I said what I said
Also I’m high
one of the times where “let people enjoy things” is valid
using it to kill discussion of [thing] because [thing] has become part of your identity, bad
using it because you are minding your own business trying to do [thing] and someone is being obnoxious, good
Reminds me of how fucking weird some people get about it if an adult reads YA books
Like yeah they’re for teenagers, I don’t read them myself, and I’m going to roll my eyes at anyone who insists they’re every bit as deep and meaningful as books written for adults, and you deserve nothing but mockery if they’re the lens through which you understand real-life politics, but the way some people talk about it, you’d think a YA book murdered their dog
Reminds me of how fucking weird some people get about it if an adult reads YA books
Sometimes there’s an explosion of “(well written cartoon that adults happen to also like) is FOR BABIES”
here.For some, adults are not allowed to like things without sufficient violence and/or sexual violence or IT’S FOR BABIES.
Ah, yes, the hill on which FuckYourselfEndless spectacularly self-destructed
I didn’t want to name names, but yes. And the icing on the cake was that user had an anime waifu avatar.
I always thought the anti-natalism was going to be the thing that got them
Yeah the complete sidelining of a medium as “for babies” doesn’t make me mad at all…
If it’s from glorious Nippon, it isn’t for babies, though fandom and industrial pressures may mandate a fanservice emphasis of creeping on children.
I suppose by the same logic Tolkien can be considered for babies because there’s not enough sex, violence, and/or sexual violence against children compared to Gambo.
Tolkien can be considered for babies
my high school gf told me tolkien was for babies, also jane eyre, and pride and prejudiced were also for babies.
What the fuck was not for babies according to that very adult authority on adulting?
her very cool dnd games where she played with her dad his 40 year old doctor friends was very mature. fantasy series written by boring white men. also iron maiden and the like were the only real music smart people listened to, unlike my pop garbage. yeah…
Gotta love the edgelord need for hyber violent or hyper sexual shit.
Meanwhile Don Heartfelt has been out here for 20 years doing compelling independent animation that’s constantly pushing the form and storytelling. Still hasn’t won a best animated short Oscar.
Still hasn’t won a best animated short Oscar.
Infinity Train was interesting and different and heartfelt enough that hateful edgelord and kiddie creeping sex predator Justin Roiland had to shit on it on an episode of his own edgelord cartoon. Because one was for babies and the other is for mature grown-ass adults.
Oh, right, not from Japan therefore Rick and Morty still for babies.
Over the Garden Wall is some of the best Halloween time storytelling. Amazing writing, amazing acting.
But it’s not edgy adult humor so no one appreciates it.
Funny, Infinity Train was also the target of vitriol from cartoon Youtuber Lily Orchard, who
CW: Pedo
made sexual advances toward a 16 year old among several other awful things
I think you’re (unintentionally) framing this in a way that centres the adult-oriented books that you value more highly, to the exclusion of the ones that you don’t hold in any esteem and that’s a real trap that people can fall into.
Let me put it in different terms to illustrate the point.
Imagine if I told you that any adult TV show is more deep and meaningful than any children’s/youth TV show. I’m sure that immediately you’re thinking of the most trash-tier reality TV show and comparing it to a celebrated TV show which is aimed at a younger audience and you’re thinking “Hang on a second… that’s a flawed proposition” and you’re right to think that. Not to mention there’s a really good chance that you haven’t even considered that infomercials are undeniably aimed at an adult audience nor considered the implications that this has for the argument.
So, why is it different with books?
There are some really shallow, vapid books aimed at an adult audience and there are books aimed at a younger audience which are deeper and more meaningful than a Harlequin romance novel or a Chuck Tingle novel for example (I’m making an assumption here - I’ve never read any Chuck Tingle before.)
Of course this is all subjective and it’s a matter of taste, but isn’t that kind of the point?
You could give The Yellow Wallpaper to a misogynist and they’d shrug their shoulders and be like “Women… amirite?” or you could give Things Fall Apart to a western chauvinist and they’d see little value in the book or you could give something like Infinite Jest or The Naked Lunch to a lot of people and they’d see no value or meaning in it.
Likewise, books aimed at a younger audience are likely to be more meaningful to a young audience than The Old Man and the Sea is to an adult. And vice versa.
But I’m not telling you off for having your own preference and for finding more meaning in the books you are drawn to. When it comes to how we make meaning and what value we place in art, this is something that is deeply personal and it’s entirely subjective. There’s no right or wrong and there’s no objective better or worse in this experience, it’s all simply a matter of preference and we should embrace this fact.
You don’t have to share in someone else’s love for YA fiction, for example, but there’s no need to try and impose your preferences on them either.
With that being said if you’re an adult and your frame of reference for politics is YA fiction, you’re playing around in the shallow end because this is a matter of facts and not simply taste; if you use the Star Wars movies to inform your understanding of medicine then you should be prepared to have your opinions disregarded by medical professionals, and rightfully so. That doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to have Star Wars as your favourite franchise. It just means that it has its place as art and that’s where it belongs. The same can be said for fiction novels and politics (although I’m sure that someone’s going to chime in with a good counterexample now that I’ve gone and made that my position.)
When it comes to how we make meaning and what value we place in art, this is something that is deeply personal and it’s entirely subjective. There’s no right or wrong and there’s no objective better or worse in this experience, it’s all simply a matter of preference and we should embrace this fact.
