This article brings up some interesting concepts about a cultivated disinterest in sports. A few thoughts on this issue:
-I agree that learning a bit of something like this is useful for conversation. Knowing something that is very popular allows you to find common ground with someone. If you have really obscure fandoms and only want to talk about them to people, you are sharply limiting yourself in who you connect with. Some of the commentators asked whats the point of knowing something you don’t like for the sake of conversation. I think this is a narrow way of looking at it. If every interaction you have with people ends up like Dwight Schrute, you may be at some disadvantages. Often when I console people on their lack of friends or loneliness it turns out they struggle with small talk or finding benign things to discuss with people. This in turn is because their interests tend to be either really obscure or not age/gender standard. They feel like they are being insincere for acting either interested in or knowledgeable about something that’s not in their narrow band of obsessions.
-This leads to my other observation. There are certain things that seem popular to dislike, i.e. cultivated disinterest. It is often proportional to the popularity of the subject in question. Or, it sends strong messages about class to the people around them. In other words, it is not that they necessarily dislike the thing, but rather they are trying to set themselves apart. This often happens with genres of music, with people debating what is “real” music or talent.
With the Super Bowl recently passed, it made me realize just how many people on Facebook went out of their way to emphasize how pointless football is. As though Super Bowl Sunday is an informal “let me tell you how stupid this whole thing is” day. Valentine’s day is coming up, and I am anticipating similar cultured disinterest in it as well from single people.
Well, thanks for both proving that there are people who “cultivate a disinterest”, and for the general insult to me and probably half the posters on this board.
I’m sure you like something that I could say the fans of are stupid. Let us know what you like so we can insult you.
I think part of the reason that some people seem to cultivate a disinterest in sports, especially football, is because so much of society seems to place way too much value on football. I think it’s a reaction to the fact that collegiate football is supposed to be an extracurricular activity at an academic institution, but at the big football schools, a star player can pretty much assault who he wants, rape whomever he wants and steal whatever he wants without consequence. That attitude is carried over to the professional level.
Meanwhile fans cheer for big hits, knowing that they are watching young men permanently damage their brains for the enjoyment of the public. Add to that the fact that many of the players are from disadvantaged backgrounds and their ability to play football is their only avenue out of entrenched racism and economic inequality and it’s hard not to cultivate a disinterest in something so grotesque.
American football is one of those things that make it easy to cultivate a disinterest in, if you stop and think about it even a little bit.
I don’t express pointed disinterest on Facebook or anything like that, for various reasons. But I can certainly identify with the sentiment–a part of me would certainly like to post things like that.
It’s not that I’m trying to set myself apart. Mainstream sports-fanning set itself apart from me, when I was a kid, for getting angry with me for being bad at sports, and by ridiculing me for not having a natural interest in it. As a result, I have little but bad associations with the topic, and have found plenty of success in other areas, so have never had cause to drift into sports-related topics when learning new things.
I was comforted to discover, on getting out into the real world and away from grade school and hometown, that being uninterested in sports is just another way to be, and that there are plenty of other people like me. Soon after coming to this realization, I can very well imagine myself having posted things like what you’re talking about on Facebook (had Facebook existed at the time), not as a way of setting myself apart so much as a way to assert that despite what I’d learned as a kid it is okay to be the way I am. (This isn’t setting oneself apart, because it’s not opposition, it’s just position.)
That was years ago and I don’t feel even that need to “affirm myself” by sending out noises to like-minded people. Indeed having since then had to really digest the fact that plenty of perfectly respectable and friendly people, good friends of mine even, are true sports fans, it would be wrong of me to offer blanket criticisms of fandom in general. But I can certainly understand the urge.
As for the OP, it sure does seem like sports, and specifically big sport events, brings out the people who have to go out of their way to say they dislike it. They can’t just be happy that they don’t like it, they have to let everyone know how special they are. They’re like anti-sports hipsters.
I mean, RV shows, bird watching, the opera, St Patrick’s Day, having children - these don’t appeal to me at all. But do I go around posting how much I think people that enjoy them are “stupid”? Nope (this post excepted ).
So why is it people think they are better for disliking sports? Is it because sports are so popular? Because these people never got picked for the grade school baseball games?
I’m not getting that, I find it kind of presumptive actually. I didn’t need to cultivate anything, I simply lack an interest in sport. Just as you may lack and interest in needlework. You just didn’t find it interesting, you didn’t cultivate it.
And if you’re not sports inclined, interest wise, it seems galling that it’s part of every news broadcast, for instance. It’s everywhere and the build up to the Super Bowl seems to take over media. By the end of that week, the non sport lovers can be understandably testy, I believe.
