Macho Bullshit

[Animavore]

I absolutely do appreciate a nice goal or graceful ice-skating performance. I specified contact sports. For example, soccer/football doesn't glorify pitting "man against man" at the cost of possibly doing serious bodily damage to either yourself or your opponent. It's masochistic. On the part of the spectator, it's sadistic. Boxing? I can't watch more than one or two punches without being sickened and must stop watching it, it's revolting to me.

You talk about sadism and masochism like they're bad things.

[MiM]

Agreed. My rule of thumb is, if I can smoke a cigarette and drink a beer while playing it, it's a game, not a sport.

I cannot really agree here. The only competitive sport I have done semi seriously is keelboat sailing. And when you'r out there in the still of the night, a beer and a cigarette might be just what you need to keep you focused (and the smoke will tell you where the minute draft is coming from). But then again, when you'r with five other boats at a mark pulling up the spinnaker as fast as you can, it's all the physical competitive sport you can wish for.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I cannot really agree here. The only competitive sport I have done semi seriously is keelboat sailing. And when you'r out there in the still of the night, a beer and a cigarette might be just what you need to keep you focused (and the smoke will tell you where the minute draft is coming from). But then again, when you'r with five other boats at a mark pulling up the spinnaker as fast as you can, it's all the physical competitive sport you can wish for.

That's transportation.

[klr]

Given the origins of most sports, it's no surprise that they should have a macho dimension. I've no time for macho posturing myself in sport (or elsewhere). I certainly don't find it entertaining.

[tattuchu]

It's not our fault. It's all the testosterone coursing through our veins

[Svartalf]

The glorification of competitive sport of any kind is bullshit of the smelliest kind. period.
Encouraging exercise, and sports for purely health and amusement purpose is one thing
turning professional sports into a million dollar industry for the entertainment of countless couch potatoes that are often lazy enough to be reluctant to rise to get more chips and beer is a scandal that should be outlawed...

[Hermit]

All true, but there is more to sport than that. Tribalism. We identify with a sports team or individual. This became clear to me even as a child. We knew some Americans in Germany who were stationed there as part of the USA's military presence, and many of them lived there with their families. One of them was a tenant in our house. He shuttled military freight planes between the states and Germany. Occasionally, he'd get visitors. On a Saturday morning someone's wife called in. Husband and daughter were to follow after watching the baseball game. When they did, the daughter skipped into the living room with great excitement and jubilantly exclaimed: "we won, we won!" as if she had actually been part of the team.

I'm not immune to this phenomenon. Watching the cricket on the television at my then girlfriend's parent's place, Jeff Thompson was racing a lob to the boundary, quickly looking over his shoulder two or three times to gauge the ball's progress overhead and behind him. Would he be able to catch it before the boundary rope when it came down? I was riveted to the lounge chair, willing him on. If he was going to make it, he'd have to keep running as fast as he could, then dive with arms fully outstretched. The moment I thought he'd have to dive, I shouted: "Now!", my hands shot forward and all but knocked the coffee mug off the table. In my mind I had become him for that moment. He made the catch, by the way. T'was fucking brilliant. And he did it because I helped him.

[JimC]

I'm not too keen on boxing, but I quite like watching Aussie Rules football, which is very definitely a contact sport, but usually the violence is casual and in passing, rather than with malicious intent...

Usually...

[Svartalf]

All true, but there is more to sport than that. Tribalism. We identify with a sports team or individual. This became clear to me even as a child. We knew some Americans in Germany who were stationed there as part of the USA's military presence, and many of them lived there with their families. One of them was a tenant in our house. He shuttled military freight planes between the states and Germany. Occasionally, he'd get visitors. On a Saturday morning someone's wife called in. Husband and daughter were to follow after watching the baseball game. When they did, the daughter skipped into the living room with great excitement and jubilantly exclaimed: "we won, we won!" as if she had actually been part of the team.

I'm not immune to this phenomenon. Watching the cricket on the television at my then girlfriend's parent's place, Jeff Thompson was racing a lob to the boundary, quickly looking over his shoulder two or three times to gauge the ball's progress overhead and behind him. Would he be able to catch it before the boundary rope when it came down? I was riveted to the lounge chair, willing him on. If he was going to make it, he'd have to keep running as fast as he could, then dive with arms fully outstretched. The moment I thought he'd have to dive, I shouted: "Now!", my hands shot forward and all but knocked the coffee mug off the table. In my mind I had become him for that moment. He made the catch, by the way. T'was fucking brilliant. And he did it because I helped him.

