Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

Post by soylentcola » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 9:59 PM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #16

jleyank wrote: post #7

Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1480/ You can watch sports, or you can participate in the watching of sports. One requires real interest in the event while the other merely requires interest in who's nearby. People are different. I'm into some sports and can't stand others. But I like being social with friends, both F2F and online.

I ordinarily dislike when people do this ("obligatory xcd: URL"), but that is today's comic. So it is actually relevant. Today.

Post by genericuser » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

toolz wrote: post #153

rinon wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are sports unhealthy? They are in fact extremely healthy, in the physical sense. Professional sports are simply an outgrowth of more "natural" sporting activities. Sports, even the professional variety, are not carefully engineered social prisons, but an evolution of natural human activities: physical activity and training combined with competition and the desire to observe others who are better than one's self.…

Professional sports are anything but healthy, as soon as competition is even remotely recognized and praised illicit drugs come onto the scene. As for a more idealistic world and my choice, I never even hinted at trying to legislate your ability to do what you want, but if you want me to clap and jump up and down and pick a favorite team because a bunch of grown people make ridiculous sums of money doing absolutely n…

Post by praptak » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 10:01 PM UTC

serve_yay wrote: post #128

solson wrote: post #20

When you show overt contempt for sports you are showing contempt for most everybody and that is problem with your social skills. It's called being a snob. The disdain for working class culture among academics was part of the reason I choose not to pursue a formal higher education. I suspect this overt snootiness keeps many gifted working class kids from participating in higher education. I grew up working class and w…

It seems to me that rooting out and shaming "snobs" is becoming something of a cultural pastime. It really bothers people when you don't like what they like. So it must be because you're an asshole snob, not because you just don't like it. It's related to all the anti-"hipster" crap that has popped up in recent years. It's fun because skewering "hipsters" is puncturing pretensions, you're taking cultural snobs down a…

Post by tuelz » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 10:02 PM UTC

psychometry wrote: post #180

toolz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Sports aren't a healthy part of society. They are games mean to occupy the less curious people of our culture so they don't get bored and dissatisfied with their existence. There is nothing healthy about sports culture. The socialization is entirely tribal and the impact on humanities future is non-existent. Imagine if we game all our attention and praise to teachers and all of our money to successful charit…

You sound like the type of insufferable bore this article is expressly written for; it's a shame you seem not to have read it. No doubt you take great pleasure in some other form of entertainment that "does nothing for anyone".

Post by eldavido » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 10:04 PM UTC

bkjelden wrote: post #11

I really enjoyed reading this. I had a relatively blue collar american upbringing, but more or less since the day I left for college I've been predominately surrounded by people from white collar lifestyles, and this article really resonated with me. As illustrated in the article, the difference between the cab driver and the highly educated professional taking the cab is not as great as the latter would often like y…