I’m going to have to disagree to an extent here. It’s actually good to have aesthetic and moral principles by which you assess the value of art, and it’s also good to argue for them with others. Art is subjective, yes, but that doesn’t mean that every thing is equal to everything else and that everything is in the eye of the beholder.
Read Barthes
When it comes to how we make meaning and what value we place in art, this is something that is deeply personal and it’s entirely subjective. There’s no right or wrong and there’s no objective better or worse in this experience, it’s all simply a matter of preference and we should embrace this fact.
My disagreement is that Ready Player One is a giant steaming pile of shit that cashed in on credulous aging Xers by pandering to their nostalgia and their gross reactionary politics by providing an extraordinarily empty ego-insert power fantasy based entirely on a narrow less-than-a-decade-wide window of generational childhood experiences that had to be viewed without any literary analysis or political awareness, just REMEMBER THING? THEN YOU WIN THE PRIZE!
Like yeah they’re for teenagers, I don’t read them myself, and I’m going to roll my eyes at anyone who insists they’re every bit as deep and meaningful as books written for adults, and you deserve nothing but mockery if they’re the lens through which you understand real-life politics
the first hunger games book for example was actually pretty good. (although the series didn’t really know where it was going from there)
I’ve noticed that people have a great deal of difficulty distinguishing between scenario 1 and scenario 2
Listen you might not like the comic but “let people enjoy things” is much less unpleasant sounding than “don’t yuck someone’s yum” because saying that phrase makes me feel a visceral disgust as it slides out of my throat like a thick ooze
“Let people enjoy things” is linguistic harm reduction
It’s the
harm reduction in place of 
bumbling harm delivery.
The sports fandom really can be toxic and overbearing. As much as I love some sports, the way it was always expected for me to give a shit about the local football or baseball team was obnoxious. Not to mention the excessive doting on sports, to the point that schools will slash their arts department and lay off teachers so the middling football team there can get more concessions.
One of the most sobering early experiences I had as a teacher was being notified, again, that I had to tighten my belt, again, because of a budget cut that was necessary, again, in the district’s newsletter.
The next page over, the same newsletter proudly announced the new stadium being built…
For the amount that the necessary budget cut was for.
The sports fandom
Love this phrasing
I’m not sure how else it’s supposed to be described except in less flattering ways.
The Sportsball Cult
My city is currently facing a housing and homelessness crisis and each mayoral candidate keeps promising to build a new stadium without raising taxes because of the constant braying of the sports Fandom.
That is a uniquely american thing in part because America is the only country I know of that takes high school sports seriously and also don’t seem to understand that the relevant costs for a sports team are: shoes, a ball, PE teacher salary, field someone will let you run in none of which should be breaking the bank
To be honest this is the real issue. People I know who say ‘sportsball’ are trying to mock how sports is not more important than all things, yet in some contexts seems to be treated as such. Unlike all other hobbies, sports gets ground into my face every day by Youtube ads and buses and TV and news etc. If chess got the same coverage and pushing into my face that sports did, I’d mock it just the same.
College and high school sports should just be some field out on campus, and the coach should just be the anthro professor doing it as a hobby or something.
Do they have to be anthro? I dunno if we can find that many furries
anyone whos ever said “sportsball” in earnest is a loser
Death to America
I hate sports, but yeah sportsball as a term is exactly the sort of faux-clever lib shit you see when people are talking about Trump as Cheeto Hitler or whatever
Death to America
It’s coming back around as based to me because of how mad it makes everyone. I’m going to go back to mocking sportsball because of this thread
People who don’t like culturally normative thing are losers. Congrats, you’re literally the stereotype of a high school bully.
cringe post. there’s a huge difference between not liking sports and being an insufferable “sPoRbSbAlL” dipshit. my post is very obviously about the latter group, not the former, and I don’t appreciate you trying to collapse that distinction
Death to America
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If this were 15 years ago this take would be “anyone whos ever mocked sports in earnest is a f**”
You are reproducing the same thing as them, re-worded for 2023 hexbear
cringe post. there’s a huge difference between not liking sports and being an insufferable “sPoRbSbAlL” dipshit. my post is very obviously about the latter group, not the former, and I don’t appreciate you trying to collapse that distinction
Death to America
Removed by mod
disengage
Death to America
there’s a huge difference between not liking sports and being an insufferable “sPoRbSbAlL” dipshit
I think in a lot of cases, people getting unreasonable amounts of shit for being the former leads to them becoming the latter.
Even the maker of the comic made a followup where the “let people enjoy things” thought terminating cliche was dragged out back and shot.
About the only single comic that I can think of that did as much lasting ideological damage to western cultural discourse was “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory” from Penny Arcade which was used to justify/excuse nazi shit across the nascent internet and also made people assume that everyone was a shitty edgelord the moment they could get away with it, which lowered the bar steeply for how many people expected others to act.
That edit was made for me.
The Adam Ellis redemption arc was really something.
Who knew, if you’re not forced to make shovelware comics for a profit-driven company and instead make them because you enjoy creating art, the quality goes up.
I wouldn’t have been sorry, I would’ve walked up and shot it again just to be safe.
sports haters are incredibly annoying and childish. critiques of how athletes are treated and the culture around sports are valid but “haha sporbsball amirite” makes me think you’re never interacted with someone outside of the internet
Hard disagree on this one. In a vacuum, sports is a hobby like any other, and it’s fine, if not my particular cup of tea.
