THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => CHATTER => Topic started by: KharBevNor on 29 Sep 2009, 22:27
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GRRR.
Rather than derailing yet another sports thread I just thought I'd make my own thread about how much I dislike professional sports.
Who else thinks that the amount of time, effort and money our society invests in some half-retarded shitheads in shorts manipulating spherical objects is sickening. Who thinks that the idea that a man who kicks a fucking ball on television can get paid as much as a brain surgeon makes in a year every month or even week to be just the most awful thing.
For bonus loony-left points, who thinks that sport is, for the ruling class, a combination of bread and circuses and the opiate of the masses. Don't worry about the fact that you were born into grinding poverty lad! There's a one in a million chance you could be a footballer! Of course, only if you practice hard and forget all that boring politics and history. Oh? That ridiculous dream never materialised? Don't worry, you can still care more about your football team than you do about who your local MP is. That is a-ok.
GRRRR.
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I honestly couldn't name the mayor of my city.
I can name the entire probable 25-man playoff roster for the Red Sox, though.
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GRRR.
Well, when you put it that way, yeah. Most of the time I don't really give a shit.
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Man the only sport I find interesting is soccer(or football, depending on where you live) I would rather play then watch though.
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How about them Knicks?
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Well, uh... to be honest, I'm not sure how the Knicks are doing.
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I don't watch baseball, you see.
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Sports suck. All Sports suck. Its all the same thing. Get Over it everyone.
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Just professional a-typical sports we hate correct?
For example: Ultimate and Disk Golf don't count right? Because I'd be sad if they do.
*frowns*
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Professional sport is no more ridiculous than professional artists, musicians, actors, or directors - all these people get grossly overpaid for entertainment.
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I don't like sport but no need to get up in everyone's face about it. Just look sheepish when people start talking about sport and you're all good.
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Professional sport is no more ridiculous than professional artists, musicians, actors, or directors - all these people get grossly overpaid for entertainment.
Depends on whether you think we are still inherently violent animals at our core or not, really. If we are, then sports could be considered culturally cathartic for all the instincts and urges we repress. If not you could argue elevating our sportsmen to high social status encourages violent thuggish behaviour we should have gotten over as a species by now.
Who thinks that the idea that a man who kicks a fucking ball on television can get paid as much as a brain surgeon makes in a year every month or even week to be just the most awful thing.
Also Brain Surgeons get paid a lot more than teachers and to be honest I think teachers are way more important. So there are a lot of discrepancies out there in pay. Doesn't mean brain surgery isn't worthwhile.
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Sportspeople can make hundreds of thousands of people happy all at once. Brain surgeons really only make people happy a few at a time.
It's all relative, I guess?
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on the flipside a sportsperson that makes a hundred thousand people happy at once is presumably making roughly the same amount very unhappy at the same time so the overall benefit to humanity is nil.
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What if a brain surgeon is operating on an asshole. Keep in mind that most people are assholes.
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I've never had a Brain Surgeon try to pick a fight with me for not giving him a cigarette is what I'm saying goddamnit
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Brett I'm not sure how this relates to sports and if you'd like to discuss your crippling social inadequacies we already have like a zillion threads for that
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So basically, sports = good.
Brain surgery = bad.
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If we are to believe Capitalism (and really why shouldn't we?), then YES!
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Brett I'm not sure how this relates to sports and if you'd like to discuss your crippling social inadequacies we already have like a zillion threads for that
Look my experience calling a professional AFL player an ugly piece of shit is one of the few glorious moments in my failure of a life, just let me brag about it somewhere
If we are to believe Capitalism (and really why shouldn't we?), then YES!
Let's let the FREE MARKET decide whether we should trust capitalism or not, mmk?
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Let's let the FREE MARKET decide whether we let the free market decide whether we trust capitalism.
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dude that's tautologous as HECK
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man us people who hate Sports are so smart we must be if we can use words like "tautologous"
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I like sports. I'm just here so I can be popular.
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Professional sport is no more ridiculous than professional artists, musicians, actors, or directors - all these people get grossly overpaid usually has to eat noodles all their lives for entertainment.
FYP
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Professional sport is no more ridiculous than professional artists, musicians, actors, or directors - all these people get grossly overpaid usually have to eat noodles all their lives for entertainment.
FYP
FYPF
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my brother is a huge hockey nerd, and regularly irritates the fuck out of me talking about all the boring shit he knows. It's even worse when I'm around relatives and they join in the discussion, and I can't politely leave for a few hours
so yeah, fuck sports
oh also, my dad's idea of bonding with his sons is to take us to a hockey game. Not fun.
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You're all just upset you always got picked last for sports at school.
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Professional sport is no more ridiculous than professional artists, musicians, actors, or directors - all these people get grossly overpaid usually has to eat noodles all their lives for entertainment.
FYP
I think you maybe have a slight misunderstanding of what is meant by the term "professional musician/actor/director"
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to be fair, it's not like all sports players get grossly overpaid either.
(well unless if you take the view that paying someone to play sports at all is already overpaying them)
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Most women sports don't, for example.
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I loved and love playing sports...
However, I never got into watching them. For some reason it's really boring to me. :|
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Brain surgeons get paid an awful lot on average, whereas minor league baseball players make $1,100 a month maximum on their first contract season. You get $20 a day in meal money though.
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I love sports but I agree that professional athletes are ridiculously overpaid.
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But if one wins a victory by swiftness of foot, or in the pentathlon, where the grove of Zeus lies by Pisas' stream at Olympia, or as a wrestler, or in painful boxing or in that severe contest called the pancration, he would be more glorious in the eyes of the citizens, he would win a front seat at assemblies, and would be entertained by the city at the public table, and he would receive a gift which would be a keepsake for him. If he won by means of horses he would get all these things although he did not deserve them, as I deserve them, for our wisdom is better than the strength of men or of horses. This is indeed a very wrong custom, nor is it right to prefer strength to excellent wisdom. For if there should be in the city a man good at boxing, or in the pentathlon, or in wrestling, or in swiftness of foot, which is honoured more than strength (among the contests men enter into at the games), the city would not on that account be any better governed. Small joy would it be to any city in this case if a citizen conquers at the games on the banks of the Pisas, for this does not fill with wealth its secret chambers.
In other words: SPORT SUXX SCIENCE RULZ!!!!!!
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Playing sports is fun, spectating them can lead to strange vicarious delusions where you believe that you're part of the team, having fun, or are fit and healthy enough to play sports. Talking about them seems to be just a more in-depth phatic that serves as a flimsy replacement for actual conversation.
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Talking about sport is a bit like talking about the weather. People do it when nothing else presents itself for conversation. Personally, I enjoy watching some sports, but I've always failed miserably at actual participation. I don't tend to know enough about any to hold a conversation about sport though, and that is often a good thing.
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Watching sports can be tremendous fun. There's a sense of community, elation and entertainment. There's really no difference between watching sport and watching a film or television program.
In fact in a way a sports match could be considered more engaging than a film because while a film evokes a whole range of emotions in you, it's often hard to tell if it affects anyone else in the cinema the same way but at a sports match not only do you know what the emotions of the people around you are, you're sharing in one giant emotion that results from events on the pitch, which is incredibly life affirming on a completely different level than watching a movie or even listening to an album.
