Thursday, February 19, 2015
14 Shades of Fans
Its ICC cricket world cup season again and what is a better time to review the various sub-species of the cricket fan boys and girls than now!!
Lets get to know them..
Lets get to know them..
1) The Busy Bees..
These are not exactly a part of the classification, but included them, as we tend to bump into one, very frequently. These people have plenty of everything, but time is not one of them. They consider it a awful waste of time to watch cricket and feel its better to watch a game of "Football" or "Baseball" instead. I wonder what they do with all that time on hand..
2) The Devotional.
No, I'm not talking about their devotion to the game of cricket. But their devotion to the God they believe. You might tend to think that these are a subset of theists , but you are wrong. Even the staunchest of atheists will be found engaged in archaic rituals. These people transcend all the religions and beliefs that the world has seen and the devotion just increases manifold during the times of crisis for the team they root for.
3) The Superstitious.
This group of people might be scientists in the rocketing launching division of I.S.R.O, but it doesn't stop them from wearing their unwashed blue T-shirt, when your favorite team takes on their arch rivals, just to increase the chances of winning. Logic takes a back seat, with seemingly inexplicable actions of theirs, ranging from sitting of a particular pose, to hold on to a particular spot in the room or clutching to the remote etc, is as much important as anything else.
4) The Experts.
This breed is is a class apart. They provide incisive insights into the dynamics of the match, with every bowl being bowled and every run scored. They can almost single-handedly explain the Duckworth-Lewis method, which is considered as complex as the Einstein's Theory of relativity and second only to the tax laws of any country. They are the first to decide the match result, although the last to leave the room, just to make sure their prediction is correct or wrong. In spite of their extraordinary talents, we cannot really explain why they continue watching a match that they predict that their favorite team would lose. Blame it on the "fan" inside them.
5) The Statisticians.
On surface they are almost like "The Experts". But they tend to live in the past. From time to time, during the course of the match, they present to you nice anecdotes of the past, with accurate (sometime exaggerated) accounts of what happened in a similar situation. They are moving encyclopedias of cricketing statistics, with just about anything cricket related.
6) The optimists.
They just don't give up on their favorite team. Not even when Venkatapathi Raju is playing against Curtly Ambrose, on a Perth pitch, with 7 runs needed off the last ball.
7) The pessimists.
These, as you can figure out, these are the worst kind. They just don't believe that their team is going to win. They have a gift of pissing off even the coolest of guys, when watching a match. Their constant nagging , that their team is bound to lose, gets onto your nerves like the scratching sound of chalk on a black board.
8) The hybrids.
These people cannot be classified as either pessimists or optimists. There are as optimistically pessimistic as they are pessimistically optimistic. They can never watch a match completely. Nor they can keep themselves away from watching it. Every now and then they resign to the fate of their team , but still keep asking about the score for every 5 mins.
9) The online fan.
This category of fans live in a virtual world. They prefer "following" cricbuzz and cricinfo than watching it live on regular TV. While some do it with no possible explanations, there are others who do not have an option, but to follow it online, like the IT/BPO folks. And there is no surprise that these would be the first to update the scores on social media.
10) The punters.
These are the type of people, who are not really interested in the game. They see a gambling opportunity in almost everything. A game of cricket provide the ideal platform for these guys to bet on something. More often than not, they bet on a team that they do not like. If they win the bet, they get the money, and if not , they can at least be happy that their favorite team won.
11) The occasional fan.
These people have a sudden surge in their interest levels for the game , on special occasions like the world cup or much more important games like India vs Pakistan. They preserve their energies only for the chosen matches, which are few and far between.
12) The Cricket fan.
This category of fans is an abstract one. Their love for the game is not confined by the boundaries of teams. They root for the game rather than the teams. They are probably the purest form of fans. They do have a favorite team, but they can watch almost any game , so long as it is interesting. If you ever need to prepare a World XI team, these are the guys you can rely on.