But in practice, it holds a unique position of cultural hegemony, perhaps especially in America, in such a way that it is inextricably bound up with gender, patriarchy, race, labor and capitalism. I personally hate sports because people assume things about me based on what they think my gender is, and use it to police my gender.
I have no problem with people enjoying sports. What i have a problem with is people having a problem with me not enjoying sports.
Growing up i was always asked about sports and expected to care about them, enjoy watching them, and have something to say about them. My not caring was an unwelcome deviation from what people expected then, sometimes that necesitated an excuse for why it was okay and i always hated.
I hope its not like that for people growing up today, and we’re all just letting people enjoy things. As a kid the things i enjoyed weren’t okay and it wasn’t okay that i didn’t enjoy sports.
Big fucking mood
Yeah also it’s annoying af when old dudes ask you your opinion about the big game and when you don’t have an opinion they’re like, oh so you’re not athletic huh? Like motherfucker I see your beer gut, you’re not fooling anyone
It is interesting how some connect passive viewing as “athletic”. Similar to how watching sports is viewed as “masculine”
Yelling at the TV burns so many calories!
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Is this actually a thing? I tried googling it but all the results said “Actually there is no research substantiating this”
The term sportsball has outlived its usefulness.
I don’t disagree with that. Personally I’m not interested in attacking anyone’s enjoyment of sports.
You can see my comment to see what my issue is with sports. It has nothing to do with actual sport. But the way it was used culturally to shame and police children and their gender. I hope that’s changed since i was a kid
American football is blood-chilling to me as a flag-humping bootlicking spectacle of performative allegiance. It’s no wonder Nolan used an American football game and all of its symbolic “wholesomeness” as ground zero for his “scary leftist man with bomb” story beat.
There’s an alternate universe where Al Qaeda flew a plane into the Superbowl and America instantly nuked the world in retaliation
I reckon we could probably collapse the US simply by forcing US football teams to play against international rugby teams in half/half games.
you are significantly more likely to be badly injured playing american football than rugby. The only advantage of the american football game is that it lacks the homoerotic rapey nature of British rugby culture (to be clear the issue isn’t that the culture is gay it’s that it’s very weird and bad about consent)
bwwwwaaaaammmmm
not the wholesome football game! 
sports are fun and cool. what you hate is capitalism, not sports
Death to America
Probably lol
Death to America
Really, by this point, what hasn’t capitalism ruined?
Yeah, here in Australia as well, the funding for sports is a giant black hole that sucks in and destroys funding for the arts and sciences (unless the science is how to sports better). Resulting in us having the lowest proportion of Arts spending of any developed country.
I think it’s healthy to look at something like sports and, while recognizing it’s not harmful to society in and of itself, questioning whether it’s healthy that so much societal time, energy, and money is spent on it. I mean, there’s a not insignificant portion of Americans for whom sports is basically what they live for. I feel that way about Christmas, too. Is anything wrong with enjoying Christmas? No, of course not. Is it maybe an indication of something wrong in our society when for approximately 10% of the year, the culture seems to grind to a halt to make this one holiday the focus of our lives? Maybe, worth interrogating at least.
I don’t care for sports because I literally cannot comprehend emotionally or intellectually how one enjoys them
Umm sweaty have you considered that you’re stupid and childish? I love enforcing neurotypical normativity and belittling those who deviate from the norm! Why can’t you just be normal?
Sports fanatics are the most sensitive people on the planet and can’t handle others making offhand jokes about their obsession
You must touch X amount of grass and clock in Y amount of hours in popularly accepted consumer entertainment before you’re allowed to feel some way about it.
Sports bad
There WAS once a time in which people who only think about sports and only talk about sports, and get seemingly offended at people not following sports were more common. “Sportsball” was a necessary thing then. However, the term has outlived its usefulness, as sports fans tended to mellow out more, seemingly realizing they were cringe and learning from it, while the sportsball people became who the term was originally supposed to mock, but from the other end.
An even more problematic thing is that it also empowered chuds who are all “they shouldn’t be paid so much because they just throw a ball and don’t contribute to society”. Motherfucker, one professional athlete contributes more to society than every landlord, CEO, and financier combined.
The sportsification of education is still ongoing to this day. Sports culture in america is still cancerous and toxic and reactionary
Queer coded bad guy, speaking of sports and society enforcing gender norms
Not even “coded” really, overtly homophobic I would say
People forget the whole “sportsball” meme came about in the first place because before the widespread adoption of nerd culture in the 2010s sports was inescapable and forced on everyone. It’s hilarious that sports fans act like victims when they get any light mocking or pushback to their total cultural hegemony and imposition on everyone else. If you were a man and didn’t like sports you were mocked as gay (which was seen as socially damaging).
Let people not enjoy things
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Nah it slaps and makes sportoids mad
Normalcy is a helluva drug.
Fairly obvious that a lot of people’s resentment towards sports comes from simply not being good at it in school and getting picked last for the team or whatever. It’s like the inverse of people hating on nerds, where it’s obvious that they hate nerds because they were never good at math in school.
I wonder how old people with takes like this are.