I am legitimately conflicted as to whether I think professional sports is worthwhile or a complete crock of shit to be honest.
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Don't worry, you can still care more about your football team than you do about who your local MP is. That is a-ok.
The fortunes of Leeds United are significantly more important to what happens in this city than Greg Mulholland, so that's actually a very sensible choice. They are also currently doing a far superior job, although it's a shame we couldn't beat Carlisle at home.
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Yeah, to be ten games in with no losses is pretty fantastic any way you look at it.
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Depends on whether you think we are still inherently violent animals at our core or not, really. If we are, then sports could be considered culturally cathartic for all the instincts and urges we repress. If not you could argue elevating our sportsmen to high social status encourages violent thuggish behaviour we should have gotten over as a species by now.
I'm a fan of sport, but even if it is cathartic (and if it is, you'd have to argue that you'd be better off playing it than watching it) the amount of money some sportspeople make is ludicrous. There are people make millions of dollars a week for what ultimately amounts to an hour or so of entertainment that they provide us - I don't want to be the person that constantly brings up all those starving children, but seriously, if you made golf, football, baseball and basketball all strictly amateur or cut down their wages to an amount that would give them enough money to live comfortably (ie. the kind of wage people working actual jobs get) you could buy half of Africa with what you save, and finance the re/building of a sustainable, stable economy with what you've got left*.
I'm a big fan of the strictly amateur leagues they have in Ireland - the players still get to star, they are still idolized, but they aren't being given more money than they know what to do with.
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I swam back in high school and college. (8th place in SUNYACs!).
However I really never watched anyone swim competitively except for the Olympics.
I don't watch professional sports and I never understood why anyone does. My dad dragged me to high school basketball games when I was young and I think my dislike of spectator sports started there.
Or I am just a misanthrope at heart.
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Who else thinks that the amount of time, effort and money our society invests in some half-retarded shitheads in shorts manipulating spherical objects is sickening. Who thinks that the idea that a man who kicks a fucking ball on television can get paid as much as a brain surgeon makes in a year every month or even week to be just the most awful thing.
For bonus loony-left points, who thinks that sport is, for the ruling class, a combination of bread and circuses and the opiate of the masses. Don't worry about the fact that you were born into grinding poverty lad! There's a one in a million chance you could be a footballer! Of course, only if you practice hard and forget all that boring politics and history. Oh? That ridiculous dream never materialised? Don't worry, you can still care more about your football team than you do about who your local MP is. That is a-ok.
All of this stuff I agree with, and I used to be really anti-sports too, but at one point someone pointed out/explained to me the positive political implications of sports, how sports are a socially galvanizing force. For example, sporting teams provide a common ground that holds together communities of individuals who otherwise have no common ground whatsoever. (Years later I learned there's actually a book written around this thesis, I forget the title unfortunately.)
Of course this community building in a local area tends to come at the cost of intensifying rivalries between communities, plus the other negatives you pointed out remain true. However, reflecting on some positive points did change me from being overtly anti-sports to simply not caring about them one way or the other.
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I despise sports but to be fair, folks who play American Football (obviously this includes Boxing and other contact sports) professionally have a shit load of medical problems in the long term. Dozens of concussions, broken bones, nerve damage and torn ligaments means a rather short shelf life for the sport and practically being forced into total retirement afterwards unless they were huge names and can get ad or licensing deals.
Basically you're paying them ridiculous amounts of money to have an early death due to brain damage.
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What if a brain surgeon is operating on an asshole. Keep in mind that most people are assholes.
I've never thought of it that way. I like how you think.
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I wish I could say the failure of XFL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFL) had to do with people realizing how mind-bogglingly stupid it was, but really it just comes down to people were already dedicated to watching NFL thank you very much.
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For bonus loony-left points, who thinks that sport is, for the ruling class, a combination of bread and circuses and the opiate of the masses.
Wait, I believe that last bit, even as a sports fan. That's why I like sport. It lets me get away from my real life and sit back for a few hours, yell at my TV, and feel happy when my team scores.
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Mitchell And Webb on football fans (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN1WN0YMWZU)
Mitchell And Webb on football in general (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF_uOgyBK1c&feature=related)
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spectating them can lead to strange vicarious delusions where you believe that you're part of the team
Actually this is a common error. Spectators are the team. Everybody else involved with the team is transitory. Football teams regularly change hands, managers, coaching staff, players and sponsors. The fans are always the fans. Everybody at the club works for the fans. The players of Leeds United are playing for my team and indirectly I pay their wages.
I just feel that this exchange didn't get the full ammount of attention that it deserved. Hilarious. Good show!
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hey khar, i hate sports too.
high five! or civil handshake, whatever you're into.
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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.
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Sports are a religion, the stadiums are the temples and the famous players are the saviours. That's why they're paid so much.
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I don't understand why we need two separate threads for the two different sides of the debate.
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".
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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.
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.
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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.
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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ah I didn't realize what deaths you were talking about, wish you'd specified. Yeah that kind of violence is ridiculous. Does the UK have any incidents like here where parents killed each other over arguments because of their kids' little league games? wtf
I haven't ever one seen the TV fantasy of total strangers hugging and dancing and crying together.
I can't recall having seen this TV fantasy you refer to, but regardless that's not what I was getting at. I'm talking more like people from different socioeconomic classes being comfortable interacting in public. If they don't have any cultural things in common, people tend to fear and hate each other.
Also, this may be a UK specific thing you're railing against, because actually come to think of it it's pretty common for total strangers to laugh and cheer together at sports bars around here. On game days (and remember, I live right next to a major ballpark) I'm a lot more annoyed by the noise levels of people cheering than by violence they commit.
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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.
I have. I've been in the middle of that giant dancing hugging pile. It was pretty great.
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I have not hugged, danced and cried with strangers, but that is because I support a team that is consistently terrible. I have, however, made a number of friends where our first point of contact was watching an (American) football game.
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 am an incredibly competitive person due to music. With sports, I always felt like I could play them no matter how good I was and have fun. With music, I needed to be better than everyone else, or I wouldn't be able to do the things that were fun, and later on do the things that paid.
Personally I think that intelligent people should be able to posit and defend any argument or belief they may have and the best way to be sure of yourself is to be aware of both sides of the debate.
This is my belief about life.
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Music is not a competition.
http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-Freestyle-Rap-Battle
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There's patently people on the fence here and have said so.
Yeah, I like sports and all but it's easy to have misgivings and dislikes. I also think you need to be living in a cave not to have a couple of moral concerns about at least the more physically dangerous sports. Take boxing, for example. On the one hand, I agree that people have the right to do what they want and boxers consent to step in the ring. On the other hand, I'm rather leery about a society that offers men millions of dollars to beat the shit out of each other, particularly since many people (including sports fans) begrudge them their pay. I mean, really, at what point are a couple of men being compensated enough that it's OK for us to encourage them to give each other concussions? Is that really even possible? And that's not even touching the whole "Isn't there something better we could be doing?" angle. Capitalism confuses the hell out of me sometimes.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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?
