#and casual fans are 1000% more fun than uncles and uncle-minded ppl

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i feel really similarly re: your answer to the ask about leafs fans. one thing that genuinely annoys me to no end is how people don’t seem to realize that a lot of the hate/negativity that surrounds the leafs is literally a direct byproduct of other fanbases seeing how awful “fans” of the leafs themselves talk about the team and its players 😭 like uncles will complain about all the disrespect the leafs get but if supposed fans of the team constantly broadcast themselves ripping into players then why wouldn’t fans of other teams think they have a free pass to repeat the same talking points lol. steve dangle making an entire career off exactly that and still being popular within the fan base speaks for itself. it’s just irritating that every single widely held (obviously baseless) criticism about the players like about mitch and his character or jt not being captain material or the core not caring etc etc etc literally began from fans themselves like that’s so sad to me lol

that's extremely well put and 100000% the case, lol. i totally agree. and it's why the divide in fans annoys me so fucking bad. all the neutral people who are like 'you can't tell people how to be a fan and ultimately we all want the same thing' are also obnoxious bc like. these people who are actually hateful and constantly negative use the length of their 'fandom' to explain why they're fed up and it DOES contribute to the way other teams fans view us and makes it hard to be a fan out loud and it EVEN impacts how players perceive toronto as a market (elliotte on a show last night admitting that the marner debacle has made players be like... ehh not there! abt toronto is so funny). anyway it's like........ once again, i fully believe engaging in sports and hobbies in general is a choice, whether it was something shown to you as a child or you discovered it yourself later. plenty of people who have been fans for the same lengths of time have managed not to become ugly and over the top about it so lol. i know some people manage to detach themselves from players but ultimately.... you're here to root for players as much as the team. you buy jerseys with their names on it and you spout facts about their individual play to other teams fans to defend your own. athletes are human beings, and i think that's a much more interesting and grounding way to interact with sports than the barbaric and annoying ass way so many men do. nothing's going to change about it, but i think toronto media in general needs more neutral to positive voices (fuck you steve dangle fr.) bc they get accused of having homer broadcasts and yet. every time i listen to either the american or the canadian ones during leaf games, the leafs are never getting the benefit of the doubt and they can never do anything right, lmfao. and maybe that's been shaped by their playoff failures of late but i don't care. we're here to have fun, and i want to be able to be positive and believe in this team and its core players (who are going to end up the best to ever do it in blue and white regardless of the playoffs btw) every offseason in a place without 49023492 idiotic comments telling me they can't win a certain way. like. you've lost the plot if part of your thing as a sports fan isn't blind belief. that is quite literally what it is... every year 31 teams lose and still have a fanbase at the end of it, lmfao.

i'm aware of how celeb culture and parasocial relationships impacts all of that too. i feel it in myself, the weird urge to be defensive over some of these guys i know that i don't know, but on the other hand, i fully think that the people who are overtly negative have their own little parasocial thing going on where they make up their own narratives and personalities for these guys they don't know either. i've fully seen a couple twitter users insinuate bc they, a toronto/ontario native themselves, have never heard about a positive interaction with mitch marner first hand that must mean he is actually the devil (they never say they've heard negative things either LMFAO.. like they don't know him or know people who know people who know him and say he's decent so he must be rotten bc hockey circles are small and blah blah blah). it's just so................ it's all bc toronto's a huge market and hockey is the thing to talk about 24/7.