If you grew up before 2010 and nerd culture you would realize that liking sports was not optional. You were mocked as gay. You couldn’t keep up in small talk with your boss and would get passed over for promotion. It was mandatory to watch sports or you would be stigmatized. There was eventually pushback to that hegemony via the “sportsball” meme and mocking sports for being silly. Everyone seems to have forgotten how oppressive and toxic American sports culture was (and continues to be, schools are still getting gutted to make way for more football shit. Stadiums are still built with slave labor. Now it just makes you a “loser” instead of a “f**” to hate sports but the toxic masculinity underlying it is still there as you can see even in this thread)
for growing up with same shit i did. I hope that it has changed enough for people to not get it, but i kind of doubt its changed that much. Just unexamined patriarchy i think the person I’m replying to isn’t American, which probably shows where the difference is coming from. It is possible for most sports to have a healthy place in society, and in different countries they may have struck the balance a bit better I don’t know. But in the USA it’s absolutely absurd the amount that people who worship sports and sacrifice people’s health and educations on the pedestal of a game, and it’s very sad how many poor kids grow up thinking its their only avenue out of poverty - destroying their bodies and forsaking their educations for a 0.01% chance at becoming a pro player. Americans overall act like everything is normal and fine, but it’s not. Sports need a serious reckoning and they need a complete divorce from schools and heavy, heavy taxation to remove a lot of the profit that creates perverse incentives.
If we could have publicly funded sports broadcasts without ads that didn’t make any profit, that would be one step for progress. Another would of course be to create a publicly funded youth sports program that is entirely divorced from schools and colleges, their funds entirely disentangled and separate, that would be another step. I’m fine with sports existing, but right now they are a parasitic growth. College sports need to be banned in all public schools across the board. Get rid of sports scholarships, make them illegal, and make public colleges free.
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melodramatic
Would you say I’m being a bit theatrical? A bit fruity? A bit hysterical? lmao you aren’t helping your case that this is toxic masculinity being enforced
Treatbrained concern trolls often need to frame people they disagree with as emotionally unstable, mentally ill, or female/queer coded weak and they may not even consciously do it.
Being obsessed with sports and destroying all other aspects of social life and replacing it with sports is normal and the baseline. Questioning that? Wow, what are you a GIRL? A FREAKING WIMP?!?
It’s NOT NORMAL and it EMBARRASSES LEFTISM. You need to TOUCH GRASS and by that I mean consume sports treats on the screen.
It’s funny cause usually people see how nonsensical the “let people enjoy things” angle is, but when it comes to sports we now have to let people enjoy them even though there’s demonstrable social harm attached. I haven’t even touched on how interwoven militarism and nationalism are in sports either. There’s so many angles to come at this from because American sports culture is so uniquely fucked up
and you are being more than a little melodramatic
I grew up in the 80s and your concern trolling is tinged with residual misogyny/homophobia that’s so watered down that you maybe don’t see it yourself.
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Sports parents are truly the worst. The only good famous one that I can think of right now is Antony Hamilton. And even then, Lewis Hamilton still had to let go of him as his manager in 2011.
Jos Verstappen intensifies
The best role model for how not sport parent.
I think most people’s resentment for sports, if you asked them, comes from their connection to gender norms, and how kids who aren’t interested in sports are treated by society as freaks who need to be policed into liking the appropriate gender coded activities. I suppose that also extends to people who for whatever reason weren’t fortunate to be good enough at sports that they were picked last.
Either way the issue isn’t that they werent good at it or weren’t interested - its the gendered stigmatization that comes with it.
Perhaps that’s changed or isn’t as extreme now as it was. But, most peoples issue that grew up when i did comes from the reaction from society at large for not liking the enforced gender coded thing and being told whatever we liked instead was stupid or wrong and that we needed/were expected to like sports instead.
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Eh, athletes are workers whose labor is still exploited by owners despite their large salaries. And don’t forget about the exploitation of free labor at the college level and even lower because kids are competing and hurting their bodies to maybe one day make that money. I think that’s the part that’s worth being mad about, not that the few who make it get to make large salaries for years of wrecking their bodies
Yeah, most athletes don’t make even close to enough compared to the value they bring team owners. I can’t feel bad for millionaires who play a game for a living, but I feel a hell of a lot more for them than billionaire owners who don’t do shit.
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I’m not fond of them because I never grew up with it and I don’t understand having loyalty to a random North American city over another one. I don’t watch much TV to begin with so that’s another big barrier.
To your school point, I wish there had been more non-competitive alternatives. I thought I hated physical activity until I realized you can go portaging or on long bike trips, and work with your peers in an extensive environment instead of being pitted against them in a very mechanized ruleset on a very small court.
I love pushing my body to new limits and travelling ambitious distances in the woods. And now I’m not against a good game of ultimate or whatever with some buddies, but sitting down to watch “the game” is one of the most frightfully boring ways to spend an evening that I can think of.
I can watch a game especially in person, but the thing that really makes me wither and die is when people talk about the fucking probabilities of the success of teams over the course of the season and fucking picks and shit.
I thought it was because I just wasn’t interested in football or whatever. But that’s not it.
I really like video games and I often love watching someone playing a game in a fun or skilled way. But when someone starts talking about the fucking bracket some esports team made it to, I want to claw my fucking ears off. I don’t care! Holy shit! If any of those games were a good watch, send me the vod or whatever. But don’t talk to me about who’s gonna win IEM Katowice or whatever. Fuck! What could be less interesting???
