“It just seems like this doesn’t happen to any other place in the world,” said Chris Billig, 21, of Silver Spring. (Editor’s note: It does.)

The recent run of title-less seasons — in which many young fans not only fear a loss but expect one to come in as heart-crushing a fashion as possible — begs the question: Is there some kind of hex on D.C. sports? In a recent Style Invitational, one reader went so far as to offer a new definition of autumn: “The time of year when one gets a queasy feeling that one’s first-place team will yet again go down to ignominious defeat.” The Nationals had yet to begin their series with the Dodgers at the time of writing.

Ben Farquhar, 26, one of several 20-something D.C. sports fans interviewed last week, said that “while some sports franchises think of the amazing wins, I think for my generation we think of all the horrible losses.”

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“As far as I’m concerned, it can’t really get more depressing than this,” said Farquhar, who is from Sandy Spring, before realizing that he “just jinxed [the teams] and something terrible will definitely happen now. But after watching Gus Frerotte run his head into a wall, you never know what to expect.”

Not all millennials share such pessimism.

“I’m actually pretty happy with where things are,” said Loudoun County 28-year-old Jonathan Blaine. “The Nationals and Caps are in the playoffs nearly every year. The ‘Skins seem to be headed toward the playoffs again with a competent GM, and the Wiz may sneak in as a seventh or eighth seed. What more can you really ask for as fan but to have your team play meaningful games at the end of the season?”

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Travis Reuther, 23, from Columbia Heights, was a bit more blunt.

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“We are a generation of Crying Jordans,” he said, “except if MJ was always as trash as he was on the Wizards.”

Harris Fanaroff, previously quoted on the Bog about local heartbreak (“We talk about all the absurd things we would do just to sniff a conference championship”), has since taken a step back from a claim of being “absolutely” cursed.

“In the heat of the moment, for example, when the Nats blow a 2-1 series lead and go down 3-2, I think D.C. sports are cursed,” the Rockville resident said. “Then if you give me 24 to 48 hours to think about it, I usually come to my senses and realize curses aren’t real, although sometimes it feels like it.”

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Matt Dunavant wasn’t as disappointed by the Nationals’ loss to the Dodgers as he was by the Cardinals series in 2012. “At this point,” said Dunavant, 24, of Manassas, “it’s all a giant bag of numbness. At least we had pleasant weather for this disappointment.”

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Michael Weinberg, 23, of Bethesda, says that he’s gathered with college friends in recent years to watch the most notable D.C. playoff defeats. What was the atmosphere after the loss to the Dodgers?

“The mood in the room wasn’t even angry,” he said. “We all just got up, spoke no words to each other, shared a few hugs, and went home. We are simply used to it.”

D.C. sports fans might have earned their cynicism, but they also have an impressive supply of resilience.

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Said 26-year-old Kyle Roenick of Germantown: “The first thing that comes to mind about Washington sports fans is loyalty. Not everybody can endure the humiliation and constant embarrassment of Washington sports. Only the loyal can survive.

“One bad thing happens, then another, and another until we’re staring at our old pal defeat. That’s why I think of loyalty when I think about fans like myself, because it’s either that or we’re just straight-up dumb.”

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Harry Daley-Young, a 17-year-old from the District, has noticed a whittling following of the local teams in recent years, both in terms of passion and sheer numbers.

“The recent influx of transplants into the city has diluted local sports fandom to an extreme degree,” he said. “For me, the worst part of being a D.C. sports fan at my age isn’t the perpetual disappointment and the crushed hopes and dreams; it’s how lonely the suffering is.”

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Mark Koons, a 22-year-old who grew up in Myersville, Md., said, “We’ve put our faith on the line over and over without having that payoff, and we’ll continue to do so. We’ll keep surviving the sub-. 500 seasons and playoff collapses because one day there will be a parade that erases everything else.”

What has to happen for that drought to end?

“We need to have someone to come in a teach us how to win,” Billig says. “And it might even need to be a couple guys.”

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Have millennials lost hope, even with — or maybe because of — the city of Cleveland and the Chicago Cubs both ending well-documented droughts of their own in the last few months?

Not Weinberg. “I hope we can eventually pull one out. After all, it’s pretty weird for a 23-year-old sports fan of teams in a massive media market to go crazy at the thought of reaching the semis,” he said.

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Warrenton native Ross Wilkers, 28, worries that even the days of consistent playoff berths and contention, though the latter is contained to the first stage or two of the postseason, are beginning to fade.

“I personally feel the idea of the ‘eternal promise’ is fading a little bit on several fronts. [Alex] Oveckhin is going to start aging soon, [Bryce] Harper will be a free agent and the Wizards may be stuck where they’re at given how [unbalanced] the NBA is, and LeBron [James] is still in Cleveland, after all. The ‘Skins are a different animal because the NFL is so even, and they may be able to keep Kirk [Cousins] playing well . . . hopefully.”

Chris Rauch, 24 supports the locals from Harpers Ferry, W.Va. His pride, at least, has not faded.

“It’s in my blood to be a Washington fan. [I] honestly wouldn’t change it,” Rauch said.