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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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You also can't separate these things from the fan violence you're talking about. Celtic and Rangers fans go at each other but it's not just about football, it's also about Catholic and Protestant communities fighting. Or look at violence between FC St Pauli, Hansa Rostock and Hamburger SV. The conflict comes from the latter two sides having, at certain times, neo-Nazi factions in their supporters and FC St Pauli fans being well known for their left wing, anti-sexist (apparently Maxim ads are banned from the stadium) and thoroughly anti-fascist outlook. FC St Pauli bring people together in mutual hatred of the Nazis. What's wrong with that?
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Music is not a competition.
http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-Freestyle-Rap-Battle
Also possibly the only competition in which cocaine is legitimately a performance enhancing drug
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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.
Or not!
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::sigh:: I was literally just at a research conference (http://horizonsnyc.com/) about precisely this, last weekend. The extrapolation that pharmaceutical industry interests play a causal role in keeping MDMA illegal is my own conjectured opinion, but the bit about MDMA being a safe and effective treatment for PTSD and other mental disorders is simple fact, and it's not a huge leap in logic to see that antidepressant prescription and use would decline if it were available as an alternative treatment. It almost certainly would not be overprescribed to the extent current antidepressants are, so it wouldn't see widespread use, but my personal opinion is that this is because it does not hold the same potential for profit through overprescription.
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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.
Or not!
cool contribution dude
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Music is not a competition.
And auditions end up with everyone getting the job! I'm so glad that I was able to make money without having to compete with other bassists.
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Eh. Making music isn't a competition, you're right, but making a living playing music is. My case is certainly a rare one.
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You can play music alone and be happy, but its hard to do that with a sport.
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So, sports are more social then?
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You can play music alone and be happy, but its hard to do that with a sport.
Depends on the sport. I would consider rallying, target shooting, and free running sports, but you can do those by yourself and have fun.
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Golf could probably be fun alone too. Not mini-golf, though. Mini-golf requires a second person so you can rub it in their face how much better than them at it I am, Rachel!
*Ahem* What were we just talking about?
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I really hate football season... Everyone always asks me my favorite team and I have to respond with I don't watch football and then I get wierd looks. Then I explain I love playing sports, just hate watching them.
Yes, the big names do get way overpaid. It is however, the nature of the beast for this to happen. It's entertainment and a business. As with anything, if people are willing to pay the money then people somewhere are going to get the money.
But I'm with Khar, I hate watching sport or having to sit there and waste my time among friends who are talkinga bout sports all the time. I'd rather be out having the fun than talking about it.
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So, when you're hanging out with friends talking. What do you talk about?
edit: I hate football season for the exact opposite reason. The two things I have done most in my life are music and science. I rarely find people who give a damn about football in either group. I still haven't found anybody to discuss F1 or Moto GP with yet.
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You can talk about every other single thing in the universe apart from sports.
There isn't exactly a shortage of topics.
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ya i lost alot of friends to skating(i guess thats a sport).
discussion topics were limited to skating and marijuana.
I could only participate in 50% of those conversations.
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I still haven't found anybody to discuss F1 or Moto GP with yet.
Er...If I say I like F1, and that I could probably discuss it, are we going to have to make another thread :-D
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Actually this is a common error. Spectators are the team. Everybody else involved with the team is transitory. Football teams regularly change hands, managers, coaching staff, players and sponsors. The fans are always the fans. Everybody at the club works for the fans. The players of Leeds United are playing for my team and indirectly I pay their wages.
Perhaps more directly you pay for the armed forces and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are you as enthusiastic about that team too? I see your point though but it seems about as valid as me saying "we played some great music tonight" when seeing a band I like (and support).
Also, why does everyone have to pick a team? I know people that enjoy football whoever's playing, but they always have "their" team.
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Everyone has to pick a team because sports unite people!
Wait.
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Perhaps more directly you pay for the armed forces and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are you as enthusiastic about that team too? I see your point though but it seems about as valid as me saying "we played some great music tonight" when seeing a band I like (and support).
Also, why does everyone have to pick a team? I know people that enjoy football whoever's playing, but they always have "their" team.
I've heard a lot of people talk about their shame over what "our" troops are doing in the Middle East. Similarly, people aren't always happy with the decisions made by their club or the performance of their team. Most bands don't make any suggestion that the audience is part of the people making music, whereas it's very different with football. You'll rarely see a football match where the commentators won't talk about the crowd's effect on the match. Watching Ipswich lose to Newcastle on the TV recently they were talking about the level of support of the Ipswich fans, how they were urging the players to take chances but Ipswich were nevertheless unable to build on this psychological base.
People like to be part of a group, a community, and it also makes matches more exciting if you care about the outcome. Most of the time it's due to identification with family history, geographical location or national identity.
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People like to be part of a group, a community,
And to hate people from other communities.
Yay it's all so cuddly and fun!
I wish I'd just derailed the goddamn sports thread now.
Thing I don't get is how it is even enjoyable to watch sports. It's just so fucking dumb. "OH LOOK ONE MAN IS KICKING THE BALL TO ANOTHER MAN" *sexwee*
"OH LOOK AT THE CARS GO ROUND IN A PRETTY CIRCLE VROOM VROOM VROOM"
"LISTEN TO THE TENNIS LADIES GRUNT!!!"
It's just so utterly without anything to excite the thinking human mind!
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OH LOOK THOSE LONG HAIRED GENTLEMEN ARE PLAYING MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
OH AND NOW THEY ARE MOVING THEIR HEAD/NECKS AROUND IN A CIRCULAR MOTION CAUSING THEIR HAIR TO MOVE IN AN EXAGGERATED "WINDMILLING" MOTION. SPLENDID!
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You can talk about every other single thing in the universe apart from sports.
There isn't exactly a shortage of topics.
Why are sports so much worse than everything else? Would you rather discuss one of those reality shows? It comes down to what you have in common with other people, and sports happen to be that for a lot of people. Hell, it's one of the only things I can actually talk about for any length of time with most people here. Sad? Maybe a bit, but humans are social creatures and I crave social interaction even with people with whom I have very little in-common. By the way, very few people I know support my sports team, but I can still have enjoyable discussions with them.
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Sports and reality shows are seriously the only things you can think of to have conversations about?
Like, you just seemed to say that it was a 50/50 choice. I've never even seen any reality shows for more than about fifteen seconds channel surfing. I interact all the time with people I have 'little in common' with quite happily without having to talk about lycra shorted ball manipulators.
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And to hate people from other communities.
Yay it's all so cuddly and fun!
Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes not. Sometimes it's communities meeting each other in friendly competition. There's nothing wrong with having a sense of community, just some of the ways that manifests itself.
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Sports and reality shows are seriously the only things you can think of to have conversations about?
Like, you just seemed to say that it was a 50/50 choice. I've never even seen any reality shows for more than about fifteen seconds channel surfing. I interact all the time with people I have 'little in common' with quite happily without having to talk about lycra shorted ball manipulators.