Saying people cultivate a disinterest makes it sound like they’re only doing it to annoy you!
Also, people talk crap on Facebook, news at eleven!
Your points here are valid, but they don’t just apply to sports. The same could be said about movie stars, the music industry, politics. But you don’t get threads or FB posts from people saying how much they hate the movie industry because some movie star rapes a young girl, or hate all music because Chris Brown beats Rihanna.
I think it is a combination of two factors - the (over?)emphasis that American society puts on sports, combined with people’s lingering resentment at how they were treated when they were young and not good at sports.
I’d like to be Brad Pitt, Bill Gates, or Aaron Rodgers, but due to not being born with the necessary attributes or skill sets, I never will. But I don’t hate the movie industry or the software industry, and neither do I hate sports. I like the parts of each I like, and dislike the parts I don’t.
I don’t agree with the author about needing to learn about sports in order to be able to talk to “everyday” people, but I do agree that there is a degree of cultured disinterest. I particularly agree with this:
[QUOTE=The Article’s Author]
“I’ve heard people almost compete to explain the depth of their ignorance in sports — one doesn’t even know the rules, one doesn’t own a television, one doesn’t know the first thing about the game.”
[/QUOTE]
I’m completely apathetic about football: I spent Sunday evening binge-watching Sons of Anarchy on Netflix. What annoyed me on Facebook and Twitter were not the posts from fans, but rather the ones from those who felt the need to go out of their way to show how disinterested they were. (The next person who used the term “sportsball” was going to be smacked with a dead fish.) I never saw any posts objecting to the game itself: the “hater” posts were all about making the poster seem somehow superior to those who were enjoying the game.
That’s not disinterest, that’s active dislike. There’s a big difference. Yes, the Super Bowl was everywhere for the past week: so what? It happens every year, and lots of us – who genuinely don’t care – are able to not be bothered by it. If people get testy about it, that’s not understandable (IMO).
The OP is absolutely right about Valentine’s Day, BTW: I’ve already seen some “I just call it ‘Saturday’” memes going around Facebook. Puh-leeze. :rolleyes: (And I say that as a single woman.)
I agree. In much the same way that atheists often come across as anti-religion when they express their opinions around Believers, people indifferent to sports can be perceived as forcefully anti-sports too. And maybe that perception is based on some amount of truth, but not without reason. When you grow up your whole life feeling pressured to enjoy sports, it eventually becomes tempting to challenge this pressure with equal vehemence.
People also like to have their attitudes and opinions validated by others (which accounts for sports enthusiasm too). So you’ll see people speaking up so that like-minded others can agree with them.
I’m not interested in most sports (except being a passionate NY Mets fan) because I’m not interested. I even used to host a cable sports call-in show in the 70s, but as time went by, I became more and more involved in science fiction and fandom (and later the Internet).
My disinterest isn’t cultivated; I just don’t pay much attention to sports. Other than baseball, I just ignore it all. Obviously there are some things you can’t ignore, but I usually have better things to do with my time than watch sports.
I haven’t watched the Superbowl in over 30 years, and that one time was an anomaly. I’ll watch again if the Jets get in it, but that’s not going to happen in my lifetime.
There’s truth to this. Clearly, some people care too much about sports (in general, or a particular sport or team) and take them too seriously, so I understand caring “too little” about sports so as to keep things in balance.
I don’t think that particular attitude is as widepsread a problem as you imply, but I am bothered by the way athletics at some academic institutions, especially men’s football and basketball at big universities, seems to be at odds with and detrimental to those institutions’ main academic mission.
This is an important point. I think the vast majority of people who are sports fans as adults have positive associations from childhood/adolescence, either of playing sports themselves, or of watching sports with their father or grandfather or someone like that. But there are plenty of people whose childhood associations with sports have been more negative.
That last paragraph I quoted kinda sorta refutes your assertion in the first two. If something’s all over the place, and the media are trying their best to drum up interest in it, you kind of have to go out of your way to avoid it; you have to actively resist learning at least a little about what’s going on. There is cultivated disinterest there.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, necessarily. There are so many things that you could devote your time and attention to, you could never do justice to more than a small fraction of them in one lifetime.
I think the OP is right, and there are a lot of folks who look down their noses at sports as a way of putting themselves above the Great Unwashed. But that happens with anything popular - football, Harry Potter, Top 40 music, dozens of other topics. I’ve done it myself, unfortunately.
I am not a sports fan, at least of sports anyone else follows, but I think the above is true. Sports is one of those topics that can be used to start conversations and keep them going. When I use it in that way, it is an interesting exercise because it prevents me from adding my thoughts to the conversation (I don’t have many) so I just keep the other person talking with generic questions, and it doesn’t take much to do that. I watched some but not all of the Super Bowl, and I can get my daughter’s boyfriend talking almost indefinitely about the game.
