That's exactly how I feel, mate.
One thing that does amuse me, is the conspiracy of silence between local united fans and those from further afield. The latter have been hoodwinked by much of the former about how much their rivalry with City actually means. Anyone who's lived in or around Manchester knows how deeply it goes. I sat and watched the Liverpool Palace game in 2014 with my dad and he was absolutely on the floor when Palace pulled three goals back, because City being successful is his worst nightmare, partly because of me, I guess, but partly because it came from nowhere. This whole "Liverpool are our biggest rivals" is a fucking Ponzi scheme which serves to perpetuate a footballing myth whilst simultaneously trying to belittle City. The more they say it, the funnier it becomes. Anyone who spends any meaningful time in and around Manchester knows what the main rivalry is, day to day. If people stopped and thought about it, there can be no other logical outcome, based on a conflation of recent football history with people living and working together in and around the same city.
I agree. It's the Arthur's Day of footballing rivalries. A marketing tool designed to sell a product.
There is a dynamic there, though and to understand it, you must first embrace the notion that to be a glory-hunter, is essentially the act of trying to achieve respect and gain pride simply by association. It is in essence a shallow act.
So, when United's glory-hunters look upon Liverpool's contingent (and vice-versa) and each profess to "hate" the other crowd, I believe that they genuinely do, though.
You see, I think that each sees in the other, their own very worst traits. It's a sort projected self-loathing, if you will.
Living in Ireland, I can tell you for a fact that it is a dynamic that has manifested some right weirdos. For example...
A kid on front of me in the bank queue, a few years ago, who had a tattoo of the Munich clock on his shoulder but had never been to Old Trafford.
A guy in the pub who started crying when he told me how he thanked God every night for allowing him to support Liverpool FC.
I'm not saying everybody who supports those two clubs is as far out of their box as those two (far from it) but there are dozens of such fuckwits all over the place. And whilst those guys are the extreme examples, there are others who undoubtedly harbour the same bizarre obsessions but manage to get on with their lives at the same time - functioning fuckwits, if you will. Not of them would ever go to a League of Ireland game (or a junior match). Most of them wouldn't know how to kick a ball out of their way if they were fleeing a burning building. Yet they're all ultra-knowledgable experts on the size of the crowd, the number of trophies won, the value of a sponsorship deal, their clubs number of Twitter followers...
Size, measurement and the quantification of their "support" are enormously important to these people. What that says about them, I don't care to think about.
It's a rivalry alright but it's not a normal or even healthy thing.
It's a weird phenomenon and gets even more so when they start waffling on about how "more Irish" than the other crowd, their club "really is".
These people... Who won't walk up the road to support a local team...projecting Irishness upon an American owned institution plying its trade in England... that they only have Rupert Murdoch's word for it the club even exists, at all.