No, but reality shows fall into the "every other single thing in the universe apart from sports," so I figured that was okay. I've tried to have conversations about other things with the people I know. They tend not to like music (they listen to it, but they don't actually enjoy it). I can't talk about work because nobody understands what I do (including me). I can't talk about philosophy, because nobody I can find has any intelligent opinions about it. Nobody has really read any books, same with movies (with notable exceptions of shitty movies) and television. Do you see what I'm getting at here? If I don't want to have a conversation that consists of me explaining things to them, or them talking about the interaction they had at the lunch counter, it's pretty much sports. Am I happy about that? Hell no. I hate it here. I'd love to have substantial conversations, but I haven't been able to do that since I left Charleston (except with people from Charleston). Sports is one of those non-topics, like the weather that is accessible to a number of people.
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Being a human is about significantly more than passively observing other peoples achievements, ideas, and creative pursuits (or even your own achievements to date), and as a result the range of things you can talk about outside of these things is practically infinite.
Not that these things aren't interesting to talk about but if they are all you can relate to another human being over then the conversations you have are never going to be as engaging as they could be.
In my experience, most of the limitations people find in their ability to converse with other human beings are entirely self-imposed by narcissistic tendencies when they realise the person they are talking to does not resemble them as much as they'd like.
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OH LOOK THOSE LONG HAIRED GENTLEMEN ARE PLAYING MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
Listening to music is not watching some guys kicking a ball around.
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And if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.
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Listening to music is not watching some guys kicking a ball around.
I fail to see anything even remotely resembling a point. Music fandom and sports fandom are actually incredibly similar. You could do either if you really felt like it, but the majority of people are content to just watch other people with legitimate talent perform the activities. I've always found Khar to be a strong boarder overall, but claiming sports are pointless and serve no purpose to society as a whole while being an admitted and avid fan of music and concerts just does not add up in any logical manner. I enjoy playing guitar and watching music, just as I enjoy playing sports and watching them. It's about as close to apples to apples as you are apt to get in a discussion of this sort.
This thread is essentially an exercise in "I hate this and everyone who doesn't is a bestial jackass."
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How is that out of character for this forum, again?
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Your pink shirt offends my sensibilities and I hereby judge you harshly as a result.
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You have shorter hair than I do! I am offended because you are different! WHARRGARBL
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Your glasses mark you as a nerd and I hereby inform you that it is my regrettable duty to give you a wedgie and steal your lunch money while cheering for my local sports team.
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I'm 6'2", 170 pounds! You are not! I will never accept you socially until you can squeeze into my tightass purple jeans!
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Was that a come-on?
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Only if you want it to be.
wait what i mean GO BEARS
(http://12.media.tumblr.com/AyvJLM0UUl7v28bnCbb1E6Yoo1_400.jpg)
TESTOSTERONE
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Good luck with that
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Being a human is about significantly more than passively observing other peoples achievements, ideas, and creative pursuits (or even your own achievements to date), and as a result the range of things you can talk about outside of these things is practically infinite.
Talking about sports doesn't just involve observing what happened, but also speculating on things. This sort of thing is good for my science side, because it is essentially observing data, spotting a trend, making predictions based on that trend, revising the trend when future events don't match that trend. I think my problem with interacting with people is that I am either incredibly passionate about a subject or I really don't care.
In my experience, most of the limitations people find in their ability to converse with other human beings are entirely self-imposed by narcissistic tendencies when they realise the person they are talking to does not resemble them as much as they'd like.
Not for me. I can definitely recognize that I would not like to be friends with someone like me. It would be terrible.
Also, knowing things about sports can get you quite far, actually. A lot of times, I will make friends with people because it makes my life easier (if people like me, they will treat me better). Sports is a great way to spark that friendship. Sure, it's not a close friendship or someone that will help me move, but it will be someone who can relieve my boredom, end a dry spell or let me know about awesome things going on. That is actually why I started watching football again after not giving a shit for several years.
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There is already a thread for people who love sports. Can you not read, because your mind has been melted by sports?
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This thread is essentially an exercise in "I hate this and everyone who doesn't is a bestial jackass."
except most of the people in it are arguing both sides because it's a complicated issue worthy of discussion.
Actually it's really good we have two threads because we literally can talk about sports in the other one without shitting it up but this thread is talking about the value of sports to our society! Two completely different things and both pretty good topics!
Jeez.
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I don't really think everyone who likes sports is a dickshit fuckmoron, I just need to vent sometimes.
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Talking about sports doesn't just involve observing what happened, but also speculating on things. This sort of thing is good for my science side, because it is essentially observing data, spotting a trend, making predictions based on that trend, revising the trend when future events don't match that trend. I think my problem with interacting with people is that I am either incredibly passionate about a subject or I really don't care.
yeah I'm not trying to say there's no inherent value in talking about sports, and really if you can talk about sports well, it's as worthwhile a topic as music or books etc but what I am trying to say is that the ability to relate to another human being and talk about their passions, not because of what those passions are, but because they are something another human being genuinely cares about is a pretty important part of social interaction.
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There is already a thread for people who love sports. Can you not read, because your mind has been melted by sports?
That is a thread about sports, this is a thread about why people dislike sports. I am discussing the topic at hand.
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Actually it's really good we have two threads because we can talk about sports in the other one without shitting it up but this thread is talking about the value of sports to our society! Two completely different things and both pretty good topics!
Everyone is doing a good job in this thread except maybe Obsesessions and Scarred.
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As pointed out in the attempted discuss sports thread, this is perhaps in the wrong forum for everyone to be doing a good job. After all, this is for Infinite Pony Debates, not real debates.
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Okay, fine, if you guys are sticking around, what is it that makes you like sports, because really I have tried, but it is just so utterly incomprehensible why anyone would like it (we're talking about watching here).
Like, for example, a sports match takes as long as a film but is ten trillion times less interesting?
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Jesus man are you just being wilfully obtuse?
Most people when faced with your dilemma would probably say something to the effect of "well I don't understand but I guess different people just like different things so whatever no skin off my nose"
To return to the earlier analogy, it is kind of like those dumbshits who completely dismiss entire genres of music because it does not appeal to their narrow aesthetic sense.
Oh wait, you do that as well.
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It's a vicarious thrill of being on the side of the "winners". Long ago, battles were a matter of life and death, with "our guys" having a serious interest in winning. If "our guys" lost, generally the men were killed and the town looted. If "our guys" were the winners, they got to do the looting and killing. Back then it was all participation sports. Everybody played, and everybody had a serious interest in the outcome.
Today, we have "civilized" our thirst for victory, and focus our efforts into team sports. When our team wins some still get the sense of satisfaction from the victory. Others are far more removed from the events and we recognize it for what it is: a bunch of testosterone infused jocks being overpaid for our entertainment. They don't really DO much for society other than make some of the audience feel like winners because of their emotional ties to the team, usually through regional proximity.
(I love google search)
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To return to the earlier analogy, it is kind of like those dumbshits who completely dismiss entire genres of music because it does not appeal to their narrow aesthetic sense.
Oh wait, you do that as well.
Where the hell did this come from? My musical tastes are fairly diverse by the standards of this forum, or generally even. It is news to me that I have a narrow aesthetic sense? Also that's kind of a personal jab coming completely out the blue? Why you gotta do that?
