Support

I found myself yelling out loud today watching Singapore slip from first to third during the butterfly stroke leg of the 4x100m boys' medley in the Asian Youth Games 2009, losing out to the teams from Korea and China. Later on, I found my hands coming together in delight as the Swiss Roger Federer executed a perfect cross-court return against the American Andy Roddick. The match has gone into its fifth set, and is still being played out even as I type. I am listening in to the commentary on TV although I am away from it.

At some point, I started wondering who these people were to me. How can they possibly evoke such extreme emotions when I never even knew them? And at that same point, I knew: I was a fan.

We see it everywhere -- fans clad in jerseys of soccer clubs they support; people cheering wildly when their team wins, and reduced to tears when they don't; millions of imitators upon news of Michael Jackson's death. Clearly, there is something about claiming support for a club, country or person that makes people become a little irrational. And as is often the case, anything powerful enough to override logic is often deserving of some consideration.

Sociologists have long noticed such a quirk of the human nature, and have for about just as long attributed this to human nature. We are, they claim, creatures desiring identity. When we identify ourselves with a larger organisation -- with greatness, fame and skill -- we inadvertently stake a claim to some fragment of this; and we feel good about it. So we hate rival football clubs and buy paraphernalia of the one we support, oblivious to the truth that donning the same shoes as Cristiano Ronaldo does not make us suddenly able to perform magic with our feet.

The markets know this. So they exploit it. It is no coincidence then that one of the longest-running advertising strategies has involved celebrity endorsement. But the question then is: should we then label such fan-ship as a boon or a bane? Do we heed the benefits that sociologists proclaim such emotions bring us or do we heed the warnings of the rational mind?

I do not know, to be honest.

Oh, but Federer goes on to beat Roddick in a 15-13 marathon fifth set. I delayed completing this post to watch that happen. Why; is that wrong?