dg comments

please empty your brain below

This is indeed one of the great mysteries of life - why are we passionate about certain things? Was it a rewarding experience at a critical age? Why is DG passionate about writing? Can we go off things we were once passionate about?
I’m looking forward to the comments….

RogerB | 21.05.26 - 7:54 a.m. | #

The religion one is interesting. "Not having it in them to believe in a higher state at all" is not necessarily apathy.

There are some atheists who are quite evangelical in their convictions, not only that God does not exist, but that religion is actually evil. Richard Dawkins for example.

timbo | 21.05.26 - 7:56 a.m. | #

Congratulations to the Gunners. And indeed to Villa.

Sport has largely replaced religion as the opium of the masses.

Andrew | 21.05.26 - 8:00 a.m. | #

When it comes to scales, I think you're at last an 8 on the scale scale. A meta-scale, perhaps.

Chris | 21.05.26 - 8:03 a.m. | #

An Arsenal fan since I was 7 & went regularly late 70's to late 90's, I was on the North Bank when they beat Aston Villa but Villa still won the league & Pele did a lap of honour, I drove back from a holiday in Dorset to see them win the league in 1991, I was in Brussels when they lost in 1980 & in Copenhagen when they won in 1994,I went to all 3 cup finals v Sheffield Wednesday, I would have been an 8/9 in those days but more a 4/5 today, I'm happy for today's fans who started at 7 and had to wait till 30 to see them champions.

mclm | 21.05.26 - 8:12 a.m. | #

I think age has something to do with it, thirty years ago an Arsenal win or defeat would make or ruin my weekend but this isn’t my first rodeo. For my daughter (21 next week) this was a much bigger deal, like 1989 was for me. At full time in Bournemouth on Tuesday, she was jumping around the living room, I smiled. We shared a hug, I went to bed while she stayed up ‘til 3am chatting to friends and watching ‘content’. That said, as I write I’m listening to an Arsenal podcast featuring a group of middle aged blokes chatting about their experiences on Tuesday night.

Phil | 21.05.26 - 8:32 a.m. | #

I think it’s a good thing that you have a low interest in sport or else you’d be watching it on TV or going to live events. It certainly can be too time consuming and you’d never have time to do the leg work or write your blog !

Brian | 21.05.26 - 8:39 a.m. | #

As noted above, thank heavens you aren't a sports fan - we wouldn't have your blog.

Chris | 21.05.26 - 8:56 a.m. | #

Is it the sport or the story, Arsenal haven't won since 2004, they keep on screwing up (usually losing games over Christmas), they tried to maintain this tradition by losing successive games in April, crucially it marks a break with the Wenger era, 8 years after his departure its not 'his' team that won the title.

As for myself I keep an eye on the scores and the table - I couldn't name a single player in any league, I dropped out after the 'taking the knee' stuff, the political messaging that surrounds the game having put me off.

As a number nerd, I'm surprised you steer clear of the stats, with one game left there's a 10 point gap between second and third, then seventh to sixteenth is covered by 10 points, then the useless twins at the bottom, 22 points between Burnley in nineteenth and Notts Forest in sixteenth, for most teams the season consisted of milling about.

Still Anon | 21.05.26 - 9:14 a.m. | #

I probably rate about the same as you. But I can get into an intense tennis match. There's something about the one-on-one battle that does get me interested in a way that team sports, or even everyone vs. everyone things like F1 or golf don't.

Chz | 21.05.26 - 9:33 a.m. | #

I'm so pleased that you have brought non-interest in sporting achievements out into the open. I have zero interest in the result of somebody kicking or batting a ball somewhere. It just doesn't matter to me.

But the curious thing is that my three brothers are keen fans (2 Manchester United, 1 Crystal Palace) and my wife is a lifelong Leeds United fan.

Somewhere in the genes I must have missed something, but I'm OK with my no.1 score on your chart.

Petras409 | 21.05.26 - 9:49 a.m. | #

Read the latest post on your linked arseblog if you want some total Scale 10 bedwetting.

David B | 21.05.26 - 10:05 a.m. | #

I take a mild interest in the fact that the top-flight team I took a mild interest in back in the early 70s, and my home-town team, are likely to both be in the Championship next year. It has to be said that one set of supporters are rather less ecstatic about that possibility than the other set. (They last met in the League in 1949)

Timbo | 21.05.26 - 10:06 a.m. | #

I'm a 9 or 10. I can't watch a sport without picking a team or individual to support. It just seems to be hard wired into me. I even worked for a couple of years on a little shindig we had in London in 2012.

As for football, I've followed a largely rubbish team for 42 years. I follow them everywhere (I don't want to think how much this has cost me) and have made life long friends doing it. I've been to their weddings and birthday parties, know their families and children and, sadly, been to their funerals. They are now some of my closest friends and it's all built on the love of a crap football team...

Simon | 21.05.26 - 10:33 a.m. | #

I'd self score as an 8.