I can get the winners and losers thing, but I guess I find it hard to see how you derive enjoyment from the game itself. I can easily see how it is fun to play games, but not really to watch them. This doesn't just go for sports, I can think of little more interesting than watching a chess game, say, whereas I quite like playing chess.
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OK apologies on the personal nature of the attack, that was out of line.
To clarify I was mostly referring to comments you'd made previously about hip-hop. But you also do have an established history of refusing to accept that anybody could even possibly have a different viewpoint to yours on some subjects, and that said viewpoints could be valid.
Most of the time it seems like you're deliberately acting boneheaded in order to get people's dander up and provoke a reaction but keeping that in mind it's still pretty frustrating. Also it's worth taking you at your word- even when you obviously aren't intending to be- to keep an interesting conversation going.
P.S; I will concede that what I know of your musical taste could be considered diverse, yes, but I would also argue there across that spectrum of music there is still some distinct thematic and stylistic similarities between them all. This thread also extends to other forms of art you enjoy and the art you produce yourself. "Narrow" maybe wasn't the best term to use, but you're not exactly hard to pin down either. At least not the version of yourself you're representing to the Internet.
I'm not saying that is at all a bad thing, by the way.
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I didn't know that not like very much hip-hop and detesting professional sports made you narrow minded.
Also are you implying that most peoples musical taste doesn't have broad thematic and stylistic similiarities? I can guess what you're gunning for but I don't think it's 100% fair.
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My beef isn't with what you don't like, but with the manner in which you dismiss the preferences of other people whose taste doesn't match up with yours.
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All I wanted was a thread where people who dislike or hate sports can vent, outside of the hair of sports people.
You didn't have to come into this thread! I am not saying you shouldn't, but you make this thread an attack on you by being here. It wasn't a personal attack on anyone here on the forums, but now you're making it about me?
I dunno.
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I didn't know that not like very much hip-hop and detesting professional sports made you narrow minded.
Maybe you just don't like things black people excel at.
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Maybe you just don't like things black people excel at.
This thread is dead.
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Did someone mention Hitler? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law)
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I can get the winners and losers thing, but I guess I find it hard to see how you derive enjoyment from the game itself. I can easily see how it is fun to play games, but not really to watch them. This doesn't just go for sports, I can think of little more interesting than watching a chess game, say, whereas I quite like playing chess.
For me, it's an appreciation of the level of skill involved.
Yes, watching two dolts who don't know what they're doing play chess at a party is about as entertaining as watching paint dry, but watching two excellent chess players matching wits can be exciting.
Look at it in the way that you would look at watching a skilled guitarist on stage. Watching them nail a complex solo is the same to some people as watching an American football player complete a 70 yard pass to score for some. It's the heightened emotion and excitement, especially live, that drives it. A big part of it can be the atmosphere involved. It's not so simple as just winning or losing, but the way the team goes about it.
For me, personally, a game with a high score on one side gets really boring. Seeing the opponent crushed into the ground is nifty for a couple minutes, but it gets boring when one team is leading the other by about ten for an extended period of time. I know it's not your cup of tea, but bear with me for a moment on this example:
I was at a professional baseball game on Tuesday night. The team I root for was being outright abused the whole game. It was coming to the end of the game and they were down by a rather large deficit. In the span of about five minutes, they came back and almost took the lead. While they didn't pull it off in the end, the park still absolutely exploded with emotion over the excitement of watching them claw back and then suddenly almost clear the deficit with one moment.
Stuff like that doesn't happen every game (Just like not every concert is well performed or not every piece of art is particularly thought provoking), but it's the potential fort that excitement that I watch for.
Then there's the subtleties. Player positioning and following the odds and all that. Baseball's considered, by most, to be the most boring of the big professional sports. I personally disagree, because I'm fascinated by much of the things going on between the box scores. It can be the same thing with football (Soccer to us Americans), as I've never quite gotten the appeal, but I can see where its fans probably appreciate the subtleties more than I do.
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Maybe you just don't like things black people excel at.
haha yes funny.
Jon, this is kinda interesting. The experience of being riveted by a guitarists skill is fairly alien to me. I care about what comes out of the guitar, not what went into it.
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I would ask, is this not the same thing?
By this i mean, is the skill going into the guitar not part of what you enjoy so much as it is what produces the sound you have said you do enjoy to come out? Similarly, it is the skill in sport that produces the entertainment which Sports fans enjoy so much.
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but i can enjoy technically unskilled musicians if they make music that is enjoyable to me. see: Meg White. she's not good at drumming but i love The White Stripes and her drumming fits perfectly with what they do.
the only enjoyment i can get from unskilled athletes would be laughing at their expense (not to belittle the value of this form of entertainment).
what i am saying is that the two don't exactly seem comparable.
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They're comparable, but in different ways. SWM is right in that a bad musician can still be enjoyable, but a good musician will often get more appreciation, even if they're not aesthetically pleasing. For example, Rush is known for being technically good and I respect them for it, but god damn do I hate listening to their music.
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See I know for a fact there are hundreds of technically excellent musicians who produce work that is, at best, dull. I don't think someone deserves respect for spending five hours a day for ten years playing the guitar if they can't produce something interesting at the end of it all.
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true.
but still, "interesting" is a relative term and will be different for everyone. that's what makes this a difficult thing to talk about.
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They're comparable, but in different ways. SWM is right in that a bad musician can still be enjoyable, but a good musician will often get more appreciation, even if they're not aesthetically pleasing. For example, Rush is known for being technically good and I respect them for it, but god damn do I hate listening to their music.
I have found bad musicians enjoyable, but never consistently so. They can produce one or two songs that I like, but for the most part, bad musicians produce bad music. Now, I'm not talking about technicians. I will liken this to American football to maybe enhance the discussion about what makes sports interesting.
First, since I am talking to non-sports people, I will describe the function of the position known as "wide receiver." He runs down the field, catches a football that is (he hopes) thrown to him and tries to run forward after catching the football. This requires speed (to hopefully outrun the guy who's trying to stop you from catching the football), precision (because you have to be where the guy throwing the football thinks you're going to be), good catching skills (so that you can come down with the football even if you get hit by someone) and good agility (because if you miraculously find yourself still on your feet after you catch the ball, you can try to get even further downfield by avoiding people trying to stop you). A good wide receiver isn't necessarily the best at any of these, but he has to have all of them to some degree. The same with a musician.
A good musician doesn't have to be crazy fast on his/her instrument, but needs to have the ability to play what the music demands. A good musician needs to be precise. That is, a good musician needs to be able to play what he/she wants when he/she wants. A good musician must have musicality. Nothing that he/she does will be good unless it helps the piece of music that he/she is playing. You don't necessarily have to be the best in any of these areas, but you must have all of them to some degree to be a good musician. The appreciation comes from watching someone who has the ability to consistently produce good music, as with an athlete who can consistently produce a good game. Also, as with music, it doesn't matter how good one individual is if the whole group doesn't execute well.
Live music is exciting as with sports because there is always the possibility that one will mess up, and to see the performer (athlete or musician) perform when it wasn't guaranteed that it would happen is exciting. Also, with sports there are harsher consequences of screwing up than with music, so it's more exciting when the screw-up does/doesn't happen.