13) The Party Animal:-
This set of people are there in almost every group that watches the game of cricket. Although they do not understand the nuances of the game, they are almost an indispensable part of the group and more often than not, also the life of the gathering. They will be there throughout the game, munching on the potato chips, gulping the soda and/or beer. Basically these people are there just for the atmosphere, more than the game.
14) The superficial:
These people masquerade as hard core fans, until you pit them alongside an expert or a statistician. They only know a few keywords and using this vocabulary, they try to show off as an expert fan.
The reasons for this behavior is hard to fathom and is irksome for a real fan.
This set of people are there in almost every group that watches the game of cricket. Although they do not understand the nuances of the game, they are almost an indispensable part of the group and more often than not, also the life of the gathering. They will be there throughout the game, munching on the potato chips, gulping the soda and/or beer. Basically these people are there just for the atmosphere, more than the game.
14) The superficial:
These people masquerade as hard core fans, until you pit them alongside an expert or a statistician. They only know a few keywords and using this vocabulary, they try to show off as an expert fan.
The reasons for this behavior is hard to fathom and is irksome for a real fan.
Friday, February 13, 2015
The side effects of being nice
"The world, they say, is a nice place. Especially if you are not. Or so it seems."
These people are always at the best of their behavior, good at academics and no really bad at social etiquette, they were your quintessential nice guys. Call it good parenting/teaching or lack of opportunities to be bad, they always believe that it was everyone's responsibility to keep the world a nice place, and that they need to be nice, before expecting niceness from others.
In theory, this should have worked, but the reality seemed far from it. These people feel like the guy who continues a group-prank, when everyone opts out of it, at the last minute. I think there was a caveat for the idea of making the world a nicer place, that it only works when everyone becomes nice, at the same instant. Apparently, they have missed that caveat.
It starts very early. People always expect more from people who make an effort to be nice. The expectations are almost exponential, especially if you are nice.
Comments like ,
"I can understand if X does something wrong. But from You ?? (with a capital Y)"
"Even You??"
"Trees which bear fruits, will have to suffer the pain of stoning"
and "You can observe the dark spots only on a full moon", are almost a regularity.
It may be an unreasonable expectation , probably because you are a nice guy, to expect that the world to be fair enough to provide a level platform to all the people. But fairness in this world, is almost as rare as intelligent life in the never ending cosmos.
If you fall into this category, in school, if you ever fall below the so-called high expectations, purportedly set by yourself, you will be flogged with comments and expressions, that would make you feel that you have committed a blasphemous crime of the worst kind. All this happens while your less-nice compatriots play along in gay abandon, with no questions asked, apart from the occasional comparisons with the nicer guys.
In adolescence, while everyone else is trying to find their sexuality, these poor souls will be busy fighting the urges of their first crush, but commissioning their focus onto something less carnal (Video Games, Academics, Cricket etc), for it is something no less than a crime, again by their own standards(or so were they made to believe). Even if they ever break their shackles and try to strike a conversation with their crushes, chances are that they find themselves in a bottomless pit, now-a-days being called as friend-zone. While these people evolve into nerds and geeks, the others will happily walk away into the sunset, holding hands.
Once you enter the corporate world, the scene does not change much. It appears natural for the rest of the world,that these "nice" people have no option, but to compensate for the all the bad in the world. This notion is also bearable, if the distribution is uniform. In reality, this is not the case.
Right from the pre-historic days of "Mahabharata", when the good: bad ratio was literally 5%, it was always lopsided towards bad. The game is heavily rigged, towards the not so nice people.
At the time of appraisals and assessments, you will be dragged down by your own accomplishments, so much that your seemingly amazing achievements, become, "its-expected-at-your-level" things.
In the political scene too, these people have to prove a lot more than their regular counter-parts. If they have formed a political party with an agenda like anti-corruption or social justice, people will scrutinize them all the more, to find faults. While there is absolutely nothing wrong in the scrutiny, what is baffling is the askew-ness of this scrutiny. People seem to always come to terms with the inadequacies of the "not-so-nice" , for the lack of a better word. At the same time, they do not seem to have enough time to forgive even an iota of a mistake committed by the "nice", just because they have set high standards for themselves.
