this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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chapotraphouse

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Fairly obvious that a lot of people's resentment towards sports comes from simply not being good at it in school and getting picked last for the team or whatever. It's like the inverse of people hating on nerds, where it's obvious that they hate nerds because they were never good at math in school.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I wonder how old people with takes like this are.

If you grew up before 2010 and nerd culture you would realize that liking sports was not optional. You were mocked as gay. You couldn't keep up in small talk with your boss and would get passed over for promotion. It was mandatory to watch sports or you would be stigmatized. There was eventually pushback to that hegemony via the "sportsball" meme and mocking sports for being silly. Everyone seems to have forgotten how oppressive and toxic American sports culture was (and continues to be, schools are still getting gutted to make way for more football shit. Stadiums are still built with slave labor. Now it just makes you a "loser" instead of a "f**" to hate sports but the toxic masculinity underlying it is still there as you can see even in this thread)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

fidel-salute for growing up with same shit i did. I hope that it has changed enough for people to not get it, but i kind of doubt its changed that much. Just unexamined patriarchy brainworms

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

i think the person I'm replying to isn't American, which probably shows where the difference is coming from. It is possible for most sports to have a healthy place in society, and in different countries they may have struck the balance a bit better I don't know. But in the USA it's absolutely absurd the amount that people who worship sports and sacrifice people's health and educations on the pedestal of a game, and it's very sad how many poor kids grow up thinking its their only avenue out of poverty - destroying their bodies and forsaking their educations for a 0.01% chance at becoming a pro player. Americans overall act like everything is normal and fine, but it's not. Sports need a serious reckoning and they need a complete divorce from schools and heavy, heavy taxation to remove a lot of the profit that creates perverse incentives.

If we could have publicly funded sports broadcasts without ads that didn't make any profit, that would be one step for progress. Another would of course be to create a publicly funded youth sports program that is entirely divorced from schools and colleges, their funds entirely disentangled and separate, that would be another step. I'm fine with sports existing, but right now they are a parasitic growth. College sports need to be banned in all public schools across the board. Get rid of sports scholarships, make them illegal, and make public colleges free.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think most people's resentment for sports, if you asked them, comes from their connection to gender norms, and how kids who aren't interested in sports are treated by society as freaks who need to be policed into liking the appropriate gender coded activities. I suppose that also extends to people who for whatever reason weren't fortunate to be good enough at sports that they were picked last.

Either way the issue isn't that they werent good at it or weren't interested - its the gendered stigmatization that comes with it.

Perhaps that's changed or isn't as extreme now as it was. But, most peoples issue that grew up when i did comes from the reaction from society at large for not liking the enforced gender coded thing and being told whatever we liked instead was stupid or wrong and that we needed/were expected to like sports instead.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm not fond of them because I never grew up with it and I don't understand having loyalty to a random North American city over another one. I don't watch much TV to begin with so that's another big barrier.

To your school point, I wish there had been more non-competitive alternatives. I thought I hated physical activity until I realized you can go portaging or on long bike trips, and work with your peers in an extensive environment instead of being pitted against them in a very mechanized ruleset on a very small court.

I love pushing my body to new limits and travelling ambitious distances in the woods. And now I'm not against a good game of ultimate or whatever with some buddies, but sitting down to watch "the game" is one of the most frightfully boring ways to spend an evening that I can think of.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I can watch a game especially in person, but the thing that really makes me wither and die is when people talk about the fucking probabilities of the success of teams over the course of the season and fucking picks and shit.

I thought it was because I just wasn't interested in football or whatever. But that's not it.

I really like video games and I often love watching someone playing a game in a fun or skilled way. But when someone starts talking about the fucking bracket some esports team made it to, I want to claw my fucking ears off. I don't care! Holy shit! If any of those games were a good watch, send me the vod or whatever. But don't talk to me about who's gonna win IEM Katowice or whatever. Fuck! What could be less interesting???

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Are you mad or just blowing your referee whistle?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Everyone has treats that they're biased towards and treats that they're biased against. In the end, I don't see how one set of treats (sports) is noticeably more harmful than another set of treats (movies, games, anime, YA novels). You could argue that a particular sports fandom like American football is very obviously more reactionary, fascist, jingoistic, and in general terrible than other sports fandoms or fandoms period, but sports as a whole? It's pop culture, and in a reactionary society, pop culture will always be some shade of reaction. Pop culture is a key component of the superstructure that socially reproduces reaction. You can't escape it.

I personally don't tap into pop culture these days, partly for the reason above, partly because I don't really get personal fulfillment out of pop culture, and partly because I realized that even if you share the same taste in pop culture as someone else, it doesn't actually help you socially and emotionally connect with them, so why bother? But I'm not going to stop rolling my eyes at some weeb or gamer making the same "sportball" joke while they gush over some slice-of-life anime or AAA game that nobody, including them, would remember in a year.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't see how one set of treats (sports) is noticeably more harmful than another set of treats

Lmao. My high school in town just laid off 10% of the teachers in the same year they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on new turf for the stadium. Sport culture in America is extremely toxic and harmful and has destroyed public institutions and education. Public education systems are being gutted and replaced with footballs. YA novels don't do this.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

But I'm not going to stop rolling my eyes at some weeb or gamer making the same "sportball" joke while they gush over some slice-of-life anime or AAA game that nobody, including them, would remember in a year.

That's pretty much it yeah.

I realized that even if you share the same taste in pop culture as someone else, it doesn't actually help you socially and emotionally connect with them, so why bother?

I have the complete opposite experience. Formed quite a few friendships and even relationships by starting from common interests, like say talking about soccer. It's a good ice breaker. Even if you go outside of sports, were only on hexbear due to our shared interest in left wing politics.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

For me, the bonding comes more from shared experiences than shared tastes in pop culture. By shared experiences, I mean like if we live in the same city getting stuck in traffic in the same highway or if we both have a deadbeat dad and were raised by our mom. I guess sports have the most potential because it isn't as passively consumed as other parts of pop culture, especially if you go to stadiums to watch it live and play the sport casually with other people. If we're talking about videogames, there's a difference between playing couch co-op Smash with other people and saying, "BG3 and DE are my favorite games. I can see it's also your favorite game as well." I've encountered the second in the wild, some dude who had the same exact taste in games as me. It also did fuck all to actually develop a friendship because talking about videogames doesn't mean much except talking about videogames. We might have the same tastes in games, but we didn't share the same experience of playing those games together.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

TW: bullying, domestic violenceOnly your parents might, potentially, hit you for failing math. You could beaten a lot for not liking sports. The fact that you are suggesting people don't like sports only because they are weak is a part of this.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

If you werent a jock you were a target. My frjend group gad death threats against us during school and tge jocks were exempt from consequencez because they needed them for the "big game" 🫠

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was good at neither and yet I only dislike sports today. Organized, big league broadcasted on TV sports I should say. I just do not care about it, or talking about it, or it taking time on the news every day. There are few tings that matter less to you and me then who won the ballgame yesterday. It's pointless.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Not caring about it makes perfect sense, but its still entertainment to a lot of people, so them talking about it also makes sense.

Now Ultras, yeah that goes way too far.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

neither nerd nor jock