I put up a post asking for suggested frequently asked questions for new visitors to Niners Nation and thus far I've gotten some good suggestions. One question was a bit more tongue in cheek, but caught my attention as worthy of front page discussion. From Neon, a fairly new visitor to Niners Nation:
"How do I mock Raiders fans without acknowledging the clear decline in prestige for the 49ers?"
Now, with the Raiders, given how awful they've been and how inept the franchise seems, I'd imagine this is not quite as difficult as it might otherwise seem. Although they've been to the Super Bowl more recently than the 49ers, they've still turned into a god-awful franchise that does not have a whole lot of positives.
So, the question turns on some other teams' fans. The easiest example would be Cowboys fans. Fortunately, living in San Francisco means not having to deal with very many Cowboys fans. However, given the large east coast contingent in SF, I get NY Giants and Pats fans like nobody's business. Giants fans are bad enough, but Pats fans have grown oh-so-obnoxious over the last decade that they've becoming rather insufferable (all the more ironic since my own father is a Boston-born Pats fan).
So, how do you handle such fans? Do you go for the easy ignore? You can just let them blather on, knowing that the 49ers dynasty of the 1980s would take them behind the woodshed pretty handily.
Maybe you spout off the greatness of 49ers history. It's an easy argument, but it also comes across as a bit defensive. Given the recent struggles, they can fight back arguing that all we've got is the past.
For Pats fans in particular, you can get under their skin with the cheater comment. However, I think that one has worn itself out a bit. And, of course, the 49ers were cheaters first (I can admit it). This one leads me to one of my favorite anti-49ers sites: 49ershaters.com. It hasn't been updated in a couple years, which is highly disappointing.
So, given all that, how do you handle such fans given the 49ers current state of affairs?