The worst part is that this process seems to drive more and more people away from being good and there by augmenting the divide between the good and the bad, ironically, making the nice people look like misfits in a world that just seems to swing away heavily against them.
In spite of all this, there seems to be some very inexplicable tenacity and consummate resilience about these people, to still stick to the standards that were imposed by the conditioning of the world. Probably, these people are the real "Atlas"es bearing the weight of the world.
These people are always at the best of their behavior, good at academics and no really bad at social etiquette, they were your quintessential nice guys. Call it good parenting/teaching or lack of opportunities to be bad, they always believe that it was everyone's responsibility to keep the world a nice place, and that they need to be nice, before expecting niceness from others.
In theory, this should have worked, but the reality seemed far from it. These people feel like the guy who continues a group-prank, when everyone opts out of it, at the last minute. I think there was a caveat for the idea of making the world a nicer place, that it only works when everyone becomes nice, at the same instant. Apparently, they have missed that caveat.
It starts very early. People always expect more from people who make an effort to be nice. The expectations are almost exponential, especially if you are nice.
Comments like ,
"I can understand if X does something wrong. But from You ?? (with a capital Y)"
"Even You??"
"Trees which bear fruits, will have to suffer the pain of stoning"
and "You can observe the dark spots only on a full moon", are almost a regularity.
It may be an unreasonable expectation , probably because you are a nice guy, to expect that the world to be fair enough to provide a level platform to all the people. But fairness in this world, is almost as rare as intelligent life in the never ending cosmos.
If you fall into this category, in school, if you ever fall below the so-called high expectations, purportedly set by yourself, you will be flogged with comments and expressions, that would make you feel that you have committed a blasphemous crime of the worst kind. All this happens while your less-nice compatriots play along in gay abandon, with no questions asked, apart from the occasional comparisons with the nicer guys.
In adolescence, while everyone else is trying to find their sexuality, these poor souls will be busy fighting the urges of their first crush, but commissioning their focus onto something less carnal (Video Games, Academics, Cricket etc), for it is something no less than a crime, again by their own standards(or so were they made to believe). Even if they ever break their shackles and try to strike a conversation with their crushes, chances are that they find themselves in a bottomless pit, now-a-days being called as friend-zone. While these people evolve into nerds and geeks, the others will happily walk away into the sunset, holding hands.
Once you enter the corporate world, the scene does not change much. It appears natural for the rest of the world,that these "nice" people have no option, but to compensate for the all the bad in the world. This notion is also bearable, if the distribution is uniform. In reality, this is not the case.
Right from the pre-historic days of "Mahabharata", when the good: bad ratio was literally 5%, it was always lopsided towards bad. The game is heavily rigged, towards the not so nice people.
At the time of appraisals and assessments, you will be dragged down by your own accomplishments, so much that your seemingly amazing achievements, become, "its-expected-at-your-level" things.
In the political scene too, these people have to prove a lot more than their regular counter-parts. If they have formed a political party with an agenda like anti-corruption or social justice, people will scrutinize them all the more, to find faults. While there is absolutely nothing wrong in the scrutiny, what is baffling is the askew-ness of this scrutiny. People seem to always come to terms with the inadequacies of the "not-so-nice" , for the lack of a better word. At the same time, they do not seem to have enough time to forgive even an iota of a mistake committed by the "nice", just because they have set high standards for themselves.
The worst part is that this process seems to drive more and more people away from being good and there by augmenting the divide between the good and the bad, ironically, making the nice people look like misfits in a world that just seems to swing away heavily against them.
In spite of all this, there seems to be some very inexplicable tenacity and consummate resilience about these people, to still stick to the standards that were imposed by the conditioning of the world. Probably, these people are the real "Atlas"es bearing the weight of the world.
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