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.
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.
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
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What the fuck was not for babies according to that very adult authority on adulting?
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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
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.
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
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
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.
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disengage
Death to America
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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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
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
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
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
bwwwwaaaaammmmm
not the wholesome football game! 
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)
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.
Nah, fuck sportsball.
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
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.
I also grew up in the 80s and 90s and Ulysses is 100% correct and it was often times even worse.
My resentment towards sports comes from being good at sports as a kid, so I got a ton of pressure from a bunch of boomer dads, sucking any fun that once existed out of sports for me. I nonetheless kept playing sports until middle school (because I was scared of my dads reaction if I didn’t want to play sports anymore) when the pressure started coming from my peers in addition to my parents and coaches. There was so much pressure on us to be good at sports that kids would thrown tantrums and get in fights if they lost a pickup basketball game. If I wanted to goof off a bit or just not try so hard just playing pickup basketball I’d have a couple of my “friends” start yelling at me giving me shit for trying to have a little fun. The atmosphere around sports was so toxic, I remember the fights and the arguments when some of us made the school basketball team and others didn’t. By 7th grade I had enough of an independent streak (and was sick enough of my “friends”) that I quit baseball tryouts halfway through. My dad didn’t speak to me for like 2 months after that.
I wish I had stuck with sports I really do (and I wish I didn’t quit just to do drugs all day in high school) but when everyone around you is a toxic asshole who sucks all the fun out of it it’s hard to. I like competition, but when you have kids breaking down crying and throwing tantrums when they lose a simple pickup game I think it’s gone too far. Sports culture is extremely sick in the United States and “sportsball” is a cringe term, but sports culture deserves most of the hate it gets.
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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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” 🫠
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.
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???
thats fucking ableist
Are you mad or just blowing your referee whistle?
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
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 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 “sports all 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.
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
truly the most oppressed majority
Leftists who sort of follow a sport are the most oppressed minority
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?
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
This comic is so cringe it feels like a strawman
But what if I enjoy being a hater?
Then people should let you enjoy that
That’s when you activate an Uno Reverse card.
There is a lot of unexamined
in this thread.I’m not defending the use of the term “sportsball”, of course its cringe its from like over 10 years ago. And there is nothing inherently wrong with sports, playing sports, or watching sports. They can be fun.
For me personally, i grew up hating sports, because i had no real interest in them yet they were used by society to police gender. I hated and resented that sports were what i was “supposed” to like, expected to like, and maligned for just not liking. I was not allowed to “just enjoy things”, what i liked was stupid, a waste of time.
What I really hate and am upset by is the patriarchy of course, not sports themselves. I recognized that now that I’m older. As i kid, i only understood it as hating sports. But while i can delineate between the two, its also impossible not to notice how bound up sports, patriarchy, an gender policing are.
I think its important to keep that in mind when someone dislikes sports and criticizes its manistream and hemegonic acceptance as the default male gendered interest. Its not just a hobby, its bound up in America’s enforcement of gender.
I hope its not as extreme as when i was younger, but i doubt it has gone away entirely. Either way, its pretty depressing to see dissmissive takes in this thread and not seeing any expression of self crit on these issues
I didn’t intend to start a sports struggle session ITT (mostly I saw people using this comic about like YA books and Marvel movies tbh), and that’s very funny to me
But yeah some people should do some self crit if they think disliking sports as it currently exists is loser behavior or whatever. However annoying you find hating sports, it’s not even a millionth of how annoying sports actually are.
Death to America also means death to sportsball
No one ever intends to start a struggle session*. Its unexamined reactionary thought that requires one to happen.
*exception see: LiberalSocialist
Ohhh hey, you watchin’ some 9/11? How’s the stupid 9-
I think the synthesis here is that yes sports are dumb. So is dungeons and dragons. Adults can like dumb things, just acknowledge they are not serious and are for playing around.
no this comic is a war crime because people fill in the sportsball speech bubble to make the character criticize their shitty unexamined reactionary treats. For (an extreme) example:
“oh hey, you enjoying blackface cartoons from the 1930s again? That’s pretty messed u-”
“shhhh let people enjoy things”
Is D&D packed with ads every 15 seconds? Are there D&D betting apps D&D enjoyers are pushed to gamble with? Do DMs start sessions jerking off the US military with giant flags and the burger national anthem?
If you can bet on WWE matches, you should be able to bet on D&D campaigns
Please don’t give WotC more fucking ideas
On a more serious level I think people are confusing sports (exercise based games) with sports (organised large scale leagues) that’s muddying the waters. Enjoying a kickabout with your mates is no worse than playing D&D with them, it’s once you’ve got fanbases that the problems develop - just look at how ads are working into many D&D shows.
Is D&D packed with ads every 15 seconds?
Is there a Game of Thrones expansion for basketball? I don’t like sports leagues generally, but let’s not kid ourselves.
True. Capitalism ruins everything it touches, and Wizards of the Coast is easily the worst offender.
Has D&D helped gut and destroy the American educational system? Has it given millions of young people brain concussions? Does it use slave labor to make stadiums? Is the highest paid state employee a D&D DM?
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I also struggle to think of any DnD campaigns that caused mass rioting, or a statistically significant annual spike in domestic violence.
you know they aren’t non abusers who watch sports and then become abusive right. It’s the already domestically violent aggravated by their hobby not going the way they wanted if they had a different hobby they would be just as abusive but at different time periods
Its almost as if sports in the US are tied up with toxic masculinity and patriarchy, and thats the heart of the issue some people have with them.
That’s kind of presumptive and even if your claim could be verified (it really can’t), way too many domestic partners have reported violence peaking during The Big Game style events for there to not at least be influence on when their violent outbursts break out, or how often.
It’d be like saying soccer hooligan riots would 100% happen exactly the same way if every single soccer hooligan was collecting stamps instead, while also blissfully ignoring when soccer hooligan riots happen (after soccer games), which isn’t just out of thin air.
I should have said that sports correlates with a spike in DV and not causes it. However, just as I can’t say for certain that sports events directly causes DV, I don’t think it’s correct to say that there’s no link between sports and DV and that the same net amount of abuse would result even if sporting events are removed from the equation.
Anecdotally, I used to volunteer with a charity that helped out young people who were in trouble, including DV. Major sporting events were always times where they tried to get all hands on deck because there was always a surge in calls compared to just about every other time of year except Christmas.
Obviously alcohol is a huge factor too, but sporting culture in the Angloshere is also incredibly entwined with drinking culture so its hard to separate those factors.
That’s a big difference to me: I can accept that some people don’t like some things I’m in to. As long as it isn’t some dogmatic bullshit about how “X is FOR BABIES” I really do accept that not everyone likes stuff I like.
In theory, yes. In practice, I don’t think anyone has ever had their school program defunded so that the school can buy new Dungeons and Dragons books.
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First of all how dare you
