Hoverers, or "A Hater's Taxonomy"

(hatters gotta hat, and haters gotta hate)

The Hater's Taxonomy was an article I prepped when WNBA hate was high.  But WNBA hate ain't so high no more.  I'm sure the haters have gone underground, so I decided I'd just follow the advice of the above sign.  So enjoy.


"Hoverers", or "A Hater's Taxonomy"

A recent article by Rosie Schapp at NPR written during the World Cup furor attempted a classification of the various types of soccer fan.  One type of fan listed by Schapp was the "Hoverer".  If you read the description, Hoverers really don't sound like fans but would probably be listed in the "Haters" group. 

Some hoverers not only have zero interest in soccer—they also can’t wait to tell you why. They love to announce how boring it is, how insufferably low-scoring it is, and how much they hate it, all while blocking your view and otherwise disrupting your World Cup enjoyment. Most hoverers, however, are benign: along for the ride, they want to hang out with their chums, drink some beer, maybe glance at the game every ten minutes or so. And that’s fine, gentle hoverer, as long as you promise to stand and not take up valuable barstool space.

I wondered why Schapp would call these sort of anti-fans "hoverers", which was made more clear when I read an on-line definition of "hover":

hover

intransitive verb

1.  to stay suspended or flutter in the air near one place
2.  to linger or wait close by, esp. in an overprotective, insistent, or anxious way
3.  to be in an uncertain condition; waver (between)

Definitions #2 and #3 really struck me.  A lot of haters - or at least the more trollish ones - strike me as hoverers.  They betray an "insistent anxiety".  They won't trot out merely one argument or why they might hate women's basketball, but they'll trot out several brief arguments all in the same sentence - usually entire sentences separated by commas, as if space were at a premium and they felt that they nervously had to get everything in the comment thread before the internet was closed down.

This led me to conclude that not all "haters" of women's basketball are the same.  By "hater", I mean someone who feels that he has to vocalize his or her hatred towards the sport.  (As opposed to the "indifferent" or the "silent hater" who doesn't like women's basketball but is perfectly content to let the sport go his own way.)

Here is my proposed taxonomy of haters.  The first rule is that a "hater" is only a person who professes a hatred of women's basketball in a public forum, even an anonymous public forum like the internet.  The hater, believe it or not, might actually not hate women's basketball at all.  You can classify haters into several groups.

1.  Hoverers:  A hoverer is sort of the Senator Larry Craig of women's basketball hater-tude.  Craig, in case you forget, was the Family Values Senator who was caught looking for love in the men's public bathroom. 

Hoverers are extremely conflicted about their hatred.  Part of it is due to sheer fear that their own perceived masculinity might be devalued if they actually enjoyed the sport, or admitted to it.  Therefore, they have to express their hate at all times lest that male basketball fans might think that they're not man enough if that women's basketball fan inside suddenly leaps out of the closet.  You might never find them with a rentboy in the Carribean, but they might have a DVD of the 2005 WNBA Finals shoved somewhere under their bed.

2.  Haters But:  The "hater but" is a hater who will make an exception in certain rare cases, usually for an institution or particular player that has caught his or her eye.  For example, I'm sure that you'll find an intersection between fans of Georgia Tech football and women's basketball haters, as college football fans tend to be fairly conservative.  However, some Yellow Jackets fans will make an exception when it comes to the women's college team.  After all, it's important to those fans that Georgia Tech succeed in everything, even the sports that they don't like.

Likewise, some Hawks fans will be interested in how the Dream are doing because they support anything that has to do with Atlanta sports - Falcons, Hawks, Braves, Dream, Beat, whatever.  Either that, or they like Candace Parker.  Or Britney Griner.  Or whatever.  The Haters But can still be reached, in the same way that the heart of the Death Star could be reached if you could hit that two-meter wide exhaust vent.

3.  Trogs:  Short for "troglydites", these are the fans whose hatred is based in the Bigot's Triangle:  black, female, and/or gay.  Any one of the three will set a Trog off.  Most Trogs wish the clock could be turned back to 1963, when women were in the kitchen, blacks knew their place and gays were arrested.  Overwhelmingly, this group is composed of white male heterosexuals, but there are some exceptions - "Trog Identifiers" like, say, conservative female columnists who are identifying with a powerful interest group and are hoping to gain power by association.

WNBA hatred is merely a subset of their other various hatreds.  The Trogs wage a war against modernity in all its forms and many of them haven't watched a basketball game since 1960-whatever when the game became "too black."

