site banner
PaperclipPerfector  16hr ago (text post)   721 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 27, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This may be a small question, but it's about something fun and it can't wait till Sunday: I've bought my family tickets to a big soccer game, and the team we're watching sent us an email demanding that I prove by Tuesday that I'm a fan, or they'll cancel our tickets (flights, hotels, etc. already booked). Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of their team, we just want to watch the match. As such, I need someone to make an AI/filtered/etc. image of me wearing their shirt or scarf in a bar. It needs to look real enough to deceive someone looking to spot photoshopped images (but probably not super familiar with AI). If the image works, I'll donate $100 to a charity of your choice - or, if you happen to be interested, I can get you a World Cup ticket at face value minus the $100.

Please DM if interested. Why to trust I won't welsh on you: I have close IRL friends who are users and a couple powerusers on this forum who know who I am, so a callout post would hit my real-life reputation.

Mods, please delete if you don't like this. As I see it, this is legal and normal to do in the UK, though most people don't go as far as I'm trying. Plus what they're doing is kind of a dick move, the stadium isn't even sold out so it's not like the locals need the tickets.

Consider telling them that you're an American tourist and therefore cannot provide the requested photograph, but if the team is willing to send your family complimentary apparel and other merchandise you will gladly wear it and root for them. I have Photoshop and like to think that I'm fairly good at it, though who knows if it will be enough to fool anyone looking for it. DM me if interested. That being said, I think being straight with them would be better, up to the point that it might be worth making an international phone call to get it sorted out.

Bartender is British I believe.

It's pretty rare for Brits to call football soccer. Rarer still for them to be concerned about the availability of team gear in the states.

This is trivial to do, in all honesty, and I'd do it for free if someone asked me to. Unusually, I do not usually accept offers to donate to charity, but I suppose Lightcone could use $100. It would take me all of a minute.

Note that the most popular (and most powerful) AI image tools are invisibly or visibly watermarked. This is unlikely to be an issue, because I doubt the people demanding proof are technically sophisticated enough to check. But caveat emptor. DM me if you wish, I'll do it, and I'm awake for a few hours.

I don't want your money and I have a subscription to both Gemini and GPT, so can drop an image to be edited into either. I also don't have an artistic bone in my body and don't have any special talent with prompting imageGen AIs.

I know this isn't a very impressive sales pitch, but this will take me 30 seconds so it's basically a free action.

I also think you'd be much better off buying a cheap jersey or something.

Alternatively, or simultaneously, this sounds like something you could (threaten to) take up under the consumer rights act and equivalent protections.

They are incurring real losses for you by effectively changing the standards of the contract post buy. That is a very very shaky place to stand, it doesn’t matter what weasel words they put in the terms and conditions.

I find that doubtful. This was almost certainly part of the original contract and the purchase was flagged for review due to purchase history.

Here's the relevant terms and conditions:

Home Match Tickets are for the use of supporters of the Club only. By applying for the Home Match Ticket and/ or using the same you hereby warrant and represent that you are a supporter of the Club and/or that you are not a supporter of the Visiting Club.

The purchaser specifically has to be, not just a non-scalper, but a fan? That's just unreasonable, IMO. But I guess there's no recourse.

There's evidently an issue where the home club expects a lot of away fans to show up for this particular game, and they don't want them dominating the home side of the stadium. I can understand why they don't want their stadium full of away fans, but it seems to me that warranting that you are a supporter of the team is one thing, but requiring proof before you enter is another. This isn't reasonable. I'm a long time fan of the Steelers, at least to the extent that I don't care about other teams, but I don't have any photos of me in Steelers gear. I own a ballcap I rarely wear, and a t-shirt that I do where but it's an obvious bootleg with the Grateful Dead skull and roses logo modified into a Steelers logo. I don't attend Steelers games or "events", unless you count watching games in a bar, and at that, it's not like people take pictures of my while I'm there. The only such photos I can think of are ones taken after the Penguins won the Stanley Cup, and that was in 2017. Hell, I went to Charlotte to watch Pitt in the ACC championship a few years ago (twice, actually), and I don't have any pictures from either trip. I don't know why they would expect their fans to have these pictures. It essentially means that buying the ticket isn't enough, and that there's an expectation that you buy their merchandise as well.

Glancing at a random team's terms, it looks like you can buy a home ticket only if you are a fan (§ 1.2) and you can buy an away ticket only if you are a fan (§ 5.1)—so a person who is a fan of neither team in a game just isn't allowed to buy tickets at all. Maybe @Bartender_Venator can point out this problem, assert that he is a fan of neither team, and beg to be let in on that basis.

Doesn’t matter. If it’s not very clearly flagged in advance, such that he couldn’t have bought it without reasonably expecting this turn of events, then it’s not appropriate under UK law.

In general if a consumer would reasonably expect X, and not-X isn’t both clearly flagged and legally appropriate, and he has accumulated financial damage as a result, then the seller is up shit creek without a paddle. Doesn’t matter what the terms and conditions say. You can’t sign away your rights as a consumer in the UK, especially not three paragraphs into the small text.

@MadMonzer, do you have any thoughts? The above is true as far as I’m aware, and AI agrees.

I'm saying that it likely was clearly marked in advance. This isn't a new thing or something they're trying to trick people about.

People don't read disclaimers even when they're clear and require active consent.

Sorry, now I see what you mean.

That would make it more complex, certainly, though personally I doubt they did this. It seems a weird way of doing things in general and you’d expect them to demand this proof at buying time to prevent exactly this scenario.

The government is also aware that people don’t read disclaimers, and as a non-lawyer I would say that buying plane and hotel tickets signalled fairly clearly that Bartender expected to be able to get in. So I think even in that scenario he’d still have a decent chance.

What kind of a weird challenge is this? How is this real?

I remember when I went to see a game in Milan, I was able to buy a ticket as a foreigner, but I needed to show ID... the scalpers were there, selling tickets along with IDs? Somehow? It was weird, but presumably the whole setup was to ensure that the local fans of each team were kept separated.

I've never heard of this happening before, but I guess since it's an important game they expect lots of away fans to be buying home end tickets (again, a totally normal thing to do).

Many economically illiterate people hate scalpers. Presumably, when Bartender_Venator bought the tickets, the terms of service said something like "resale is forbidden and scalped tickets may be canceled", and this challenge is a roundabout method of checking whether he is a reseller.

The challenge is slightly overinclusive, since it catches not just scalpers but also those few purchasers who are neither fans nor scalpers. As a different commenter points out, Bartender_Venator presumably could try using that argument to invalidate the challenge—though I don't know how much success he can expect if he does so.

Or an away fan who might start a fight, that's a bigger concern.

Scalpers are smart enough to be able to provide the team with dozens of pictures of happy families at the ball game.

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to buy a team shirt or scarf and get a photo of yourself taken with it?

So I need to send the photo by Tuesday, and this is the exact wording of the email: "Therefore, could you please provide photographic evidence that you are a [Club] supporter which can be from a party, event or fixture wearing merchandise or [Club] related evidence (Please note any merchandise will need to be purchased PRIOR TO January 2026)." Even if I could find a jersey at short notice in the US (not enough time to ship one), I'd need to try to go to some bar and make it look like I'm at an event - there are no Premier League games this weekend, so I can't go watch one of their games. If it wasn't for that I'd just go down to a soccer bar and ask to borrow someone's scarf.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats