I don't know. I come on here everyday and am mostly glad I did. Don't get me wrong, it's clear that some are just looking for a bit of the ultraviolence if you will, but mostly I enjoy the mini-conversations I see about the team. Or that I get to participate in. I don't like it when it get's personal. I feel like DD gets unfairly attacked just because he's DD and has such a history. When he get's ugly it's usually after a prolonged period of abuse. It seems to me. I haven't enjoyed the Rockets this much since the early days of Harden. Actually, I'm enjoying this borderline play in team much more. And I think most of the people on this board feel the same. If someone wants to be ugly that's fine with me. I just ignore them and give my attention to the folks who actually have something to say. That's the other side of the anonymity thing. Yes, a person can anonymously troll and act like a ballsack, but I can also "walk away" with no risk of catching a real shiv in my back. I'm actually thinking we should get Rockets t-shirts, Clutchfans t-shirts with our handle on the back, to wear on game days. That way I will know which one of you red rockets I'm in line behind at the Chipotle.
Blame ESPN - everyone thinks they have to hold some extreme opinion to be as cool as the guys they hate on TV. It makes no sense.... .....but in all seriousness, it's not just ESPN - I think the poster above was right. The science is people have always been drawn to a sense of belonging to the point that it can overshadow their personal values and the internet, advertisers, and the media all exploit that for it's own nefarious and often financial purposes - and there is your tribalism. That's why inclusiveness is so important because when we take these extreme positions - it's really about exclusiveness ex: it can ONLY be Sengun and never Jalen or you can only agree with conservative talking points and never liberal ones. Brand loyalty, party loyalty, etc - those are all corrosive to to the things we actually primally desire which is a sense of belonging. It gives you a sense of community, but one that is defined by being at war with others....some people withraw, check out and say "no thanks, if that is a community I want no part of", others dig in and go to war with their community over in the GARM every day. It's like - we are ALL Rockets fans, WE ARE THE COMMUNITY, and yet many on this forum spend their time telling our community members how dumb they are because they think Jalen has a chance to be special. ...at least that's my POV, open to other ideas here.
you're acting like this all happened at one time. cut those into rockets eras and there wasn't nearly as much b****ing as there is now. not even close.
no I'm not acting like they happened at one time. Like i said those were all just off the top of my head and consist of so much more. I could break them up and bring up at least dozen other topics within that this board bittches about. doesn't matter which era, the GARM is always filled with agendas, player only fans, complaining, preferences, bias and so on
this is it right here. The discourse is so nasty because of this. I start rooting for Jalen just to have a good game so I dont have to read ninjas cream over his misfortune.
I don't have any beef with the guy, and I'd be a hypocrite if I started it after my comments in this thread. But I definitely haven't been a fan of some unhinged behavior a couple of times, and I think that's the type of thing that spirals online discourse. It made me want to fight him and I wasn't even involved. Twitter and Reddit have ways of radicalizing even normally chill people. Clutch deserves so much credit for having mod powers all of these years and being extremely even-keeled and emotionally reserved about all of the crazies on here.
I knew who you were talking about immediately. Just the other day the guy is trying to bully some high school kid about "knowing ball" and challenges him to play live and tells the kid he would tear him apart yada yada and then the kid who plays varsity ball at his school posts his highlight reel and Roosh moans and complains about not having cameras "back in the day" when he played so he proceeds to post a video of him playing 21 in one fo the cringiest displays I've ever seen. He is a joke. Several other Rockets Twitter guys just arent able to carry difficult discussions without lashing out and taking their ball home. I like the way Clutch Fans self polices itself.
Clutchfans can be whatever you want it to be if you use the ignore button. You can literally craft your experience by ignoring posters you dont want to read. But what you cant do is dictate how other people express their fandom. If you want to express support and put good vibes in the air about player x, go for it. Me... Im going to call a scrub a scrub and im going to use this online forum to vent my frustrations (and give kudos when warranted) because thats what my version of fandom is. If you dont want to hear about how scrubby a players is playing or what i think their future holds, like i initially said, craft your experience.
I was going to post something like this but felt it would just die because of a lack of interest to discuss this issue. I have a long history in coaching and studying the game of basketball and my hope is to have insightful and solid discussions with people who are thinking the game. Especially since I do not live around Rockets fans and to be able to discuss the Rockets with fellow fans is potentially a big deal. I am mostly disappointed in my interactions. I have been on this sight since around 2000 and created my account about a year later and I have less than 2k posts. Most times when I look at what's being discussed its of little basketball value. We get "hot takes" the consist of the words, Bust, Trade/move, Franchise player, and starting. Its all very tedious. A whole bunch of people saying the same things about different players. I would love to have conversations about what the team is trying to run offensively, what our defensive rotations or focus is. It would be cool to have people put up some film and then talk about what they and we are seeing. I would love it if we actually broke down why a player may be improving or what improvements our team as a whole has made, and why. We are missing the why in almost all of our posts and that to me is the most interesting part of talking about basketball. I don't know how to fix it other than to create a new forum with the ability to remove dumb posts. Good luck with that impossibility.
Lmao I didn't see this but it's the least surprising thing I've ever read. The most Roosh story of all time. It's the basketball version of "fight me IRL" on xbox live. It's completely insane behavior for a 40 year old dude.
Didn't want to make this thread about him, but yeah. I think that behavior is exemplary of what we are talking about in this thread. Let's talk sports ball to escape real life and have fun, not to prove anything about ourselves. We've gone through waves of weirdness like this with Yao and Jeremy Lin - and it wasn't their faults. It was because fans came in and started making every conversation about nationalistic pride, racism, or who knows what. Any time the conversation is about "me vs you" or "country vs country" or anything more than "the Rockets and winning and losing" it's going to go in a bad direction.
what if it is the other way around? what if certain players need to fail miserably for the good of the team?