I have a season ticket to both a men's and women's rugby team, and follow both extensively. Though I am less on the online forums now than I was in my 20s.

Indoctrinating my child in the same hobby as my parents raised me, has both been enormously entertaining and a reason to take results less emotionally.

However, I follow football mainly only as a soap opera (and what high production values it has!) - the recent Southampton spying controversy a particularly amusing sub-plot. Likewise, other international sports are more for occasional periods of success, whether that was cricket, cycling, tennis, combined Olympic events and even golf for the Ryder cup!

To me it is an opportunity for community, which you fulfil in other ways.

TomH | 21.05.26 - 10:56 a.m. | #

I'm very much at the low end of the scale. If rugby is on a screen, I have to look away. I can watch a soccer match, but also tend to turn away when fouls or diving start. But I do like to watch snooker. The epitome of non-contact. In every match I find I am wishing on the underdog.

Malcolm of Kent | 21.05.26 - 10:58 a.m. | #

In my opinion it's tribalism not a religion. Much of the division of today's society (not only in the U.K.) is down to social media fuelled tribalism.

Religion is a system of beliefs, values, rituals, and practices connected to spiritual or moral questions. Religions usually include teachings, traditions, and communities that go beyond family or ethnic identity.

Tribalism is loyalty to a group (“the tribe”) combined with suspicion or hostility toward outsiders. Tribalism is more about group identity and belonging than spiritual belief.

Steve | 21.05.26 - 11:24 a.m. | #

I would score myself as zero on sport empathy (and religion). My brain feels like it completely shuts down when people start talking about sport, to the point that I am unable to even pretend that I have any interest in it. It certainly hasn't helped with fitting in at work in the past.

David | 21.05.26 - 12:02 p.m. | #

I'm probably a 2 or 3 on the scale, aware of what's happening, but no passionate interest. I'm a member of a WhatsApp group of old university friends and most days that is a succession of football-related messages. I'm feeling a little left out ...

Alan S | 21.05.26 - 12:10 p.m. | #

There may be a split between right-thinking people who favour team sports, and those who favour contests between individual freaks. Something about complexity, perhaps. I take a keen but largely undemonstrative interest in football. Perhaps I rate a 2-4, although I'm in a funny spot of late because I hate the current team and find myself willing on what should be bitter rivals. There’s a hungry gap over summer once obsessively filled with F1, but I gave up on that in disgust at the start of the ‘90s. The Tour de France is to my mind the most fascinating sporting competition on the planet, although this year’s (lack of I)TV coverage promises to seriously challenge my enthusiasm.

jpmac | 21.05.26 - 12:19 p.m. | #

The World Cup is just three weeks away.
104 matches will be played (up from 64 matches last time) (all televised) (sigh).

diamond geezer | Homepage | 21.05.26 - 1:34 p.m. | #

Football is just here to fill the void, whether you realise it or not.

Maybe you go to church and meet people, or maybe you’re in a choir or orchestra, or a rambling club, or go train spotting with friends, or any other activity which involves a group a team of people with the same interest and you just get to …. be with other humans that you get along with because you support the same team.

Meeting your friends on a Saturday before the game. Having a drink. Banter, gossip, jokes. You do it because it gives you something to do, some purpose in life, something to focus on, something to look forward to - the downside being the sadness when you lost. But that’s pretty much it.

Life is long and awful and fairly pointless. Because we’re just going to die (before HS2 opens) but sports and football are here to just help fill the void.

One of my friends once said to me “Arsenal is my life!” and whilst i did not at all feel the same way, I felt that it was wonderful that they had found something to fill the excruciating void that is filling your time being alive.

darren | 21.05.26 - 2:00 p.m. | #

Is that FA Cup picture the most we've ever seen of dg?

dg writes: ✉ That’s the comment in my sealed envelope so I get to treat myself to a Creme Egg (and no, it isn't)

Ewan James | 21.05.26 - 2:41 p.m. | #

I totally share your lack of sport empathy (or sport apathy, perhaps).

Have you read the book W, by Georges Perec? I think you'd like it. The futility/absurdity of sport is a big theme in the second part of the book (although as an allegory)

Harry | 21.05.26 - 4:00 p.m. | #

> If sport ever makes your heart beat faster you're probably on the right hand side. If no sport gets your pulse racing you're probably on the left.

I'm not sure how I fit in with this, because on the one hand, sport can definitely get my pulse racing, but on the other hand, I consider myself to be low on the sports *fan* empathy scale.

The tension of a close contest and the resolution of the big unknown as to who will win can fire me up, but the emotional effect of a particular team or individual's results is ultimately negligible.

When people ask me what football team I support I I sometimes say Arsenal. But that's mostly because it's easier to give an answer of the kind that people expect rather than a long explanation about how I often find sport entertaining and exciting, but find the notion of true fandom rather inexplicable and unrelatable.