Everyone has treats that they’re biased towards and treats that they’re biased against. In the end, I don’t see how one set of treats (sports) is noticeably more harmful than another set of treats (movies, games, anime, YA novels). You could argue that a particular sports fandom like American football is very obviously more reactionary, fascist, jingoistic, and in general terrible than other sports fandoms or fandoms period, but sports as a whole? It’s pop culture, and in a reactionary society, pop culture will always be some shade of reaction. Pop culture is a key component of the superstructure that socially reproduces reaction. You can’t escape it.
I personally don’t tap into pop culture these days, partly for the reason above, partly because I don’t really get personal fulfillment out of pop culture, and partly because I realized that even if you share the same taste in pop culture as someone else, it doesn’t actually help you socially and emotionally connect with them, so why bother? But I’m not going to stop rolling my eyes at some weeb or gamer making the same “sportball” joke while they gush over some slice-of-life anime or AAA game that nobody, including them, would remember in a year.
I don’t see how one set of treats (sports) is noticeably more harmful than another set of treats
Lmao. My high school in town just laid off 10% of the teachers in the same year they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on new turf for the stadium. Sport culture in America is extremely toxic and harmful and has destroyed public institutions and education. Public education systems are being gutted and replaced with footballs. YA novels don’t do this.
But I’m not going to stop rolling my eyes at some weeb or gamer making the same “sportball” joke while they gush over some slice-of-life anime or AAA game that nobody, including them, would remember in a year.
That’s pretty much it yeah.
I realized that even if you share the same taste in pop culture as someone else, it doesn’t actually help you socially and emotionally connect with them, so why bother?
I have the complete opposite experience. Formed quite a few friendships and even relationships by starting from common interests, like say talking about soccer. It’s a good ice breaker. Even if you go outside of sports, were only on hexbear due to our shared interest in left wing politics.
For me, the bonding comes more from shared experiences than shared tastes in pop culture. By shared experiences, I mean like if we live in the same city getting stuck in traffic in the same highway or if we both have a deadbeat dad and were raised by our mom. I guess sports have the most potential because it isn’t as passively consumed as other parts of pop culture, especially if you go to stadiums to watch it live and play the sport casually with other people. If we’re talking about videogames, there’s a difference between playing couch co-op Smash with other people and saying, “BG3 and DE are my favorite games. I can see it’s also your favorite game as well.” I’ve encountered the second in the wild, some dude who had the same exact taste in games as me. It also did fuck all to actually develop a friendship because talking about videogames doesn’t mean much except talking about videogames. We might have the same tastes in games, but we didn’t share the same experience of playing those games together.
thats fucking ableist
TW: bullying, domestic violence
Only your parents might, potentially, hit you for failing math. You could beaten a lot for not liking sports. The fact that you are suggesting people don’t like sports only because they are weak is a part of this.
If you werent a jock you were a target. My frjend group gad death threats against us during school and tge jocks were exempt from consequencez because they needed them for the “big game” 🫠
I was good at neither and yet I only dislike sports today. Organized, big league broadcasted on TV sports I should say. I just do not care about it, or talking about it, or it taking time on the news every day. There are few tings that matter less to you and me then who won the ballgame yesterday. It’s pointless.
Not caring about it makes perfect sense, but its still entertainment to a lot of people, so them talking about it also makes sense.
Now Ultras, yeah that goes way too far.
neither nerd nor jock
Sports fans have it so hard! 😞
I can’t tell you how much growing up as a “guy” in America made me hate sports
Are you me?
The entire reason i hate sports is because of the gendered bullshit that meant it was okay for people to assume and expect or demand that i like sports, and whatever i did like was stupid because it wasnt sports. No one was stepping in telling people to a let literal child enjoy things
Are you getting ready for The Big Game™? Do you have Official Product for The Big Game™? If you don’t, what the fuck is wrong with you?
When a bartended it was shocking how many men have nothing else to talk about or any other way to socialize than through sports.
is always the reaction when you don’t care about The Big Game™That disturbed me in the break room early on when I started in my district.
There wasn’t much to talk about except
A: THE BIG GAME™
or
B: THE NEW HUSTLEGRIND STARTUP THAT IS MAKING ME MONEY ON THE SIDE DONT MISS OUT BROOOOOO
Umm ackshually you’re a basement dwelling loser. You’re stupid and childish for not conforming to my neurotypical expectations of how a person should behave. Don’t you socialize with people? There is something wrong with you. Why yes I am very leftist.
I love logging onto hexbear dot net and getting flashbacks from 20 years ago of manchildren “adults” harassing an actual child over disinterest in getting major league brain damage and sports in general. I don’t like sports just like I don’t like certain flavors. I’m just not interested. But everyone had to fucking psychoanalyze me and determine that there was something deeply wrong with me. Of course I had undiagnosed ASD but if known they would’ve just used it against me even further. If someone tried this again in real life I’d be trying real hard not to sock them in the jaw.
Denigrating sports haters as stupid abnormal (gasp) basement dwellers reinforces centuries of cultural discrimination against both a significant swath of neurodivergent people and an also significant swath of neurotypical people who happen to have different interests by brandishing the “social unifier” of sports.
Making offhand jokes about “sportsball lol” has literally zero cultural impact and doesn’t contribute to societal-wide denigration of those deemed “different” or “abnormal” but the sports fanatics act like someone murdered their dog. Reminds me of “cracker is a racial slur”.
For anyone who spends time moaning about the sports haters being mean, all I have to say is, you have the entire weight of the vast majority of society behind you. Fucking get over yourself. You never, ever have to deal with any real harassment and bullying over you liking sports.
