Can I use both these sentences for present hypothetical/unreal situation?

Factual Questions
1

Here are two sentences that I am thinking of using for present hypothetical/unreal conditional sentence. Can I use either one of them?

  1. If someone **spent **half their time hating golf you would presume there **was **at least something in golf they **were **attracted to otherwise they would ignore it.

  2. If someone **spent **half their time hating golf you would presume there **is **at least something in golf they **are **attracted to otherwise they would ignore it.

But upon reading them again they also seem like they are talking about simple past, or maybe my semantic satiation is kicking in, either way I am confused.

By present hypothetical I mean like: “If you didn’t spend so much time on facebook you wouldn’t lag behind in your studies” see what I mean? We are using past but for present. So can I use 1) or 2) like that?

I await your responses. Thanks in advance.

2

I think the first sentence is fine, but that the second should be:

“If someone spends half their time hating golf you presume there is at least something in golf they are attracted to otherwise they would ignore it.”

Your original sentence 2 is mixing past and present in a way that I think is inconsistent.

The second sentence feels more immediate. But I think both get your meaning across.

3

Conversationally, the meaning is quite clear when you use the simple past form, but strictly speaking you’re mixing conditional and hypothetical forms. “If someone spent” implies that someone might or might not have done, but there was a possibility that a real person did in the past, whereas you’re imagining something that might still happen at any time, past, present or future, which calls for the subjunctive.

Subjunctives are not much more than ghostly relicts in English nowadays, but for strict concordance, you probably would say “If someone were to spend… you would…”

4

IMO both sentences suffer from extreme wordiness and circumlocution that hides much of their real point. They both feel very fussy.

And I say that as somebody who writes long fussy sentences way too often.

As Patrick says, depending on your audience they may not have any idea, even a vague informal feeling, about what subjunctive even is. Much less which flavor of it is correct.

5

Regardless, you need a comma or semicolon or period before the word “otherwise”.

6

It is, of course, nonsense to suggest that anyone could spend *half *their time hating anything. Do they sit around for twelve hours a day mumbling “I hate golf”?

There is a word for this kind of exaggeration which escapes me at the moment.

7

Hyperbole?

8

Unless the person is dead, this all needs to move into the present.

If someone spends half their time hating golf you would presume there is at least something in golf they are attracted to otherwise they would ignore it.

9

If someone spends half their time hating golf, there must be something in golf they are attracted to; otherwise, they would ignore it.

10

I would say that they both are okay and even have different meanings.

These are murky waters where usage has a lot more nuance than can be readily captured by grammatical rules. Consider a fight between two angry co-workers where one says, “If you didn’t spend half your time interrupting, you would be able to follow along!” I don’t think any native English speaker would argue that you have to match tense and mood in the two clauses of that sentence. The way it is worded emphasizes an on-going interruption problem.