[If you’re reading this, you’re either as tired of hearing the bloo-bloo spit-bib-wearing Class Police whining as I am or you’re a patrolman on the force and somebody sent you here in an awesomely un-classy bit of passive-aggression. Either way, have fun. All feedback is welcome in the comments, especially from your precious ivory tower.]
Dear friend,
We’ve come to a time of the year when you may have noticed people can get a little touchy about mean things said on the internet (colloquially referred to as “all the time”). There’s a decent chance that you’re among the touchiest of these folks and I’m here to help guide you through your internet experience to make sure you don’t badly embarrass yourself with some trite parochial amniocranial bilge.
I’m talking about class, of course. Specifically, I’m talking about the kind of people who give a shit about what they feel are people exhibiting a lack of it in our beautiful sport, whether it be from players, coaches, referees, fans, owners, ice girls, announcers, analysts, bloggers, reporters, gypsies, tramps, and thieves.
Specifically among fans though. That’s the worst.
What is class, you ask? Well that’s simple. Class is that thing crybabies mount their high horses over when somebody says something they don’t like and they’re both too scared to drop a good comeback and too dumb to know better than to try. Later, when these people are done mounting their horses, they get into the saddle on the back and try to make somebody feel ashamed for not being as virtuous as the fart-sniffing, finger-wagging donkeyjizzes who demand some random set of codes be enforced online.
Here’s the fun part though: classiness is actually a thing. Classy people are great. They’re cool. It’s neat to aspire to classiness. Classy people don’t get caught up in long-distance bickering over hockey games. Classy people don’t really concern themselves with that kind of stuff.
Classy people don’t wag their fingers and demand people be like them.
That’s the rub: you can tell somebody to be classy; you can passive-aggressively whine about how it’s particularly lacking somewhere; You can pretend to be concerned for another person in a lament about how much better things would be for that person were he to exhibit class; but the one thing you can’t do is actually be classy while doing any of those things.
It’s the global thermonuclear war of internet fandom discussions. The only way to win is to not play.
So I’ll leave you with this advice, dear friend: Whenever you feel yourself wanting to ask for a little more class, be the change you want to see. Instead of crying about it, simply take the same measure of class you’d ask that person to exhibit and shove it up your ugly ass, you stupid booger. We call ourselves fanatics for a reason.