It was a line from (I think) the movie City Slickers where one of the protagonists says that, no matter how much he and his father were alienated from each other, they could always talk about baseball. And that’s a good thing.
Conversations about sports are, for me, a demonstration of the fact that it is not necessary to have anything worthwhile to say, to have a perfectly civil and useful conversation. It’s a safe topic, people have a lot to say about it, they usually can disagree without being unpleasant, and it is less boring than the weather.
Maybe it’s because I’m a baseball fan, but I do think the kind of attitude the OP references is more common with American football. One thing I dislike about football is how gross and “fake” it is (for lack of a better word). If you go to an NFL game you realize that sometimes the game just stops, while they wait for the commercials to play on TV, it’s weird.
Football increasingly feels like a WWF or monster truck rally, rather than a sporting event. I also find it really weird when people tell me they watch the Super Bowl for the commercials; that’s just weird.
I think that people who are vocal about their dislike of football are rejecting all that weird over the tope violence and consumerism. Katie Perry dancing with sharks (?), this year’s Budweiser commercial (who gives a shit?), guys who can barely read after spending four years at a university giving each other brain damage? Fuck that shit.
You all can watch the Super Bowl for the commercials, I’ll watch the World Series for the baseball; and yeah, I’ll feel a little smug about it. Oh, well.
At the tender age of eleven, the '69 Cubs cauterized any sports genes I many have had in my nascent personality. I didn’t have to cultivate it. I’ve had zero interest in any sport ever since. But I don’t brag about it, and don’t think it makes me any better than other people. I have fervent interest in many things that are every bit as pointless as sports (Star Trek and Tolkien, for examples), so I can understand how people can take their frivolous interests seriously.
My problem with your question, Tuxie, is that it seems to assume that being interested in sports is more natural than not giving a fuck.
I don’t like football, basketball, baseball, or hockey; I’ve watched soccer because my favorite niece to play, and she’s my seventh-favorite human being, but had no interest before or after she played. That’s because they’re fricking boring as hell. I do like boxing (which is dying) and MMA, though, and will happily watch those. I ordinarily am happy to simply ignore the first four sports I mentioned; when I was a relay operator, I used to volunteer to work on Superbowl Sunday so someone who wanted to watch the game could have the day off.
What I find annoying is when people try to shove sports down my throat. Back in the 90s, for instance, I had an otherwise wonderful and too-good-for-me girlfriend who wasn’t content to have me go for a walk, read a book, or cook dinner while she watched baseball games; she insisted that I could learn to like them if I’d just give them a chance (but was not willing to, say, go to the museum with me). She’s not the only person I’ve known who thinks it’s just unnatural not to care about men running up and down a field or court with a ball.
I didn’t start any Facebook or Dope threads about hating the Superbowl. But damned if I’m gonna exert any effort to be interested in football, unless my kids want to play it when they’re older. My lack of interest in the game isn’t something I’ve cultivated; it’s just me.
Sport fans aren’t stupid. My baby sister is smart as a whip, and she adores football; likewise my favorite niece, and my older brother. Their fannishness is no more silly than my preference for chess. They’re just not me.
I enjoy playing sports and was actually pretty good at some of them when I was younger. But I find watching other people play sports about as interesting as watching paint dry.
What I find annoying about the Superbowl is the assumption that Everyone Watches the Big Game. If it were just presented as a big event for the fans, I wouldn’t give a fuck about it. I could happily ignore it the way I happily ignore most people’s hobbies. But it’s treated as some sort of national holiday. That’s annoying and it prompts me to want to be snarky about it.
I’ve been on both sides. When I was in high school and college, I disdained taking an interest in sports because it wasn’t “intellectual.” It seemed to me at the time that only the less intelligent were interested in it. I also had bad associations due to my father’s interest in it, and the fact that I was bad at it.
When I was in graduate school, I found that many of the people who I respected, like my major professor and some of my friends, appreciated sports a great deal. I realized that whether or not you enjoyed sports had nothing to do with how intelligent you were. I became an enthusiastic baseball fan following the NY Yankees on their run from 1976-1978.
Today I’m still a baseball fan. I follow football when the NY Giants are competitive, and I always watch the Super Bowl. I have almost no interest in basketball and hockey. I also don’t follow soccer, but I did try to watch games during the recent World Cup to try to see why it was so popular. I think I got more appreciation for the complexities of the game than I ever had before.
There are some activities I’m interested, and others I am not. But taking pride in not being interested in something strikes me as rather ridiculous.
).