Every fucking time a socially disadvantaged group starts pushing back against cultural stigma and norms (or even, get this, mocking them, the horror!) these people peel their eyes away from the BIG GAME to bitch and whine about how they’re being maltreated. Indistinguishable from conservative backlash whenever someone suggests accommodating the “different”.
If you think sportsball jokes are “bullying”, or do the thing where you apathetically remark about how it’s annoying or whatever, you need to check your fucking privilege, because you haven’t experienced even a fraction of what the sick depraved abnormal people have.
Just let an out group vent for once without making it about yourself and how it’s personally annoying that we’re making jokes about your sacred cows.
Umm ackshually you’re a basement dwelling loser. You’re stupid and childish for not conforming to my neurotypical expectations of how a person should behave. Don’t you socialize with people? There is something wrong with you. Why yes I am very leftist.
“Why aren’t you kissing strangers at a New Year party, you shut-ins? I love you all, but you are all embarrassing the leftist movement by not being basic enough.”
This shit got real enough to piss me off. I did go out and reasonably celebrate with masking and social distancing but because I stuck up for the “shut-ins” when I got back a bunch of mysterious very leftists started chiming in after weeks or months of inactivity to vomit rage at me for not nodding to the sage wisdom of the all loving performative grass toucher and the kiss a stranger sermon.
For anyone who spends time moaning about the sports haters being mean, all I have to say is, you have the entire weight of the vast majority of society behind you. Fucking get over yourself. You never, ever have to deal with any real harassment and bullying over you liking sports.
One of the most glaring signs of unexamined privilege is the primordial fear of being treated the way they treat other people.
Made some ninja edits, but I’ll repeat for clarity,
Sports fanatics being annoying to me usually manifested through bullying and other forms of denigration and belittlement. Me being annoying to sports fanatics has no effect on them other than the energy it takes them to roll their eyes and call me the r-slur and other toddler insults before they trash the cars parked in the hundred acre garage next to the stadium and violently assault rival fans after their team loses before rendering public transportation unusable for the next five hours.
Note: the above is a joking description of a sports fan even if it is descriptive of a significant portion of them. I am putting this here because I just know someone will be in my replies about how I’m persecuting sports fans or whatever.
It costs you literally nothing to just let the out groups vent. It’s kinda like racialized groups joking about crackers and whatnot. Including the corresponding whiny, entitled Facebook rants from angry white men about how the blacks are being mean to them. You don’t actually need to effect any material damage to set these people off, all it takes is the tiniest implication that their worldview isn’t objectively correct.
Anyone who feels the need to use teenage bullying tactics on me for being different because I made a joke they didn’t like can line up over here at the jaw-socking station. It’s my favorite sport.
These whiny, entitled little babies throw a hissy fit every time they aren’t congratulated for conforming to societal expectations.
People like me are bullied through their entire childhood over this stupid fucking bullshit and some entitled neurotypicals always show up to whine about me “not letting people enjoy things”. Out groups can’t even do anything to change something materially, but just joking about their hobbies is enough to send them into a rage.
Like, it’s ok, everything will be fine, sports will still be here tomorrow even if you don’t valiantly defend the sports fandom against my rabid attacks.
Typically, when the knee-jerk defenders of the popular billions-of-dollars franchises see criticism of their treats, they act as if the criticism is some existential threat to the treat, and that’s laughably false when it comes to the head-injury death cult that is the NFL.
definitely feel this comrade
They always do seem to be upset about sports.
Sports fans are the most socially disadvantaged minority in the US. Imagine waking up every day and everyone wants to talk about the exact same thing that happened last night that you also want to talk about. There’s no bars or churches anywhere that you can’t find someone to tell you the highlights and minutia of last night’s events that you want to talk about or you missed and want to get caught up.
is this a situation you regularly encounter at church or at a bar?
you mean growing up in the US or are you referring to something else?
for some reason i thought you were implying that you couldn’t escape being talked to about sports, which isn’t what you said lol, sorry
maybe i’m just jealous because i don’t know anyone irl who likes baseball
Leftists who sort of follow a sport are the most oppressed minority
truly the most oppressed majority
Apparently, the author of this comic has retracted it, views it like an inventor or scientist who sees their creation as gone horribly wrong.
A modern day Oppenheimer
https://youtu.be/pQtSdsR1-H8?si=Ut-6O_eyDci1N1jS - “Wealthy people profiting off the physical misery of mostly minorities - what could be more all-American than that?”
on the other hand sportsball is also used to criticise non evil sports like basketball, soccer etc
soccer
fifa uses fucking human trafficking to build stadiums, all of the sexual assault stories, refusing to pay women fairly.
basketball
college basketball still steals MILLIONS from mostly poor black teens and young adults. your face can be sold on a shirt that makes millions and you make no money and you probably never will. there is also a culture of player abuse around basketball. and you still have a sport that reduces people to their bodies and if those bodies have opinions they are told to shut up and play. and they still also refuse to pay women and stop assaulting them. stadiums still take millions of taxpayer dollars.
i dont care about your local adult sports team or a pick up game, but sports under capitalism is destructive to the bodies, minds and lives of millions of black and brown children. nothing is as bad as football and boxing but these companies are no less “evil”
this isnt even mentioning the effects of sports in colonized nations. We are reading Fanon over in the theory comm, come join us, this is a bit of what we read last week. heres some of Fanons (a casual soccer player himself) thoughts on sportsball.
