Appreciation Day: Arsenal

Seems like, this transfer season, there's been a lot of edginess, nastiness, and all-around unpleasantness floating around lately - around TSF a bit, around the Twittersphere, and around Arsenal-land. It all comes from a good place - WE WANT OUR FAVORITE TEAM TO BE BETTER - but what gets lost in that is that sports is a game, is supposed to be entertainment, and shouldn't matter this much. It's just sports, people!

So, with that in mind, I'm stealing an idea. I don't know if you're a podcast listener at all, but if you are, and if you're even remotely interested in movies, books, comic books, music, TV and such, you really should be listening to NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. It's a weekly podcast in which a panel talks about pop culture, and it's smart and funny and interesting and well worth the 45-50 or so minutes each episode runs.

A couple years ago, one of the panelists on that podcast, Stephen Thompson, started noticing that, particularly on social media, things had (and have) gotten....coarse. We all know how it works; social media is instant, easy to snark on, and anonymous, so it's easy to tear someone apart glibly, with no recourse.

So he started a holiday. He created "Appreciation Day", where in early July, people would tweet about something that they appreciate - be it about a friend, family member, or even a movie/book/other cultural thing. But the key was, you had to tweet about what you liked about it - you had to find something positive, and celebrate that positive rather than dwelling on the snarky or the negative.

So that, given the transfer window so far, is what I'm doing here with this post. I want you to take a minute in the comments section here and talk a bit about something you like about Arsenal, whether it's playing-related, business-related, kit-related, current, historical, or whatever.

Let's take a day and remember why we're fans, instead of trying to find reasons not to be.