Meaningless meaningful rivalries

A rivalry of galactic proportions finally came to a head when the police were called to The Norwich Sci-fi and Film Convention. 

Apparently, Star Wars fans had got into a verbal altercation with Doctor Who fans. It seems no punches were thrown, but I’m guessing generations were definitely cursed.

Why do seemingly similar groups hate each other? Star Wars  and Doctor Who fans should be close friends, since they most likely have very similar interests. They are all enthusiastic enough fans of sci-fi to attend a convention dressed as their favorite character.

While most of the world dresses up only on Halloween, they spend weekends doing it at conventions and cosplay forums. That makes them an exclusive group already, yet they still draw more lines in the sand.

As an outsider to the rivalry, I don’t quite understand. Star Wars is a movie about the future and Doctor Who is a TV series about the future. Seems interchangeable. But to the fans, it’s not. The difference between a lightsaber  and a sonic screwdriver is astronomical — only outsiders can’t see that.

For example, Victor Oladipo and D.J. Byrd  are not the same (thank goodness), but to sci-fi fans they might appear to be similar. IU students know differently. In the same way we have our rivalry with Purdue, sci-fi fans inherently hate other fans of other shows.

So why do we hate Purdue students with all our might?

We are both students at colleges in Indiana. We probably both come from similar upbringings. I have friends and family who graduated from Purdue, yet every time I see someone wearing a Purdue shirt I wonder what went wrong in his or her childhood.

They were probably just like me, with one difference — they chose to go to Purdue.
Why do we choose to hate Purdue, when we could just as easily not care about it?

Plain and simple: it’s fun to playfully hate.

I boo Purdue fans from small children to elderly women when walking into an IU game. I feel an entirely unreal responsibility that I owe it to my team. It’s fun to hate something that closely resembles what you stand for, but is somehow (at least in your eyes) inferior. Instead of being happy for both sides, we pick one to epitomize as the
lowest of low, creating a rivalry.

The notion of a rivalry is a man-made concept. It injects a sense of importance into a meaningless distinction.

That importance, although empty, somehow makes the distinction now meaningful.

The sense of pride superiority over a rival gives us reinforces the most important thing: how much we actually love our school, TV show, movie etc.

So keep on booing, arguing and jeering — especially if you see a Doctor Who fan from Purdue.
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— lewicole@indiana.edu