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I think the main draw of an athelete/musician screwing up is not only the "screw-up" but also the way the athlete/musician recovers. A good musician and likewise a good athelete will have the ability to shut out or laugh off a mistake (I believe football people call it "compartmentalizing"). A bad or maybe inexperienced one will let one simple mistake influence the rest of his or her performance.
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All I wanted was a thread where people who dislike or hate sports can vent, outside of the hair of sports people.
But that would be a silly thread to have! Threads devoted solely to hating things are silly! I thought we knew that?
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My college football team is rated number five in the country. We won a bowl game in 07 and since then we have built or started work on a new technology and general studies building, a student union expansion, a new nursing building, a new science building, and a new business and econ building. I am reaping the benefits of a sports culture, even if I have little to do with it. I have never gone to see my schools team play in the four years I've been here.
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And...you did those things because you won the bowl?
Did you win millions of dollars or something?
What?
BB I really don't get what you're blathering on about. For a start, music is a joyous and beautiful thing and sports aren't. Like, I personally cannot even begin to see how a dude catching a ball and a dude playing a song are in any way comparable, aesthetically. For a second, I don't think we have anything like the same definition of what constitutes a bad musician.
Dovey, why can't we have threads in which to hate something. We're hating an abstract thing after all? It's not like I made a thread saying "WE HATE DOVEY, JON, BB AND TOMMY" (though you wouldn't think it maybe at some points during this thread). If you don't like the fact that I or a couple of other people dislike or hate sports, you could have stayed out the thread, just like we have stayed out of your thread talking about sports. One could argue equally that a love-in thread is as boring as a hate thread. I would have liked a discussion with other like minded people about what we most disliked about sports, and maybe discussed tactics for permanently eradicating sports from our culture, possibly by putting everyone who likes sports in gas chambers. But no.
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Pretty much. Merchandising, and selling rights, donations, sponsorships, ect. all as a result of the program. The uni coach is the highest paid state employee because of it. If you look at Florida they have the largest school in the country and the best football team. Screams correlation.
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I am so glad we don't have anything like that in the UK.
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Oh, I agree it is a pretty stupid system. I don't care for pro/team sports at all. Of course there are lots of stupid systems in the world, and as far as I can tell the sports machine isn't doing net harm to the world. If my degree is worth that much more, and my facilities are that much better I can't complain.
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It's a good system in the system of capitalism, because if people didn't spend their money on college sports, that money would not be spent on colleges. The net result is that institutions of higher learning get more money then they would have otherwise, so it would be hard to argue that the college sports machine is doing net harm to the world, to borrow your phrase, dude. It's a bit easier to argue about the professional sports machine, but it's not really doing much more net harm than the movie industry (remember that most of the money in the movie industry is not spent on art).
BB I really don't get what you're blathering on about. For a start, music is a joyous and beautiful thing and sports aren't. Like, I personally cannot even begin to see how a dude catching a ball and a dude playing a song are in any way comparable, aesthetically. For a second, I don't think we have anything like the same definition of what constitutes a bad musician.
A person playing one note is generally not a joyous thing. A person catching one ball is generally not a joyous thing. It's the collection of how it all fits together. If I spent my entire life up until this point disliking music, then I would have the exact same opinion about music that you do about sports. You have to have the background to appreciate that the people you're watching/listening to are doing something great within the tradition of that activity.
Youre definition of a bad musician doesn't include someone who plays stupid stuff ineptly?
One could argue equally that a love-in thread is as boring as a hate thread.
One would also argue that we are not discussing how much we love sports in the "love sports" thread. We are rather discussing sports as a whole. If you really want me to leave, though, I will.
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I really can't tell you where you should and shouldn't be I suppose. I'm just saying that when you come into this thread you seem to make my dislike of sports into a personal attack on yourself.
Also, I personally don't have much love for hollywood or the record industry, so those aren't really comparisons I would care about. Also, higher education in the UK manages to be funded perfectly well without relying on sports teams.
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Yes, but I haven't seen you go make a thread in either the movies or music forums about how much you hate Hollywood or the record industry. You seem to be content to let them do their thing, and I think that maybe you should do the same with sports.
I never thought you were personally attacking us. You were just actively hating something that we don't believe deserves as much hate as you were directing at it. As such, we are now trying to convince you that sports are not, in fact, the worst thing in the world.
My college did not have a big sports program, and we had enough funding to get by, but any college that has a good sports team has enough money to do some amazing things. I am now at a program at a different University that is strongly focused on research (which is the result of a lot of money long ago) and they have amazing facilities compared to where I got my undergraduate degree. If we want to do really interesting experiments, we don't have to scrounge a piece of equipment, somebody has it (science equipment is freakishly expensive). They get a lot of money through their research, but the results would be quite similar if they got it through sports (I've talked to people who have gone to big sports universities, and they had enough money to do things they wanted).
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I don't think Khar needs to make a thread about how he hates those things because in this forum people mostly agree with him. I don't really understand why people are saying things about that though, as even from like 2004 the dude has been incredibly consistent in his views. He probably has made posts about how terrible they are, just not an entire thread.
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But, as I said BB, in other countries people manage to get funded without having big sports teams. What you seem to be saying is that, in the US, any college that doesn't want to place an emphasis on sports, or doesn't attract people who are good at sports by devaluing their degrees to allow sports people an easy ride. Don't you think that's a fucked up system, as opposed to an advertisment for the brilliance of sports. Sports simply shouldn't have a place in something like that. Imagine if hospitals had to attract funding based on how good their basketball teams are. They have to hire doctors who aren't so good at medicine, but are so good at basketball.
BrittanyMarie is spot on! No one here really likes Hollywood or the big five, so not much point. Anyway, this is not actually a thread about me.
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Do you actually read his posts before you respond to them? BB actually provided an example where something other than sports provided the funding for the school and in no way did he say the college system was brilliant.
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I don't think Khar needs to make a thread about how he hates those things because in this forum people mostly agree with him. I don't really understand why people are saying things about that though, as even from like 2004 the dude has been incredibly consistent in his views. He probably has made posts about how terrible they are, just not an entire thread.
And I think most people in this forum probably agree with him about sports. Well, watching sports at least. I've seen posts where somebody expresses an enjoyment of a mainstream movie or artist. Sometimes he responds, and sometimes he doesn't. The thing is, those posts are spread out around the forum where it's hard to avoid them. You'll be reading through a thread and then there is a post about somebody who likes something mainstream. The sports thread is an attempt to avoid that. Instead of spreading out the sports discussion through random posts in other threads when the topic might turn to sports, we thought we'd spare everyone else the trouble and just make a thread to get all of our sports discussion out.
Also, in terms of funding, I clearly never said it was necessary. Many colleges get along just fine without a significant sports program. Colleges don't need them, but if you had the option to make a lot more money and maybe foster some social interaction between the student body that isn't focused on parties, wouldn't you? It gives them a lot more money for merit- and need-based scholarships. It gives them a lot more of a budget for equipment and everything. I raises the value of almost every degree that institution confers. Yes, a sacrifice is made by making one degree really easy, but it's usually a degree that isn't too useful anyways. As for the hospital analogy, if I thought a hospital would be able to treat more people with better care by getting a basketball team, there is no way I could justify not doing that.
also: I had actually just clicked on this thread to see what people were saying about sports and if there were any new reasons to stay away from sports since I had been adamantly opposed to sports, and would have left quietly if I hadn't seen:
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.
