Does success breed contempt?

[JunkMonkey]

I had the same experience when The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was first on BBC Radio 4. It was a kind of underground success and only a very few people knew about it. Episodes were recorded on audio cassette and exchanged hands.


<snip>once it became better known, repeated, made into a popular book series, TV series and film, then it was no longer cool to like it. Fans began to be much more critical of it.

Though, to be fair as the same material was endlessly beaten into new formats it did get a bit thin and worn out. The radio serial which I remeber listening to on Radio 4 back in the day still stands up. It works. As a radio show it's funny. As an LP (I have a copy) it is still funny but less so - what works as a serial with week long gaps between episodes doesn't necessarily hold together as a whole . As a TV show it's okay, the books wore out their welcome pretty quickly, and as a film it was a bore. The more special effects were thrown at it, the less special it became.

 

[The Big Peat]

As an example, why do people hate David Beckham so much but love Eddie the Eagle so much?

Tbf, Beckham had a notable lack of success for the national team, culminating in letting them down at the worst moment. If he'd won a major tournament and actually had success, rather than being an underachiever, might be a very different story.

As it is, being the person who lets down the huge load of emotional investment rarely goes well. Which I think is very much a strand of what goes on here.

 

[Montero]

Yes, no-one expected Eddie the Eagle to succeed, we just liked watching him flap his wings and annoy the other countries that had serious contenders in the ski jump. He delivered on the emotional investment.
And fair play to him, he did jump off the ski jump and land without killing himself. He had worked at it.

Which takes us back to the point that if your expectations of a film match what it delivers, you are happy, if the expectations don't match, then you're not. Disappointment can make people really sharp about it on reflex, especially if you've been waiting for a new release for months and then it is meh.

 

[Vince W]

Tbf, Beckham had a notable lack of success for the national team, culminating in letting them down at the worst moment. If he'd won a major tournament and actually had success, rather than being an underachiever, might be a very different story.

As it is, being the person who lets down the huge load of emotional investment rarely goes well. Which I think is very much a strand of what goes on here.

Beckham is hated because of who he managed to marry more than anything he may or may not have done on the pitch. At least it is for me.

 

[Swank]

Beckham is hated because of who he managed to marry more than anything he may or may not have done on the pitch. At least it is for me.

Because he should be with Sporty rather than Posh?

 

[Parson]

So let me get this straight: The Englishman who is a legend all over the world in the world's most watched sport is hated, and the Englishman who was among the worst ever to participate at the Olympic level in his sport is loved. ----- Makes sense to me.

 

[JunkMonkey]

So let me get this straight: The Englishman who is a legend all over the world in the world's most watched sport is hated, and the Englishman who was among the worst ever to participate at the Olympic level in his sport is loved. ----- Makes sense to me.

Yep. Heroic failure is about the only thing we truly appreciate here. Possibly because we are so good at it - we should be, we've done precious little else for the past 50 years.

 

[The Big Peat]

So let me get this straight: The Englishman who is a legend all over the world in the world's most watched sport is hated, and the Englishman who was among the worst ever to participate at the Olympic level in his sport is loved. ----- Makes sense to me.

One person gave us what we wanted from him, the other didn't.

Also

a) his good stuff came for a club most of my generation loathed to a somewhat insane extent. Expecting us to love him is like expecting Steelers fans to love Tom Brady

b) it's not quite that simple. I imagine Eddie the Eagle made plenty cringe. I feel like the majority of people no longer have strong feelings about Beckham. But the larger the name, the more noise there is, and as such I imagine more people hate Beckham than even think about Eddie the Eagle's existence

 

[BAYLOR]

Yes, ive very very very jealous that I didn't think of this thread my sel.

Nope ! Don't bother im really inconsolable about it .

 

[Pyan]

...his good stuff came for a club most of my generation loathed to a somewhat insane extent.

This is true - English football fans can be divided into two mutually exclusive groups:

a) Manchester United fans
b) Everyone else

 

[Venusian Broon]

This is true - English football fans can be divided into two mutually exclusive groups:

a) Manchester United fans
b) Everyone else

I'm in the (b) camp, However, I think the division of English football fans is faaarrr more complicated. (although I'm Scottish, so perhaps my views don't count. I am observant, however!)