Arsenal became my favourite team in the Henry/Bergkamp days because they played in an attractive style. But even though I've paid somewhat more attention to them than any other team for 25 years now, and even though if they are playing anybody else, I would tell you I'd prefer that they won, I don't really count myself as a "fan". Because if they do win I think "cool" and if they don't win I think "shucks" but there's no meaningful emotion behind it.

If they win with a dramatic last-minute comeback I might be left genuinely excited and pumped-up post-game but that's more because of the last-minute drama aspect and not because of the fandom aspect of it. If they win because they scored five in the first half against a dreadful team who offered nothing, I won't be excited at all.

Likewise, a dramatic or controversial loss might leave me feeling a bit gutted but if they lose just because they were crap and thoroughly outplayed I just shrug, 'so be it'.

And these levels of emotions are the same whether it's Arsenal who I have nominally 'followed' for decades, or a competitor in a sport I don't regularly follow and I just picked one side to notionally, arbitrarily 'support' for the hell of it.

stevekeiretsu | 21.05.26 - 4:26 p.m. | #

Having flat-shared with otherwise amiable folk who turn into the sort of people you would cross the road to avoid when the football was on the telly, the thing that baffled me is why so many people invest so much time and money in something that clearly leaves them furious and miserable most of the time.

If I had a hobby, I'd want to enjoy it.

ianvisits | 21.05.26 - 5:01 p.m. | #

The Tour de France - or indeed any cycle race - is, as far as I can see, a complete washout as a spectator sport. Why do people line the roads all day to see a bunch of cyclists pass through in a matter of seconds? The order in which they are bears no relation to the final outcome as the "domestiques" are surrounding the Chosen One in order to preserve his energy for the final push.

We had to put up with the "Surrey 100" or whatever it was called every year from 2011 (the "practice" for the Olympics) until COVID killed it off. A 40 mile detour to get from one side of the town to the other, with badly-trained marshals dealing with frustrated travellers trying to go about their business.

And, talking of business, "It brought people into the town". Yes, maybe. But they weren't spending any money, and the regular shoppers couldn't get there because access to the main car parks was cut off.

timbo | 21.05.26 - 5:20 p.m. | #

I would be in David's team, if he had one.

mikeS | 21.05.26 - 5:27 p.m. | #

For many years I had a season ticket at Highbury, attended domestic and overseas fixtures (including many cup finals) and enjoyed emotional highs and lows alongside many people that otherwise I felt no connection to.
This was a significant investment, of time and money. Then I stopped attending matches in person. Once the investment was negligible, I soon found my reaction to wins/losses became significantly less high or low. This week's success brought me quiet satisfaction, and the likely defeat in UCL final will register as mild disappointment. I prefer it this way.

Frank F | 21.05.26 - 6:02 p.m. | #

I'm a 0-1!
In fact the part of this post that interested me the most when you said it was you in the photo with the FA Cup!!

Cornish Cockney | 21.05.26 - 6:58 p.m. | #

The question is who, if anyone, would you have "supported" if your then 4 year old brother's (then) team had won. Maybe his (new) team of some 50 years.

Bblb | 21.05.26 - 8:05 p.m. | #

I support West Ham Utd. Not sure how I feel at the moment, mostly terrified.

Anyoldname | 21.05.26 - 8:13 p.m. | #

"I went to the garden, started to build a fire and had a barbecue and I didn't watch any of it" - Arteta on the match that decided it for Arsenal!

Bob L-S | 21.05.26 - 11:52 p.m. | #

I'm definitely to the left of the scale, but the fact that there are so many people to the right has kept me in a job I enjoy doing for over a decade, so I'm not going to complain about them.

martin | 22.05.26 - 7:30 a.m. | #

also, in case anyone else was wondering, the photo with the FA Cup appears to be from Arsenal's 2015 win, when the competition was unsponsored.

martin | 22.05.26 - 7:48 a.m. | #

Until I was about 10, I'd be a firm 0, but now I'm probably a 7. I enjoy watching football, hell it's even fun playing it sometimes, but it doesn't derail my day if the result doesn't go how I wanted it to. When I was younger, I could get a bit too "passionate" about football, though, haha. Then again I support a team which doesn't win much, so if I was anymore than a 7, I'd probably feel more down than I should.

I don't see anything wrong with anyone loving sport, of course in a reasonable amount. They're hobbies and interests and are what make us who we are, life would be more depressing if we policed how much someone can like something.

All Over 2a | Homepage | 22.05.26 - 9:37 a.m. | #

0 on sport - no interest whatsoever, but pleased for anyone who finds pleasure in it.

0 on religion - but I gently wish I was more of a 5 because of an interest in transcendence and there being more than what we are able to see.

3 on politics - I'm one of those marchers for Palestinian rights - I don't love having to march, but the idea of doing nothing at all while Israel conducts a genocide is something I can't live with.

Colin | 26.05.26 - 9:12 a.m. | #

Would imagine most people feel the same, as to why a grown man , would find anything remotely interesting, about bus and train timetables

pleebrat | 10.06.26 - 7:50 p.m. | #

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