Which I knew to be a fallacy, so I pointed it out. Unfortunately, as is often the way with this forum, I got drawn into what is (for the most part) an intelligent discussion that has a good reason to exist.
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Do you actually read his posts before you respond to them?
Yes. Thanks!
How is it a fallacy anyway BB? I don't remember having a discussion on that front. Why is it good to teach children to be competitive and value mindless things.
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How is it a fallacy anyway BB? I don't remember having a discussion on that front. Why is it good to teach children to be competitive and value mindless things.
That is not the fallacy. The fallacy is that music education does not teach children to be competitive. I am an extremely competitive person due to music (I couldn't stand sports in middle school, high school and college). In fact, I've not met people more competitive and elitist than people doing music in school. The elitism goes away to some degree in the professional world, but the competitiveness is even worse.
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Yeah I would dispute that teaching sports encourages people to be competitive. I hated sports at school, and barely participated in pretty much any sports class you could name for the majority of my formative years, but I am one competitive motherfucker. A lot of my competition at school went into trying to be the best academically (including at art! and music!), now it tends to be funneled into card games. So, I would agree with BB that expunging sports teaching from schools would do little or nothing to affect how competitive people are. Maybe they might channel it into something other than sport, if you're very lucky?
And the valuing "mindless things" is pretty laughable (though I'm sure you're aware of this Khar) since anyone could just easily extend that argument to music or art if they consider them to be mindless things. For one, I'm quite disappointed that my school doesn't offer much of a sports program, since the students there are generally less motivated and involved with the community (working in a team encourages this!) than at schools where students are involved in sports programs. Of course, this would also be true of debating competitions, dance competitions etc, but the more opportunities for a diverse range of students, the better.
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Damn, it's now taking all my energy not to make a WE HATE SPATS thread too.
Do it and I swear to god I will make a WE SPAT HATE thread. You've been warned.
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I think people need to give khar some benefit of the doubt here too, because in all honesty, the way many people defend sports is often quite asinine. (Calm down people, I'm not talking about anyone here). The fact of the matter is that society values sport in a way that can't really be quantified or justified in purely economic terms, yet a surprising number of people insist on trying to do so anyway, often bending the truth to make the stand. It's rather akin to the way creationists fall back on intelligent design rather than cede the field completely despite the fact that there's not much empirical they can fall back on. It's an emotional issue for many people since there's a lot of pride and tradition wrapped up in these things.
For example, a lot of people in Chicago are rather bummed they aren't going to be hosting the Olympic Games. But a lot of people are also quite happy about it because nobody wanted to get stuck footing the bill. Now, perhaps you can cite the economic impact estimates that claim that hosting the Olympics would bring in serious revenue, but post Super Bowl and Olympic Games studies show that these benefits rarely if ever happen, and they certainly aren't enough to offset the enormous initial expense of meeting IOC facility standards or building high end NFL stadium. At the end of the day, you have a bunch of people opposing the idea by saying "No, we could be doing so much more," while the supporters counter with numbers they more or less pulled directly out of their ass. I won't argue with the effectiveness of such tactics, but it'd probably a lot more intellectually honest if people just came out and said "You know what? Fuck you, the games are going to be awesome."
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I'm only defending college sports based on economics. The funny thing is that I don't really care for college sports. It's just a subject I've given lots of thought and realized that it actually kind of makes sense. I'll never try to defend professional sports on an economic level. That would be incredibly foolish.
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Yeah, my greater point really comes down to the idea that the things that we value are not always producers of more value, or, at least not in any easily demonstrated economic sense. Even if a sports franchise generates a lot of revenue for itself we're still at best redistributing people's disposable income. In the case of college programs you're just shifting money from people with spare time and money to an institution that hopefully should be able to do some good with the funds. Some people might argue that it'd be more efficient to eliminate sports and convince people to devote the resources and energy straight to the institutions without the stadium building, gatorade chugging middlemen. Good luck trying to get that idea past the Libertarians and paleoconservatives.
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Football killed Futurama.
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This is one possible explanation of why some people enjoy sports more than others but just from reading the responses in this thread it's not accurate all of the time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/science/10mirr.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1 (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/science/10mirr.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1)
I know it's definitely been true in my case. When a player is attempting a particularly difficult move I sometimes find myself unconsciously performing a similar action.
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Football killed Futurama.
So, how is that a bad thing?
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What the hell is wrong with you
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Nothing. I just don't like futurama all that much. Or at all, even.
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What the hell is wrong with you
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Nothing. I just don't like futurama all that much. Or at all, even.
I'd also like to say that continuing in this vein will not yield any different result and will only lead to this thread going even further off course than it already has.
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So anyway you guys, I am watching a football match (or like a replay, or something, or bits of matches, I am not sure) and sports is still dreadful.
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WE HATE SPROUTS
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WE HATE HUEY LEWIS (did someone make this joke already? i'm not going to read the first three pages of this thread probably)
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WE HATE SPORKS
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I love Johnny C.
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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?
is this some kind of twisted thought experiment or something? is this the new pedagogy. probably one out of every ten of yr posts is a post in a topic where you don't like what's being talked about and you come in exclusively to stir up shit. if that's what this is it's horribly transparent but why would you waste our time with it, and if that's NOT what this is then how can you at all reconcile that with like anything
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I hate Johnny C now.
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I hate Johnny C now.
story of my life
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this thread's a year old, i'm retarded
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Johnny C hates your sports hate, sport.
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Then sports hate for himself upon spotting that the sports hate thread sported the majority of its sports hate posts more than a full sports season ago.
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I am indifferent to sports.
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sports is a'ight sometimes
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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?
is this some kind of twisted thought experiment or something? is this the new pedagogy. probably one out of every ten of yr posts is a post in a topic where you don't like what's being talked about and you come in exclusively to stir up shit. if that's what this is it's horribly transparent but why would you waste our time with it, and if that's NOT what this is then how can you at all reconcile that with like anything
Clearly Khar's intention was to highlight the hypocrisy inherent in the pro sports thread. It's a thread for liking sports so any negative posts regarding sport are met with "start your own thread" responses. When a new thread, reflecting on sport negatively is started, people start posting about how great sports is. I...I don't see how you can not understand?
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There are times when sports frustrate me to no end.
And then there are just some heartwarming, feel-good moments.
And dang if we don't need more of those in this world.
...Right, Josh Hamilton?
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WE HATE HUEY LEWIS (did someone make this joke already? i'm not going to read the first three pages of this thread probably)
Well, he did play harmonica on Thin Lizzy's Live and Dangerous and that gets him oodles of brownie points.
Besides, as many people here can attest ... it's hip to be square.
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I didn't say it was a good idea for a thread, I'm just confused as to why Johnny C doesn't understand Khars very obvious intent. Again, didn't say it was a worthwhile intent.
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Sports is OK, Fore! is better.
