Fun Stuff > CHATTER
WE HATE SPORTS
KharBevNor:
Tommy I specifically created this thread rather than having a pro-sports/anti-sports argument in the WE LOVE SPORTS thread. Don't you think it's a little rich to come into this thread, which is for people who hate sports, and defend sports? You and several others who have posted in this thread would surely be very annoyed if we came into the WE LOVE SPORTS thread and started pissing everywhere, eh?
I don't hate physical activity. I walk, cycle and sail. I do historical re-enactment. I don't even necessarily hate the idea of sports per se. I hate when people become obsessed by it. I think professional athlete is the most absolutely useless job ever. I hate the Olympics, a nationalist wankfest that legitimises corrupt regimes and drains millions and millions of pounds/dollars/whatever of money that could have been spent on, for example, saving peoples lives. I hate that funding for the arts is always slashed to fund sport. I hate that people want to increase sports teaching in school, to teach children to be competitive, to pick on the weak, to be elitist, rather than increase art and music teaching in school, to teach children to be creative and understanding. I hate it when people compare art and sport and say both are useless. Sport is an utterly ephemeral, pointless thing. Art can reshape entire civilisations and profoundly alter peoples lives for the better. The only way sports alters peoples lives is give them an excuse to get drunk, make them happier for a little while when their team wins, and to keep draining away their money into overpriced merchandise, tickets etc.
I hate how it is socially acceptable to have an autistic level of knowledge about sports, but not about, say, literature. I hate the violence among sports fans. I think that the ideas of 'social cohesion' and 'socially galvanising forces' are a load of hot air, made up by academics wishing to intellectually justify their love of something so achingly fucking stupid. Sports killed a hell of a lot more people than art last year, and will next year, and every fucking year. Think of what we could achieve if all the energy and passion and economic capital that was wasted in the ridiculous, flashy spectacles of sports was spent on something, anything else.
Also, you guys know I don't like pretty much any mainstream stuff at all so don't lay into me with charges of hypocrisy.
Dliessmgg:
Sports are a religion, the stadiums are the temples and the famous players are the saviours. That's why they're paid so much.
Dliessmgg:
--- Quote from: Ptommydski on 30 Sep 2009, 08:49 ---I don't understand why we need two separate threads for the two different sides of the debate.
--- End quote ---
Because we don't want any debate. Some like sports, some don't. There are no arguments except "I like it, therefore it's good" and "I hate it, therefore it's evil".
jhocking:
--- Quote from: KharBevNor on 30 Sep 2009, 08:31 ---I think that the ideas of 'social cohesion' and 'socially galvanising forces' are a load of hot air, made up by academics wishing to intellectually justify their love of something so achingly fucking stupid. Sports killed a hell of a lot more people than art last year, and will next year, and every fucking year.
--- End quote ---
I think to simply dismiss those points by sneeringly ridiculing them is a bit foolish. I mean, it's to fine to say you hate sports (that's how you feel after all) but leveling vitriol at rational arguments is a great way of avoiding having to face reality. In this case, whether or not you like sports doesn't change the simple reality that other people do like sports a great deal, that art or literature or whatever isn't very compelling to a majority of society, and there's nothing nefarious about a governing body accepting reality (just the opposite really; I really wish they would accept reality more often) in trying to build cities where people actually talk to each other.
Ultimately, if you didn't want to try to discuss sports on a societal level/in a rational way, you probably shouldn't have even brought up the point about how the ruling class uses sports to control the masses. Really though from your post it sounds like your attitudes about sports are similar to mine (I'm fine with the concept of sports, but I hate the excesses of sports mania.) I'm just not as out-and-out pissed off as you are, because those justifications do hold water in my mind.
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Also, the point about sports killing more people than art is a bit of a red herring. There are plenty of things that kill more people than art (basically everything really, but just picking something at random, air travel.) That doesn't mean we should stop doing those things, it means we should make them safer.
KharBevNor:
--- Quote from: jhocking on 30 Sep 2009, 09:03 ---Ultimately, if you didn't want to try to discuss sports on a societal level/in a rational way, you probably shouldn't have even brought up the point about how the ruling class uses sports to control the masses. Really though from your post it sounds like your attitudes about sports are similar to mine (I'm fine with the concept of sports, but I hate the excesses of sports mania.) I'm just not as out-and-out pissed off as you are, because those justifications do hold water in my mind.
--- End quote ---
I have seen like, seven or eight fights kick off in pubs over football. I haven't ever one seen the TV fantasy of total strangers hugging and dancing and crying together. I have seen total strangers getting into heated arguments about signings though.
Essentially, the idea of sports as force for social cohesion is an idea that simply does not match reality, either in my personal experience, or in wider reading about football hooliganism and other violence and discord associated with sports. Is sports a force for social cohesion in Glasgow, or the East End? I really don't see how something that promotes tribalism and an us against them mentality, and drives people to murder each other because of the colour of their shirts, can be a good thing. This is what I meant with deaths, btw; not sporting accidents, but the violence amongst fans. When was someone last stabbed to death by a frenzied art lover? And yeah, I know this is sort of a moral panic argument, except the violence is so irrefutably linked, and it's only one component of my argument.
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