Fun Stuff > CHATTER
WE HATE SPORTS
Storm Rider:
I would just like to point out that even though it's undeniable that the amount of money involved in professional sports is patently ridiculous, it's really not the fault of the players or even the leagues, but rather of advertisers. Professional sports didn't become the multi-billion dollar industry they are today until they started being broadcast on television. Selling broadcast rights, and more importantly advertising rights, is where sports franchises make the vast majority of their income, far more than ticket sales or concessions or anything like that. So while it's completely fair to say that it's absurd how much value our society places on a professional sports player in comparison to the service they perform, the angry reaction is somewhat misdirected.
KharBevNor:
Going a bit tangential on the subject of dangerous sports, can anyone explain to me why it's okay to risk your life and health doing something like bungee jumping, but not ok to do it, say, taking ecstacy, which is way safer anyway.
I mean, I know the reason, I just want to hear it from someone else.
onewheelwizzard:
Well, if it were legal to take ecstasy for recreation, it'd presumably be equally legal to use it as a medication in conjunction with therapy for PTSD sufferers (among other patients suffering from mental disorders of varying severity), and this would take a massive bite out of the pharmaceutical industry's profit margin by replacing a whole pharmacopeia of maintenance medications (which need to be bought in quantity and taken on a daily or twice-daily basis for an extended period of time) with a medication that only needs to be taken once or twice in order to result in successful treatment. The economy would take quite a hit if fewer people needed antidepressants and mood stabilizers, and that's precisely what would happen if MDMA entered psychiatric practice.
0bsessions:
--- Quote from: KharBevNor on 30 Sep 2009, 09:46 ---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.
--- End quote ---
I, like Shane, have been in multiple instances of that total strangers hugging and high fiving and what not thing. Shit, I did it last night at a game that the team we were all rooting for ended up losing anyway.
In fact, I've never even seen actual violence erupting from sports in my life. Granted, I've heard about some grizzly stuff (Including an incident last year where a rival team's fan was attacked and beaten down the street from my apartment), but almost all of them have been the result of idiots with violent tendencies using sports as an excuse to exercise said tendencies. I'm reasonably sure I've debated this with you before, but I've seen many more concert and music related incidents in my life than anything even tangentially related to sports. I've seen women throttling each other at concerts, I've seen guys get their noses broken at shows and even been briefly involved in an altercation at a show myself before.
Sports don't cause people to be violent, they just tend to attract a larger amount of the already violent crowd because of the rampant testosterone involved. The same holds true to why you might see a dude get his nose broken at a metal concert as opposed to say Phish or something. Activities that breed heightened emotion and a faux-macho attitude tend to draw people who've got something to prove with their fists.
It's not the sport or the music that's the problem, it's the fanatics and this is a fallacy I see you falling into quite often. It's not that people are obsessive about sports that's the problem, it's that people are obsessive at all that's the problem. Obsession breeds fanatical loyalty, contempt toward those who do not share it and, far too often, violence in the name of said obsession. It happens with music, religion, politics and pretty much everything else under the sun, why draw a line in the sand over sports?
KharBevNor:
Hey, let's be fair here, I am pretty damn critical of religion.
I also don't think it's at all possible to draw a correlation between sports and politics, as if politics is just a hobby people do, and nothing to get worked up about.
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