Kate Ward50 said:Keep reading, reading, and just reading... headlines like "Fan culture" or "Fans as an urban social movement," or "Fans, behavior, and mentality." Basically, society is having a moral crisis, and 70% of the group is having a mental one! As if Buddy and I are going to wear black, gray, olive green, or navy shirts, slim-fit styles, jungle boots, hats, hoodies, and every other product from the Fanatics store (which is a department store, not some street stall!) because that’s apparently the only way to prove we're a subculture rather than just a mass movement. As if Buddy and I are desperate to show how different we are from Hajduk fans. I’ll wear a jersey if it fits me right because I’m proud of it. I only wear a scarf if it actually matches the group's reputation and the vibe of the stands. It wasn't like the stands were all decked out in white back in the "eighties" and nobody was jealous! Why? Because the subcultural fan movement had its own lively energy! At the end of the day, Fanatics even sells purple shirts, and they're top-tier!
The issue is that people waste their energy typing about thugs, the Stanley plaza, the hundreds of incidents in the nineties, or percentages regarding who has more members—all the other excuses within the fan culture scene. We lose games both at home and away on every single field, yet here we are, with some random guys typing about whose graffiti is bigger or what the ratio of Black Knights to Bigfoot is up on Mount Rainier. 🐔
There’s just no effort. You don't see any new flags, banners, or double-pole flags, nothing. Then you look at the stands and there’s zero structure; anyone can stand wherever they want, even in the core group. Literally, we can't even find two Hajduk shirts. It’s a joke when the leaders are wearing Lacoste shirts, designer bags, and Ray-Ban sunglasses, while someone else throws on a Greuther Fürth shirt (!?) like a total clown. Another guy is wearing a Thor Steiner green shirt (!?) and then we wonder why the rest of the crowd isn't wearing Hajduk gear.