism while ignoring its faults, people die. However, being a sports fan involves a lot of blind optimism. It doesn't come easy to Tech folks.

2) It is not a huge leap to say there would not be a big overlap in a Venn diagram where the circles are Tech students and the most "popular" kids in high school. As such, they are used to being out of the mainstream. They look skeptically at anything that looks like the blind conformity you get with the quest to be popular, one of the gang. While that is often a good trait to have, if you apply it to every facet of your life you can miss out on a lot of fun. Instead of looking clever individualist, you come across as a bitter misanthrope.
 
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I'm just a lot happier when I set low expectations and exceed them than when I set high expectations and do not meet them. I do the same thing in my life. If I join up with someone on the golf course, I say I'm a 12, but am really a 6. I act like I'm just about broke, but I'm really pretty well off. It just seem like GT and I both do better when we have low expectations.
 
Some of us just have a pessimistic view of life. Give me lemons and I'll bitch about not having limes. We're gonna go 4-8 this year and it's going to be terrible.
 
SolJacket said:
I think this attitude is the natural result a combination of a couple of truisms about Ma Tech and her brood.

1) The aforementioned need to be right. Engineers need to be skeptical. If you build a bridge on nothing but optimism while ignoring its faults, people die. However, being a sports fan involves a lot of blind optimism. It doesn't come easy to Tech folks.

2) It is not a huge leap to say there would not be a big overlap in a Venn diagram where the circles are Tech students and the most "popular" kids in high school. As such, they are used to being out of the mainstream. They look skeptically at anything that looks like the blind conformity you get with the quest to be popular, one of the gang. While that is often a good trait to have, if you apply it to every facet of your life you can miss out on a lot of fun. Instead of looking clever individualist, you come across as a bitter misanthrope.
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I think this is true for engineers in general, but were the attitudes formed in high school or earlier? Does getting voted Most Likely to Masturbate give a high schooler a Rodney Dangerfield complex?
 
Everybody try not to take this the wrong way, but your average nerds aren't socially well adjusted people. We can have odd and frustrating behaviors that, at times, result in our social exclusion. This should have been self-evident to many of you, growing up. If we weren't all trying so hard to bond over a common purpose in our football team, it's likely that relatively few people who graduated from GT would ever talk to eachother for any non-business reason.
 
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