But the youth commissioners in underdeveloped countries often make the mistake of imagining their role to be that of youth commissioners in fully developed countries. They speak of strengthening the soul, of developing the body, and of facilitating the growth of sportsmanlike qualities. It is our opinion that they should beware of these conceptions. The young people of an underdeveloped country are above all idle: occupations must be found for them. For this reason the youth commissioners ought for practical purposes to be attached to the Ministry of Labor. The Ministry of Labor, which is a prime necessity in an underdeveloped country, functions in collaboration with the Ministry of Planning, which is another necessary institution in underdeveloped countries. The youth of Africa ought not to be sent to sports stadiums but into the fields and into the schools. The stadium ought not to be a show place erected in the towns, but a bit of open ground in the midst of the fields that the young people must reclaim, cultivate, and give to the nation. The capitalist conception of sport is fundamentally different from that which should exist in an underdeveloped country. The African politician should not be preoccupied with turning out sportsmen, but with turning out fully conscious men, who play games as well. If games are not integrated into the national life, that is to say in the building of the nation, and if you turn out national sportsmen and not fully conscious men, you will very quickly see sport rotted by professionalism and commercialism. Sport should not be a pastime or a distraction for the bourgeoisie of the towns. The greatest task before us is
to understand at each moment what is happening in our country. We ought not to cultivate the exceptional or to seek for a hero, who is another form of leader. We ought to uplift the people; we must develop their brains, fill them with ideas, change them and make them into human beings.
yes this is a transparent attempt to get people more interested in fanon
yes this is a transparent attempt to get people more interested in fanon
What would you recommend as a good starting point with Fanon?
I’ve got very little knowledge about anti-colonial theory but I’ve been trying to educate myself.
honestly the BEST place to start is the wretched of the earth IMO, he lays out the path to decolonization and discusses the many potential pitfalls, but im not the Fanon expert hes written a lot. we are on 4 chapter now, but I will literally respond to every discussion comment as long as I am on this site and we can have a convo about any part of the work.
Thank you very much.
I’ll have a look for that later.
Where is this quote from?
chapter 3 page 137 The Wretched of the Earth. thanks for asking, i forgot.
basketball listed among non-evil sports
Common Kansas W
You’re talking about the capitalist implementation of leagues and commodification of the sports.
Might as well call movies and books evil because of what studios and publishers have done, get tax breaks in many states, treat workers poorly, etc.
It’s capitalism, not sports inherently whether organized or not.
I also think if we want a proletarian movement, it’s better we don’t demonize sports
-
Sports struggle session on the menu, y’all!
You have depicted me as the “I’m very intelligent” guy. I concede.
. i dont respond with serious answers to extremely unserious comments. antagonize someone else or better yet actually read what I said before going into a treat fueled rage.this was weirdly aggro
deleted by creator
No one is antagonizing or raging, but I’ll disengage.
This is a dumb argument. The platonic ideal of a sports league does not exist, global-capitalist sports leagues exist plus whatever the DPRK has. No one is arguing against the platonic ideal, they are arguing against the existing institutions and the systemic problems that inform their nature.
Except maybe the high-contact non-comvat sports like American Football and Rugby, but certainly not basketball.
Were organized sports not a major cultural part of communist and socialist nations? Is there something inherently fascistic about “professional”, for lack of a better word, athletics and organized sporting leagues, as in the best in their class coming together to form teams and compete against each other for plaudits and the entertainment of spectators?
A lot of people are arguing against sports, or at least organized sports, in general here. Many in here are upset with the cultural assumptions put on them by conservative, patriarchal societies through sports and using this to attack sports in general and the people who enjoy them. The term “sportsball” is not an attack on the capitalist model of professional sports, it’s way to infantilize people who enjoy a specific form of entertainment.
Those are valid feelings and valid critiques, but I believe they are attacking symptoms and not the cause.
And I do still feel it is best we don’t fall out of touch with the working class, which generally is fond of sports.
the soviet union in some cases introduced sports leagues to areas
sportsball represents all sports, not just American football.
Also those are equally as evil
look I enjoyed kicking around a ball as a kid and I don’t think that was evil.
Nobody said that is. What is evil is the religion of sports in America, the cultural obsession that steamrolls public education and hollows them out, turning them into little football factories with class sizes of 50 where half of them are illiterate (whether that’s from all the money going to the coach instead of teachers, or all the concussions they are inflicting on the children). Every adult sports fanatic who spends money and goes to events and watches games contributes to this massive festering rot
in that case sportsball is not a good phrase as it doesn’t come accross like that at all. It comes off as obnoxiously dismissing something because you don’t like it
It’s certainly is dismissing it because I don’t like sports because I think people are overall too obsessed with them and it has a negative effect on society and they need to be constantly reality checked. Who the fuck cares about being obnoxious?
Your position is “Its ok to not like sports but shut the fuck up about it and keep it to yourself”
My position is “No. Sports fucking suck. I’ll keep saying it until it stops being a festering rot on society that far too many people take far too seriously”.
America’s sport religion is a social issue that needs addressing, I refuse to just shut up about it because you like it. A lot of people think anti-capitalists or vegans are annoying and tell them to shut the fuck up about it and keep it to themselves, but they don’t because it’s a social issue not a personal one. Americans are fucked. They are destroying their youth by turning their schools into prison/football factories and gutting all funding elsewhere. All the money goes to sports. It’s fucking evil.
