I’m very interested in loyalty. In theory I don’t believe you should be loyal to something that can’t give you loyalty back. I routinely mock people who go on about ‘company loyalty’ or ‘brand loyalty’ - both things are a transaction, you are getting something in return for something. Same with ideas, I can’t be loyal to something which doesn’t reciprocate and should not be trusted to be relevant tomorrow. People (and dogs) fine.
So I shouldn’t be loyal to QPR, because QPR will never be loyal to me. But I can’t help it. Fortunately that loyalty doesn’t extend to feeling I have to turn up to a fairly miserable experience (except for meeting mates, and I often think, but rarely say, “let’s stay in the pub, it’ll be more fun than the game”) every game. Loyalty to QPR has been a source of pain and frustration more often than not for many years. Not just because we don’t win things, but because the atmosphere, with fleeting exceptions, has been dire. I enjoy live football games where I have only a passing preference for one of the teams much more than watching QPR, even when we win, especially if you can be drinking a reasonably priced decent quality beer at your seat. Increasingly I can’t be bothered with football on TV at all, regardless of who is playing.
People who are jacking it in now are still QPR supporters, they have just had enough of cumulative years of mediocrity at best, and are exercising a difficult choice. What they are seeing now may be slightly better than in the recent past, but it’s still pretty ****. They’ve had enough. They’ll always be QPR supporters though. You’re just prepared to invest a bit more of your time into it than they are. Doesn’t make them shallow.