If anyone knows what it’s like to be a loyal fan of the Purple, it’s the readers of SKÖLIOSIS — your weekly reminder that being a Vikings fan is bad for your health.

The Unbearable Emptiness of Being a Viking Fan

Have we mentioned being a Minnesota Viking fan is unbearable? Allow us to say it again. Being a Viking fan is absolutely and completely unbearable. Which is also perhaps, strangely, exactly what we love about it. It’s a sick sort of challenge, much like the cold plunge phenomenon, to see how long we can sustain pain, how long we can hang on to this bucking bronco of a Purple bandwagon bus that seems intent on shedding us all. A sordid Squid Game derived to weed us out one by one. A Seinfeld “Challenge” to see how long we can all deprive ourselves of “pleasure.”

And this week thinned the herd. I’ll confess, it admittedly almost broke me. I almost “Kramered” on my text thread with the boys, so close to tendering my purple resignation once and for all, slapping down an “I’m Out!” This is what can happen if you dare watch the Vikings while already in a fragile emotional state and are forced to watch your new young QB learning a stick shift and grinding the gears of our sports car offense, as one of my former Viking fan friends put it (I should clarify that sentence, the former Viking fan is not dead - he is just opted out and is now a Bears fan - so he is dead to me). Vikings games should come with a warning, like how horror movies warn pregnant women and people with heart conditions not to watch. Let’s take a stab at that, shall we . . .

Warning - Watching the Vikings may cause extreme agitation, lashing out at family members, dizziness and extreme mood swings. Do not watch before operating heavy machinery, checking your finances, holding small animals or taking your children on costly college visits. It’s likely to be bad for your health.

UnHygge

Yeah, being a Viking fan is submitting ourselves to a unique sort of discomfort and miserableness every fall that should probably have its own weird Scandinavian term, like the opposite of the Danish word “Hygge” maybe, which means coziness, comfort or contentment. But is Unhygge a word? Because our Vikings fandom is definitely the opposite of all those things. Apparently there is a Norwegian word “Ussel”which means Miserable and/or Pitiful, which sounds about right. Everything sounds cool from the Swedes and Danes doesn’t it? We should have a Swedish Chef Manning Cast come to think of it.

While we are at it, we propose an official adoption of the word “Ussel,” which would be an easy enough modification to change our home to USsel Bank Stadium. A place where misery and pitifulness are manufactured and handed out to Minnesotans like mittens before the winter as if the misery will keep us warm. Maybe the misery of being a Viking fan is what Soul Asylum’s anthem “Misery” was really about all along. They were Minnesota boys after all.

Speaking of the Danes

The thing is, would it be so bad if we just called it quits? I mean, it’s one thing for those of us that choose to sign up for this misery, but what about our innocent family members that have to sit and watch us suffer as we toss our nachos across the room because our Special Teams can’t avoid holding calls on every single kick return but conversely can’t tackle guys on critical kick returns. Is it fair to our families to expose them to our sickness? My wife didn’t sign up to hang out with a grown man donning purple and a Claire Danes crying face every Sunday, but that’s what she has now. Yeah, She’s a trooper.

The agonizing part will likely be the breaking point for many of us are all the false summits. The feeling that we are so close to turning the corner. This season we thought we saw water on the horizon, an oasis in the desert. We thought JJ McCarthy would be the remedy. The guy to turn our Claire Danes grieving frowns upside down, but so far he’s been mostly like giving a thirsty fan base a glass of ocean salt water. Maybe we should ask him to pass it to us instead - at least we’d have a 60% chance he sails it over our heads.

Maybe it’s Not Him, Maybe It’s PluribUS?

But is it J.J.’s fault? Or is it just that Minnesota is in fact where winners go to die? Where positivity and happiness is extinguished like a candle in the wind.

If you haven’t seen it yet, there is a new show on Apple TV called Pluribus about a mysterious alien virus that turns the whole world happy, other than one miserable woman, Carol Sturka, who seems to be immune. Not only is she immune, but she is intent on figuring out how to stop the happiness and return the world to its normal balance of positive and negative emotions.

Watching the show after the Vikings loss, one can’t help wonder if all of us Minnesota Vikings fans would be immune to the alien happiness. We are a land of Carols. Maybe J.J.’s journey is an inverse version of the show, the one happy kid, surrounded by miserable pluribus people trying to fix him, trying to help him join their hive mind of misery. Consider the fact that legend has it J.J. only lost like 3 times in his high school and college career combined before coming to the land or 10,000 lakes, but now that he is wearing Purple he has lost 3 times in 5 games. Is our Minnesota misery contagious? Are we turning him into a loser? Is it a coincidence that he is 2-0 when he plays on the road and escapes our marching ant death spiral of negativity, but he is 0-3 when he plays at home? Perhaps we need to come to accept our Purple Bus is toxic.

We Are Yoko Oh-No’s

We as a fan base are a bunch of Yoko Onos, tearing apart the Beatles. Ruining the talent. Of course the Vikings have never been the Beatles. They’ve never achieved greatness, but maybe that’s on us. As soon as J.J. redeemed his 59 minutes of horrid play with a lead taking pass to Addison, who finally decided to catch a ball for the day, our celebrations only lasted seconds before giving way to our “Oh No” doubts and fearing the worst to come. Immediately manifesting a big Bears kick return that had us all screaming OH No as they got right back into game winning field goal range.

So yeah we are Yoko Ono, making McCarthy more like McCartney without the Beatles, which is exactly the problem.

Because really, who wants to see just Paul McCartney without Lennon and Ringo and Harrison. You're lying if you do. And if we are ever gonna win, maybe we need to change. We need to learn from “Nine” and adopt our own game day personas, something less Yoko Ono and Carol Sturka and more Pluribus positive, expecting good outcomes.

So while many of us are not quite ready to quit the Purple, to hand in our purple bus resignations, we should at least stop cashing our checks from Frustration Incorporated. And take a leave of absence from the company of Misery. We’ll see you next Sunday (on the road)!

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SKOL!!

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