The local rivalries between loads of different English clubs can be pretty scary. I used to live in Cambridge in the 90s and I remember vividly when the local rivals, Peterborough, came to play a game. Essentially the Cambridge police 'escorted' the couple of thousand Peterborough fans out to the train station and back home using dogs, helicopters and about about 500 officers. (If you want a scene to imagine this, it was a bit like the scenes in Band of Brothers where the surrendered Wehrmacht are marched along the autobahns - just add a layer of police/dogs either side.)

Peterborough fans really hate Cambridge Utd. (And vice versa)

 

[Pyan]

Yes, but I think you'll find that the only thing that Peterborough and Cambridge (or Southampton/Portsmouth, Liverpool/Everton, Newcastle/Sunderland, Millwall/West Ham, etc, etc,) fans actually agree on is that both sets of supporters also hate Manchester United. The only other teams that really come close are Leeds United and Chelsea.

Possibly the root of the dislike of Manure Man Utd stems from the days when they were generally regarded as the richest club in England, with the obvious corollary that they bought their way to success, rather than developing home-grown talent. However, as more and more clubs are going the way of insanely rich corporate and private owners, it would suggest that the loathing of Man Utd is slowly growing less than it was, and eventually they'll reach the dizzy heights of "disliked". Don't count on it being inevitable or anytime soon, though.

 

[Pyan]

The local rivalries between loads of different English clubs can be pretty scary. I used to live in Cambridge in the 90s and I remember vividly when the local rivals, Peterborough, came to play a game. Essentially the Cambridge police 'escorted' the couple of thousand Peterborough fans out to the train station and back home using dogs, helicopters and about about 500 officers. (If you want a scene to imagine this, it was a bit like the scenes in Band of Brothers where the surrendered Wehrmacht are marched along the autobahns - just add a layer of police/dogs either side.)

We used to have this when Southampton and Portsmouth were both in the same division, and we had the dubious pleasure of the South Coast Derby to look forward to each year.
The matches were usually moved to an early kick-off, often 12:30, to cut down on the amount of time the two sets of fans could spend in the pubs beforehand. They were strictly ticket-only with a reduced ground capacity to allow for wide gaps between factions in the stadium, and the home fans were held in the ground until the away ones could be herded (and that's the exact description) onto the coaches for the trip home, escorted by half the entire Hampshire police force until they were on the motorway. Even then, it was unusual for all the coaches to escape without at least one brick-smashed window.
Fun times...

 

[JunkMonkey]

This does seem to me to be a purely football thing.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Yes, but I think you'll find that the only thing that Peterborough and Cambridge (or Southampton/Portsmouth, Liverpool/Everton, Newcastle/Sunderland, Millwall/West Ham, etc, etc,) fans actually agree on is that both sets of supporters also hate Manchester United. The only other teams that really come close are Leeds United and Chelsea.

Possibly the root of the dislike of Manure Man Utd stems from the days when they were generally regarded as the richest club in England, with the obvious corollary that they bought their way to success, rather than developing home-grown talent. However, as more and more clubs are going the way of insanely rich corporate and private owners, it would suggest that the loathing of Man Utd is slowly growing less than it was, and eventually they'll reach the dizzy heights of "disliked". Don't count on it being inevitable or anytime soon, though.

That hasn't been my personal experience (anecdotal, of course). Some fans really are local fans for local people.

Speaking as someone whose "English team" is Arsenal (I lived down in North London for about 15 years, so they were more-or-less my local team) I'd say we put Spurs way above Man U on the dislike stakes.

I do, of course, not <cough> support, Man Utd either, but that is because my sister's useless ex was a huge fan of theirs. She of course is a massive Chelsea supporter, so EPL is fun for us

 

[Montero]

At the height of football violence, a friend had an American visitor, who said "ooh, fancy a nice Saturday out, I've bought a ticket for a football match" - it was one of the big London clubs, can't remember which. Friend explained very carefully it wasn't like American Football it was soccer, that he'd be standing all the time, on concrete terraces, exposed to the weather. American visitor went anyway and came back in shock. Not what he was used to at all.