4. Trolls:  Trolls don't really hate women's basketball at all, but they like to pretend they do.  The overwhelming property of a troll is that troll craves attention - either not getting enough of it at childhood or being deliberately ignored or disliked by his/her peers at a teenager. (The emotionally secure don't need to troll, because that would be pointless.)  Unwilling to cultivate positive qualities (or failing at it), trolls seek attention through negative behavior.

Trolls are particularly drawn to the W because women's basketball - a niche sport - is receiving both time and money that they could be receiving if the universe was proper and just in appropriating rewards and punishment.  (In their individual cases, the universe is more proper and just than it usually is.  That's the actual problem.) 

5. Camp followers:  Camp followers simply hate the same crap their friends hate.  Generally, their friends get together and decide what they will mutually hate.  Don't claim moral superiority if you're reading this - you do it too. 

Most camp followers have simply never watched women's basketball.  Unfortunately, getting them to watch a game is no solution because their opinion will change again when they hook up with their friends again.

6. Oracles:  The Oracles are a subset of "Mister Know-it-All" (see below).  These were the guys who bet in 1997 that the league would fold in three years.  The league didn't fold, and they're pissed, so they step up to the table every year and make the same bet.  A trog hates the W because its players exist; Oracles and Pikemen hate the league because the league exists.

7. Mister Know-It-All:  Mister Know-It-All is one of those guys who loves to expound on his "logical" arguments about why women's basketball falls short.  The existence of the league annoys him but he doesn't wish the league's annihilation like a Trog or an Oracle.  Rather, the league's annihilation would simply confirm his predictions and he'd get a small amount of satisfaction before turning elsewhere.

Mind you, most of the arguments that Mister Know-It-All advocates fall short of any serious scrunity - but that doesn't mean that he won't keep repeating him.  MKIA's are masters of what's called framing, which is creating an argument so elastic that it can't be falsified.  If women's basketball has a success, clearly someone like the NBA is responsible for that success.  If women's basketball falls short somewhere it's a mere confirmation of the inevitable.  Until the league fails - which, according to our Mister Know-It-All, it will - all events, good or bad, confirm his initial prediction.  (Hell, the league could survive for fifty years but it just proves his point.)

The difference between Oracles and Mister Know-It-All is that Oracles don't base their arguments in historical inevitability.  Furthermore, Oracles keep making the same "bad bet" year after year after year.  Oracles make bets, MKIAs make investments.

8. Pikemen.  Pikemen are those guys that stand outside the portcullis of a castle bearing halberds or long, pointy spears.  They don't hate women the same way that Trogs hate them.  Rather, they have claimed sports as the Domain of Men, and really wish that those bitches would stay the hell out of it and not try to horn in on their territory.  Any rumbling in the background that women might be participating in sports - or at least, expressing an interest in sports that wouldn't be subordinate to male opinion or "mansplaining" (look it up) - and the pikes come out.

Pikemen aren't Trogs, for the most part, although you can find a Trog pulling double-duty.  Pikemen can deal with women being their bosses, or women succeeding in fields like law, or medicine.  (Although, of course, there are many jokes to be told, heh heh.)  But sports is going too far!  "I watch sports to get away from women!" is the cry.  Sports is the last exclusive male domain...or at least the popular sports are.  These guys think that if you let the WNBA survive, soon television might have the alternative of showing a men's game or a women's game - and such a thing should never come to pass.  After that, Armageddon.

Sadly enough, the sports shills who populate our nation's newsrooms act as Pikemen.  Some are true Pikemen, some are simply protecting either the sport they shill for or are simply too lazy to learn about any other sport.

(* * *)

So how does one use the hater's taxonomy?  The idea behind the taxonomy is that some haters can't be reached...but some can.  If you can figure out which kind of hater you're talking to, you have a shot at reaching him.

Hoverers might know quite a bit about women's basketball, more than the average sports fan.  A Hater But can be reached by appealing to whatever commonality he might momentarily have with the women's game - city, college, whatever.  If you can keep a Camp Follower for a long time, they'll just start following the camp of those who love women's basketball.  (But only if they can easily drop their former acquaintances.)  Trolls don't really care about women's basketball one way or the other - but at least if you ignore them they go away.

Other groups are longshots.  A MKIA will never admit that he might be wrong, and will simply pity you for your delusions.  Oracles generally aren't reasoners.  Pikemen rarely desert their posts, and you really don't want to talk to a Trog even on the days when a Trog is feeling good - that much hate is toxic.  If you're going to convert a community to women's basketball person-by-person - as Kathy Betty of the Atlanta Dream seems determined to do - you need to know where to spend your precious energy and electrolytes.  Either that, or buy some Gatorade to counteract the Haterade.