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I didn't say it was a good idea for a thread, I'm just confused as to why Johnny C doesn't understand Khars very obvious intent. Again, didn't say it was a worthwhile intent.
so it's a thought experiment, like i said
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Fool’s Gold: How the Olympics and other international competitions breed conflict and bring out the worst in human nature. (http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/04/fool-s-gold.html)
I'm not done. Our own political discourse, already emaciated enough, has been further degraded by the continuous importation of sports "metaphors": lame and vapid and cheery expressions like "bottom of the ninth," "goal line," and who knows what other tripe. Hard enough on the eyes and ears as this is—and there are some cartoonists who can't seem to draw without it—it also increases the deplorable tendency to look at the party system as a matter of team loyalty, which is the most trivial and parochial form that attachment can take. Meanwhile, the sponsorship racket means that a string of thugs and mediocrities is regularly marketed and presented for "role modeling" purposes, and it's considered normal for serious programming to be postponed or even interrupted if some dull game goes into (the very words are like a knell) overtime.
I can't count the number of times that I have picked up the newspaper at a time of crisis and found whole swaths of the front page given over either to the already known result of some other dull game or to the moral or criminal depredations of some overpaid steroid swallower. Listen: the paper has a whole separate section devoted to people who want to degrade the act of reading by staring enthusiastically at the outcomes of sporting events that occurred the previous day. These avid consumers also have tons of dedicated channels and publications that are lovingly contoured to their special needs. All I ask is that they keep out of the grown-up parts of the paper.
Or picture this: I take a seat in a bar or restaurant and suddenly leap to my feet, face contorted with delight or woe, yelling and gesticulating and looking as if I am fighting bees. I would expect the maitre d' to say a quietening word at the least, mentioning the presence of other people. But then all I need do is utter some dumb incantation—"Steelers," say, or even "Cubs," for crumb's sake—and everybody decides I am a special case who deserves to be treated in a soothing manner. Or else given a wide berth: ever been caught up in a fight over a match that you didn't even know was being played? Or seen the pathetic faces of men, and even some women, trying to keep up with the pack by professing devoted loyalty to some other pack on the screen? If you want a decent sports metaphor that applies as well to the herd of fans as it does to the players, try picking one from the most recent scandal. All those concerned look—and talk—as if they were suffering from a concussion.
Still perenially shocked to see so many people on these forums whom I know to be intelligent talking about sports. Like it makes me anxious and fearful: when are you guys going to start the threads about TV talent shows or a thread about how only faggots like reading books? It is dreadful.
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You'd think a guy who is into heavy metal, industrial music horror movies, Lovecraft novels, and far-left radical politics would be a bit more hesitant to call other people's interests the Death of Civilisation or whatever, but I guess not.
LOL! :mrgreen:
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If you just absolutely ignore every good aspect of sport it probably seems pretty weird but you wouldn't do that unless you had an irrational agenda.
Well since you and other sports fans will ignore or dismiss every possible criticism of sport perhaps we could see it as providing balance? It is interesting that fans is of course derived from the word 'fanatic', and you ignore or reject all criticism of professional sport, the olympics committee etc. without even properly addressing it, just trumpeting the same unsupported talking points over and over again. Kind of like when you question people about their belief that the Earth is only 6000 years old or Xenu infested everyone with dead alien mnd parasites. I have an irrational agenda though, definitely.
Anyway this is the thread for people who hate sports, as I have tried to make clear several times before. Now where was I?
I read a pretty good article linking the rise of professional sports to 19th century ideas about masculinity and how to control it. Like, rugby, football etc. all arose in elite British all-boys schools, and were thought to discourage masturbation and sodomy, provide good experience for a future life in the army etc. Then the various sports were spread deliberately to the lower orders because such control and discipline was also felt to be good for them. And so it goes! That article may have been on JSTOR though so I will have to rootle for it. It's interesting though; like when you compare the huge bread and circuses, shit waste of money, glorify idiots sports of today with like traditional sports you might see played at a super traditional village fete or whatever, that actually are mostly about having fun and bringing people together, the contrast is pretty marked. It's not cool to guzzle down the opiate of the masses.
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I would be interested in reading that article if you can find it.
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Well its not the sports that I hate but the stuff surrounding it. I tried out for Hockey at Uni this year and could not deal with all the macho bullshit that seemed to be a constant haze over the players. Like, its not just hockey, its AH YEAH HOCKEY MOTHERFUCKERRR WE'RE MEN YEAH PENIS so I sort of stopped it. I also refuse to go to socials with these guys as they will likely dip their cock in my pint when I'm not looking or something.
I like martial arts but don't really count as sports (although Tae Kwon Do is an olympic sport! All right).
Yeah, just generally the fact that people have gotten trampled to death at football games, and the fact that England suck so much at football yet we pay so much attention to it. The commentators after this world cup said "well, they're just more comfortable in their league teams". Yeah I'm sure they are, they have a prize to work towards and on their shittiest day they still have that £50,000 a week coming in. Whereas England's pride doesn't matter because pssh, thats all hard work or something. Wayne Rooney, the saving grace for England (as was said in April 2010) scored his first goal for 2010 in a Manchester United game. After he played in every match England was in for the world cup. Then throws a hissy fit and now is getting paid £250,000 A WEEK. What does England's second highest paid footballer do with this money? Spends it on prostitutes and cheats on his pregnant wife.
When I think of football I think of twats like Wayne Rooney and instantly remind myself why I hate the sport. Its not even very interesting to watch.
On the other hand, I quite like rugby in terms of watching it, supporting England, playing it in a team also has the wonderful macho-bullshit quality to it.
I like playing sports, I just don't buy into the massive spectacle of it, and some people do and that's fine. Just doesn't sit with me to support people who make, what I feel, is a very poor contribution to society for how much they are paid.
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It sounds like your problem is Assholes
WE HATE ASSHOLES
catchy
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There's no I in TEAM so I'm not interested.
I hate when I sit down at the pub and it's busy so you share a table and you end up sitting with some musclebound dildo who thinks rugby is the be all and end all. I will not discuss your pig skin kicking, I don't understand it and I don't care. I was happy to discuss rugby with my ex girlfriend's family as they talked about the local games, where it was regular people playing rather than professional athletes who train 6 days a week. As with most things, when corporations become involved it all goes to fuck.
It disgusts me the a full 1/3 of the 6pm news in New Zealand is dedicated to sport. Not even sport in general, mostly rugby. If they included rock climbing, lacrosse or FUCKING ANYTHING OTHER THAN RUGBY I'd be happier.
I'm not anti-sport perse, just anti-corporate.
Plus there's the sexism aspect that really gets to me. When do you ever hear of women's sport on television? Tennis is the only thing I can think of off the top of my head. Or gymnastics. Even those are really only on at olympic time. Can anyone tell me why women's sport isn't on TV?
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Canada routinely has women's curling on the CBC in prime-time.
Canada is pretty weird
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Nah, they just love watching women sweeping. Those sexist bastards.
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The ABC (Australia's national government-funded public broadcaster) shows one match a week live every Saturday afternoon from the Australian national women's soccer league (the season's finished now though). It also showed the entirety of the recent women's cricket Twenty20 series between Australia and England.
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Netball, too!
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And women's basketball!