unzippy wrote: Sun Oct 20, 2019 10:58 pm
KiwiDave wrote: Sat Oct 19, 2019 10:10 am
Every time I heard the crowd sing 'Swing low...' I cringed. I've literally never heard anyone sing it who isn't a first grade fuckwit. So glad I left!
Are you confusing Rugby with Football? It was immense! On a par with the Irish crowds response to the Haka
I mean potentially - I haven't been to a big rugby match in the UK. It's more just the 'hive mind' chanting that fucks me off - I guarantee that 99.9% of them have zero idea why they're singing it- "it's just what you do" has always really rubbed me up. Certainly at football games, being pissed, singing whatever, hating the other side to the point almost everyone will have a fight about it - all the same, sheep mentality. No one ever really stops to ask why...
I can't remember having gone to a rugby match here when anyone's sung anything - the cheering has been enough for any atmosphere needed, and that way people get to support and have fun in whatever way they want as opposed to 'banding together' doing something that means literally nothing to them.
Find it difficult to put into words, but it's that 'blindly following a thing because it's what we've always done' or 'what everyone else around us is doing' that winds me up. See also people voting for Brexit although they can't explain why beyond just hating something because they've been programmed to hate it. It's not so much the actual act that winds me up, it's why the atypical bloke in the street Brit does it that I've always fucking hated.
That's why I'm glad Ieft and all the signing grinds my gears
That way of thinking just doesn't sit well with me at all.
And don't get me started on the singing over the Haka thing... Super difficult to put into words again, but you've either had to have been born here (in NZ) and raised well (as in, not by some white racists in Christchurch) or if you're an import like me, you've had to be fortunate enough to have been submerged in Māori culture. Thankfully I work in very close proximity to Māori and Pacifica culture with my day job and even now I cannot claim to be well versed in it. However, when you've understood it a little, singing over the top of the Haka (or any of the Pacifica equivalents) or challenging it is just the most disrespectful, ignorant, crass thing. While the haka
is a war dance, it's also a lot of other things, up to and including, a representation of the very core of who a nation actually is as a people. It's not too different to trying to drown out someone's national anthem or torching their flag in front of them, but on a much more spiritual and meaningful level as opposed to something literal.
Our entire staff gave the same Haka to welcome our latest CEO to the organisation - if his party had sung it down it would have been like him discrediting the country he was joining. They give the same Hakas at funerals, you wouldn't sing that down.
Challenging it back conceptually I get - if you think it's only about laying down a challenge and you wanna say
'I see ya boy, but you've got no idea what's coming' then I can see why countries want to stand up for themselves before a match. But if you understand it as something else, it's so fucking rude. It would be like Trump meeting a bunch of Native Americans and talking over the top of whatever traditional meeting ceremony was put on - just reinforces the stereotype of 'we don't give a fuck about your culture because we're more important and we don't afford you any respect, so fuck your welcome and fuck your culture.' While there'll always be some who genuinely feel like that, I'd like to think the world as a whole is trying to be better about respecting people's differences. Singing down a Haka or challenging it back is the exact opposite of that.
But... I get that people can't know that until they've been immersed in it all for a while. So I can't
really blame people as such.
) that perform a Haka before their games.