Ohhh hey, you watchin’ some 9/11? How’s the stupid 9-
Y’all didn’t learn from FFX that big sports events give the masses in a shitty world a reason to feel happy and cheer for a bit.
And also a racist soccer player will help kill god.
big sports events directly make the world more shitty so its a self perpetuating feedback loop
education systems destroyed, slums bulldozed, slave labor for stadiums, corrupt fifa deal, millions of injuries, etc.
Also he’s gonna do it with his fuckin soccer ball because fuck subtlety
Blitzball is awesome.
Although, after Sin was defeated they ended blitzball for J-Pop girl group performances and everyone seemed pretty happy about it
racist soccer player
Hey! He gets better! ANd its like, the best handled “bigot redemption arc” story in fiction lol.
Yeah I legit love Wakka.
Does John DiMaggio’s accent get any better?
I watch 0 sports and the terms sportsball makes me angry. To the point I’ve thought about a gamer equivalent to throw back. Closest I can think of is controllertoy
Just tell them to go play on their Nintendo. They get real mad when you misgender their consoles
I think the Sealion comic is similarly harmful and annoying, but less prolific.
At the very least it put some buffer up against the
gate popularized bad-faith questioning tactic of saying shit like “um excuse me could you kindly point out one example of (obvious fucking thing that the bad faith questioner refuses to see)? You can not use any sources that I see as woke or having an agenda/narrative. I’ll wait.” The most glaring example of that I ever ran into was a
gater that pulled that about proving was a racist. Yes, this was years after the “they’re not sending their best” speech.“Sealioning” is almost as bad as “whataboutism.” I’ve seen the comic and I still have no idea what it’s supposed to mean - is it when you call out racism instead of letting it go unchallenged? And this is presented as a bad thing, for some reason??
You can’t just make up words and use them to denounce things that are legit.
The longer version of its original intended use can be called “bad-faith questioning,” the kind where liberals passive-aggressively-politely demand proof of something they disagree with and then without fail reject any evidence given because it doesn’t agree with what they already believe.
Ok so if for example someone says, “Hexbear is exactly like 4chan” and I ask them to substantiate that, and all they have is stupid bullshit that I reject, am I sealioning? If they accuse me of sealioning, do I have a response other than saying, “sealioning is made up internet bullshit?”
OUR refutation of baseless accusations. THEIR bad faith sealioning tactics.
I’ve never had occasion to accuse someone of “sealioning” because if I make an accusation and someone asks me to substantiate it, I either provide evidence or back down. The only context where you can talk shit and dismiss pushback is if you’re bullying someone, and trying to bully someone while using the term “sealioning” just comes across as peak smuglord.
Yeah it seems like sealioning could be a thing but it’s much easier to use it disingenuously. Exactly like whataboutism.
Whataboutism? What about deez nuts?
This has always been my gripe with internet buzzwords and phrases. A lot of the time they’re invented for a legitimate thing but once it’s out there you can’t control it and people will misuse and misinterpret it (often for their own clout), and then the use in the original context becomes discredited.
I think if you read the Sealion comic as specifically a parody about the alt-right, it’s alright, but the moment you start talking about “sealioning” as if it’s a generalizable logical fallacy or something it completely falls apart (I doubt it was ever intended to be read that way either). It’s about as serious of a criticism as putting the other side’s position next to a crying wojak.
I think I figured out the main problem with sealioning specifically. Usually the person represented by the Victorian humans in that comic simply state their position, and then an argument of some type ensues- it’s rare that something correct is also too abstract to explain, especially when you have time to type it out on the internet.
It’s also generally used in contexts where both parties are choosing to engage. That’s like, the main bad thing the sea lion does in the comic, and it’s like, if you can’t eat breakfast because people are trying to debate you on the internet, maybe try putting the phone down.
- whataboutism
From what I remember, the comic was made during the height of Gamer Gate and made popular to call out Gamers who would basically demand citations for the bad or lacking representation or depictions of minorities in gaming or other issues
I just wish it was more clearly about that specifically. As it stands, it can be read as, “My dislike of [group] is justified by how [group] reacts when I express my dislike of them” which can be really problematic when talking about things like race, gender, etc. And the metaphor is made worse by the fact that “being a sea lion” is an innate trait, not a choice.
I thought it was about verbally affirming civility long past the point where it’s become clear that the interaction is hostile. I feel like the sealion is justified, but would be better served with a, “Fuck did I just hear you say about sealions, you piece of shit?”
This is like the third definition I’ve heard and I think it really highlights how ambiguous it is to define a word based on a comic as opposed to an actual definition. Some people think it’s about civility like you said, other people think it’s about bad faith requests for a source like Ulysses said, and still other people think it’s about following someone around to other threads and refusing to disengage like someone else said. This is why I say I have no idea what it means, despite having seen the comic and seeing the word used in various contexts. I hate it.
You’re right. Even though I uphold its role in anti-Gamer action, it’s basically just a rorschach test
The term “sealioning” was primarily used against anti-SJW chuds by feminists so I disagree it was a bad addition to the discourse. If its used against leftists I’ve never seen it.
I happened across this just now
Well, I maintain that the comic was originally invented to be ABOUT anti-sjw types and the way they behave so I would call this a misappropration.
Absolutely