Never understood that... how can overpaid (censored), most of whom have only the thinnest tie to my tribe and place, if any at all, effectively represent my 'tribe'?
I'm a Frenchman, a mix of Gaul, Roman, German, and some other components with essentially regional significance (like the possibility of Jewish/Moorish blood having filted up from Spain). How I can feel represented by a bunch of niggers who make more in a month than I do in a decade is beyond me. Why I should take interest or pride in their doings and performance is even more beyond my ability to understand... the only thing I got from our winning the footy cup back in 98 was that I needed grenades and rocket launchers to teach those morons with the horns to stop honking when it was time for me to sleep.

[Hermit]

It's just something that happens to the vast majority of us. I'm not overly keen on the concept of "evolutionary behaviour", but maybe that is where such tribalistic behaviour originates from.

[redunderthebed]

All true, but there is more to sport than that. Tribalism. We identify with a sports team or individual. This became clear to me even as a child. We knew some Americans in Germany who were stationed there as part of the USA's military presence, and many of them lived there with their families. One of them was a tenant in our house. He shuttled military freight planes between the states and Germany. Occasionally, he'd get visitors. On a Saturday morning someone's wife called in. Husband and daughter were to follow after watching the baseball game. When they did, the daughter skipped into the living room with great excitement and jubilantly exclaimed: "we won, we won!" as if she had actually been part of the team.

That's the thing you do feel like your apart of something greater than yourself. Its a wonderful intoxicating feeling that is hard to describe. If it wasnt for the fans there would be no team so i think that as a supporter you are apart of the team even though in some cases that link is stronger between fans and the players than in other teams.

All true, but there is more to sport than that. Tribalism. We identify with a sports team or individual. This became clear to me even as a child. We knew some Americans in Germany who were stationed there as part of the USA's military presence, and many of them lived there with their families. One of them was a tenant in our house. He shuttled military freight planes between the states and Germany. Occasionally, he'd get visitors. On a Saturday morning someone's wife called in. Husband and daughter were to follow after watching the baseball game. When they did, the daughter skipped into the living room with great excitement and jubilantly exclaimed: "we won, we won!" as if she had actually been part of the team.

I'm not immune to this phenomenon. Watching the cricket on the television at my then girlfriend's parent's place, Jeff Thompson was racing a lob to the boundary, quickly looking over his shoulder two or three times to gauge the ball's progress overhead and behind him. Would he be able to catch it before the boundary rope when it came down? I was riveted to the lounge chair, willing him on. If he was going to make it, he'd have to keep running as fast as he could, then dive with arms fully outstretched. The moment I thought he'd have to dive, I shouted: "Now!", my hands shot forward and all but knocked the coffee mug off the table. In my mind I had become him for that moment. He made the catch, by the way. T'was fucking brilliant. And he did it because I helped him.

Never understood that... how can overpaid (censored), most of whom have only the thinnest tie to my tribe and place, if any at all, effectively represent my 'tribe'?
I'm a Frenchman, a mix of Gaul, Roman, German, and some other components with essentially regional significance (like the possibility of Jewish/Moorish blood having filted up from Spain). How I can feel represented by a bunch of niggers who make more in a month than I do in a decade is beyond me. Why I should take interest or pride in their doings and performance is even more beyond my ability to understand... the only thing I got from our winning the footy cup back in 98 was that I needed grenades and rocket launchers to teach those morons with the horns to stop honking when it was time for me to sleep.

You sad miserable bastard.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The risks aren't kept secret, and the athletes aren't addicts. Comparing fans to addiction-enablers seems pretty mean-spirited, to me.

[redunderthebed]

The risks aren't kept secret, and the athletes aren't addicts. Comparing fans to addiction-enablers seems pretty mean-spirited, to me.

+1

[Audley Strange]

I generally do not get the attraction of sports, I get the attraction of playing them, but not the obsession with watching them. However many do and thus there is a lot of money in it for many people who have seen it as a career path, many of whom would be at best manual workers which also take the toll on the body.

If people want to injure themselves and each other for pay and others entertainment, so be it.

It's still macho bullshit.

Agreed, but then not everything has to appeal to everyone. There's a lot of chick bullshit out there too that's detrimental to the mentality and physiques of women, fashion and soap operas and well even knitting can exacerbate arthritis.

@Animavore.

I don't consider Snooker a sport because it isn't particularly physical or athletic, it is more akin to chess. A tabletop game of skill and strategy. That is not to say there is not a great deal of skill involved, I do love me a bit of snooker from time to time.

[Audley Strange]

Also.

Seraph is onto something, not only is sport a form of tribalism, but a means of social control, the whole bread and circuses thing. This is probably a beneficial thing as a whole since gangs of bored young men will channel their collective aggression out some way or another.