General Politics Discussion (X) [ARCHIVED] • Page 4

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Hello

 

Darkness

 

Whole Paycheck, amIright?

 

Two threads ago ended with Trump losing and last one ended with the queen dying, I wonder how this one will

 

place yr bets

 

Agree with the tweet and truly not the point but I cannot remember ever having a conversation about a Sport (any of them) with my dad

 

If anyone needs to a good new book, this one dives deep into how the American intelligence system works (and doesn’t work), and covers the reasons that contributed to the failure of 9/11

 

I think sports culture is pretty toxic and not a great community builder

 

I can honestly see it both ways. I'm not a sports watcher by any means, but I have a friend who is huge on hockey, and I've seen and heard how fans of a team can be brought together and also how fans of rival teams can be sharply divided. I think it brings out both the best and the worst of human nature depending on the situation and those involved.

 

I don’t doubt that sports can bring people together but the values and sustained culture of the major sports in this country is toxic in many ways. I’m living through the worst of it right now in Cleveland with Deshaun Watson, sports radio and the local media cover 24 sexual assault allegations as innocent until proven guilty. Go to a local bar and you’ll hear “he just likes happy endings” when first of all those aren’t the allegations and secondly no professional should be subjected to that kind degradation. Kobe Bryant is pretty much worshipped despite refining the playbook for victim blaming in rape cases. Growing up in sports I had the same macho and sexist experiences as everyone else—a bad throw is throwing like a girl, crying or anything showing anything other machoism is called gay. Not to mention all that’s been written about the mental health toll that sports culture and it’s pressure of performing and winning has on the participants. I’m not really saying anything about the sports themselves, I like sports, but sports culture in this country is a terrible way to build community imo. It has a long way to go.

 

Imo most of that sounds like toxic masculinity being applied to sports rather than sports culture itself

 

I agree and that’s kind of the point. Toxic masculinity permeates through sports culture. It doesn’t have to be that way but there’s no denying it’s currently a major issue with sports culture.

 

I mean, it's a major issue with a lot of things, certainly not limited to sports culture. Gaming culture, for example, rife with toxic masculinity.

 

I don’t really think it brings out the best of anyone. There can be genuine good bonding that happens, for sure. I don’t care about sports at all but have been able to bond with others when invited to watch a game. My family was a Pittsburgh Penguins family and I have fond memories as a kid from cheering on “super” Mario. Also, one of the only, if not only thing I ever got to do with just my dad and his dad was to go to a Pitt football game. 3 generations of men in the family. I have no other memory of it just being us 3. So, I also view that as a very positive and good memory with sports. it’s certainly not all bad.

but there is a lot of toxic garbage that comes with a lot of sports fans. I’m not willing to say if there is more good or more bad overall. But based on the people I interact and see in my life, there is far more bad than good. Or at least, far more bad that is visible. The good stuff is likely not as easily seen due to people just enjoying the sport with friends or family and that’s that. They don’t make it a huge loud obnoxious thing that negatively impacts others. So for the toxic bad stuff I see, it’s stuff like getting super drunk and screaming nonsense or knocking things over (my friend spilled beer all over me the night the Penguins won the cup in 09), the unreal mindset that they know better than the professional athletes and coaches, backseat quarter backing and coaching to the point that they act as if they are on the team or coach, the weird part how people make this team their identity to the point that they speak as if they are apart of the team, the way they will rage over ref calls, and they’ll call for people to be fired from one bad game. Not of that seems good. And more into my personal experience, this OBSESSION with fantasy football. At my last job they always had a league in the office. But they never tried to include everyone. So every football season there was this clique that all women and some men (like me) were purposefully excluded from. Every Sunday and Monday during the season it’s all they would talk about all day. On Sundays, some of them would actually watch games on their phones or computers and not do any work at all. They would get calls that their team would need a bathroom break and such and just ignore it because the game was on or they were deep in discussion about how x player needs to earn them points so they can win that week and blah blah blah. Them not doing their work created more work for anyone not in the league. It was gross and toxic as hell. They would even bully each other over people not doing well that week. And, in general, there was a vibe of people believing that as long as you claim it was meant to be funny, you could be as viciously cruel to someone as you wanted to. Somehow the “humor” negated any of the cruelty. Just such repugnant behavior.

All that to say, if you’re someone like sports and are able to genuinely bond with others over it without the behavior I talked about above, that’s awesome and I hope those people enjoy the football season or whatever sport. Football just seems to be the worst of them. But if people act like what I talked about above? Ugh, super gross.

This reminded me, I had a friend in high school who cried when the Steelers didn’t make the Super Bowl. During the latter part of the game they had to remove themselves from the group to sit alone at a distance they were so distraught. Like, it makes zero difference on your life. They’ll be playing again in a few months time. Why such a dramatic response? I don’t understand it.

 

I love sports, particularly hockey being Canadian, but the all too common hockey bro culture is absolutely toxic and dangerous as fuck. Just look at the allegations against Hockey Canada going on as we speak. Sports are great, but sports culture absolutely largely sucks

 

And oh my god, Mondays in Pittsburgh were the worst of the Steelers lost that week. The city was depressed for a day in those cases. It was a noticeable difference if they won or lost. I can’t think of anything else that would happen regularly that cause this throughout my life.

 

I will say that the crying being called hay stuff is definitely a 90s and before thing and these days is much more “understood” these days(though I’m sure that will depend on the area of the country). For an injury it might get made fun of a little bit still (though in my experience the campaign against kids saying gay derogatorily has been pretty effective around here), but crying after a big loss is definitely pretty accepted and universal even among kids. I cried like a baby back in 2005 when we lost in the state championship and I wasn’t alone haha.

 

I’m about as big a sports fan there is but even I would admit I think sports culture as it is in America is probably a net negative. As someone alluded to above, toxic masculinity is a big part of it, but that part in itself comes from a toxic masculine society just permeating it’s different sides.

I think the understated part of sports culture itself is how it comes at the expense of other cultures and values. Money is definitely sucking some of the fun out of it. Sports stadiums are massively expensive, public expenditures. For as much money as athletes make, they’re their own little microcosm of the inequality between owners and players/workers and it often gets ugly and annoying watching these negotiations in the public eye. More leagues that don’t need them are adopting ads on their uniforms, just a constant reminder that sports are now one less escape from thinking about the economy all the time. Commercials and media time outs make some nfl games nearly unwatchable. Granted many of those things are just capitalism seeping through just like masculinity seeps through, but regulating money and investment is a much more tangible, actionable think society can work on and make decisions over.

maybe it’s over-romanticizing but I think society would generally be better if people largely went to their local club’s 2nd division games and society instead invested their time and energy in trains that got everybody to those games cheaply and then took them to the well funded and attended museums and walking plazas and parks.

 

that’s part of why it’s great though haha. The passion and connection millions of people feel all at once is really cool IMO.
Though I don’t know if Eagles fans get really “depressed” the day after a loss, they just get…more Philly lmao.

One of the happiest and coolest moments of my life was being in the city the night the Phillies won the World Series. Being around a million+ people all celebrating and happy over the same thing was sorta surreal. The context here is it was the city’s first championship since 1983 so you basically had an entire generation of fans who had never seen a championship and everyone else who had waited 25 years for one and the city was just in complete brotherly love mode. Running down one side of broad street towards city hall while cars were going dow the other side and reaching out their windows to high five people walking by. Other cars and trucks were going towards city hall with the crowds so people were jumping on and sitting on the cars and no one cared or was mad about it. It was really an amazing night.

It’s stuff like that that I think of when I think of “sports culture” tbh