Schadenfreude is a powerful thing. It’s also very fickle. Cleveland’s brief reign as lovable-loser-cum-world-champion ended the second the Cubs clinched the NLCS and became their opponent in the World Series, as no amount of Cleveland’s scrappy, bootstrap charm could fly in the face of the Cubs’ century-long underdog narrative. But now that Cleveland has lost—and particularly now that they have collapsed in the same historic way the Golden State Warriors recently did, by blowing a 3-1 lead—they’ve returned to their longtime position in the toilet bowl of American sports culture.
The internet celebrated the end of its brief moment of not shitting on Cleveland whenever possible by shitting on Cleveland as much as possible.
Twitter itself had this one lined up:
The Ringer, whose founder Bill Simmons popularized the refrain “God Hates Cleveland,” fired this one off:
Draymond Green, whose Golden State Warriors famously blew a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals, expressed a modicum of sympathy:
While this Warriors fan account opted for unabashed pleasure in the pain of others:
There were a lot of these—and also many Crying Jordans, none of which are good, because Crying Jordan is a lesser meme. Some absolute rapscallion dug their heels into souls of Clevelanders everywhere by photoshopping the hated Steph Curry into an Indians uniform:
That is some extremely cold shit.
Anyway, Clevelanders will need to get used to this, at least if they’re going to a) publicly express support of a professional Cleveland sports team, and b) look at the internet. Massive public support of a Cleveland team was a fleeting thing, but perhaps too beautiful and pure for this world. While the Cubs winning a World Series creates a strange new universe only dreamed of in pop-culture fantasies, it has also created a sort of equilibrium, in that everyone knows once again where to go for an easy punchline.
Fine, here’s a crying Jordan: