Why do so many people in the "geek" community dislike sports?

Darks63

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I don't know about the whole "geek" community, but the reason I don't dig most sports is the whole team spirit thing alludes me. I guess it makes sense since I'm a loner. The only team sport I am kinda sorta interested in is college ball.

I did like boxing back in the 90's with Tyson, Holyfield, and Lennox Lewis, however it started to get boring since alot of fights went to the judges and I hate fights that end with those corrupt bastards.

I also liked Wrestling for a time but again the storylines just got boring and the Wrestlers themselves stale. It's a shame too since I can no long follow Spoony's Wrestle Wrestle vids.
 

KingDragonlord

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Kenbo Slice said:
KingDragonlord said:
Wasted said:
Ishal said:
I dislike the culture of sports more than the sports themselves.

While it's true I was bullied by "jocks" in school, it didn't happen more than any other group. Punks and even other "geeks" had a go at me just as often. Equal opportunity I suppose.

There's just something about going over to a friend's house, and being able to hear his parents (mom typically), screaming bloody murder before I even get in the house. Absolutely losing her shit at the TV screen, beer in hand. Granted this does happen in gamer culture, and it does happen online. But... well... that's not really a compelling argument.

Can't really compare someone getting in your face IRL to an angry message in a chat box or inbox. If they are in a voice chat, mute them or block them. Fact is there are tools at your disposal nearly always for dealing with this stuff online. There is no way to turn off an angry fan who is drunk when you're at a stadium. As for the culture being xenophobic or harsh to outsiders, I'd say sports forums are worse by a very large degree. Gaming is still a young medium. Sports have been around much longer, and their fans often express a zeal and zealotry most gamers could never hope to achieve.
To me, the video game community is easily the most vile and aggressive community that I have experienced. What you attribute as negative aspects to sports fans I see it as 10x worse in any gaming forum. Say what you will, but personal attacks are too casually thrown around in nearly any multiplayer video game.

Homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, death threats are way too common in video game chat rooms and with the popularity of swatting these idiots have a means to potentially kill someone that one time said something that they disagreed with.
Oh please! I don't care how bad they are, words are never as harmful as what can happen to you in the locker room after gym class. And you only get that kind of ugliness from jocks. I'll take a lifetime of net rage over 10 minutes in a locker room.

Sports bring out the very worst sort of competitiveness, aggression, thuggishness, attention grabbing, in public in real life in real and tangible ways. Just look at the top players. A bunch of hyper aggressive morons who can barely speak. Its only on the internet that you can even pretend that geek ugliness comes anything close to approaching that.
In high school I never had a bad experience in the locker room, and I've never had a bad experience with a jock. You shouldn't let how some people in a certain group affect how you view everybody. Do you think all Muslims are terrorists?
And yet you have no problem with how geeks and gamers were generalized in the post I was responding too. I didn't say that all jocks are ugly just that a certain ugliness comes out of that community and that I prefer geek ugliness over jock ugliness.
 

KingDragonlord

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Verlander said:
I like some. Dislike some. Pretty much the same with everything
I've come to appreciate that watching them can be less boring than seems apparent at first blush. Most sports games have a lot of depth to be appreciated by the longtime fan, just like a good game. My brothers and father who I consider to be smart people can talk at length about the intricacies of American football and one of my favorite gamer critics, MrBTongue, did a video introducing the depth of gameplay in soccer and another comparing MMOs to NBA basketball. As in the gamer community, you don't just watch the games, you pay attention to recruiting, behind the scenes drama, roster changes, stats of other teams, etc. There's plenty to keep you engaged if you want to me. In my case, too much at this point.

That said, my past with sports, hinted at in my previous posts, kept me from appreciating that and now I'm too invested in my geekier interests to have time to invest trying to get up to speed on sports to the level where it would be fun to watch.
 

Asita

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What, like actively dislike? I don't actively dislike them. Heck, I respect the physical prowess required for them. I just don't find them entertaining. I don't see my attitude towards them as functionally different than how I generally don't care to see war movies and find youtube videos about friends playing Brawl a lot more entertaining than Brawl tournaments. Some things catch my interest, some things don't, just as it is for every person on the planet. In my case it just turns out that sports generally fall in my 'not interested' pool. That's about the long and short of it.
 

Kenbo Slice

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KingDragonlord said:
Kenbo Slice said:
KingDragonlord said:
Wasted said:
Ishal said:
I dislike the culture of sports more than the sports themselves.

While it's true I was bullied by "jocks" in school, it didn't happen more than any other group. Punks and even other "geeks" had a go at me just as often. Equal opportunity I suppose.

There's just something about going over to a friend's house, and being able to hear his parents (mom typically), screaming bloody murder before I even get in the house. Absolutely losing her shit at the TV screen, beer in hand. Granted this does happen in gamer culture, and it does happen online. But... well... that's not really a compelling argument.

Can't really compare someone getting in your face IRL to an angry message in a chat box or inbox. If they are in a voice chat, mute them or block them. Fact is there are tools at your disposal nearly always for dealing with this stuff online. There is no way to turn off an angry fan who is drunk when you're at a stadium. As for the culture being xenophobic or harsh to outsiders, I'd say sports forums are worse by a very large degree. Gaming is still a young medium. Sports have been around much longer, and their fans often express a zeal and zealotry most gamers could never hope to achieve.
To me, the video game community is easily the most vile and aggressive community that I have experienced. What you attribute as negative aspects to sports fans I see it as 10x worse in any gaming forum. Say what you will, but personal attacks are too casually thrown around in nearly any multiplayer video game.

Homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, death threats are way too common in video game chat rooms and with the popularity of swatting these idiots have a means to potentially kill someone that one time said something that they disagreed with.
Oh please! I don't care how bad they are, words are never as harmful as what can happen to you in the locker room after gym class. And you only get that kind of ugliness from jocks. I'll take a lifetime of net rage over 10 minutes in a locker room.

Sports bring out the very worst sort of competitiveness, aggression, thuggishness, attention grabbing, in public in real life in real and tangible ways. Just look at the top players. A bunch of hyper aggressive morons who can barely speak. Its only on the internet that you can even pretend that geek ugliness comes anything close to approaching that.
In high school I never had a bad experience in the locker room, and I've never had a bad experience with a jock. You shouldn't let how some people in a certain group affect how you view everybody. Do you think all Muslims are terrorists?
And yet you have no problem with how geeks and gamers were generalized in the post I was responding too. I didn't say that all jocks are ugly just that a certain ugliness comes out of that community and that I prefer geek ugliness over jock ugliness.
I didn't say all geeks and gamers. But if this thread is anything to go by I'm not wrong.
 

Slenn

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I remember a Facebook post I made recently about Howl's moving castle, a great movie that I just watched. One of my friends was then commenting "ISU's playing Kansas!" This was referring to a college football game between ISU, the school I currently go to, and KU, the college of the town where I grew up most of my life. I didn't make a response to it at all, simply because I just didn't give a crap about sports, AND the comment was on something completely unrelated to sports.

I tried baseball, and I didn't like it because I didn't like the outdoor environment under the sun and heat for so long.
I tried soccer, and I didn't like it because our team lost all the time and I never felt motivated.
I tried science, and I really liked it because it felt like a good challenge for my brain.
I tried physics, and I substantially liked it because I like the natural world and I liked science.

From that grew boredom of sports and a love of the sciences. Simple as that.
 

cikame

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I have an instant opinion when it comes to fans of popular sports, i was bullied my entire childhood by people who like football (in the UK... so Soccer), they were ugly ugly people, from ugly families, i grow up and i see football fans having fights in the streets, causing riots, footballers cheating on their wives, raping women, being racist. Because of this i very quickly and easily assume most fans of those types of sports are bad people, and i'm usually right.

I do like watching Snooker and Tennis because the players are very talented, professional Tennis players have insane amounts of stamina, but i don't pay attention to the names or celebrities because i like what they are doing more than the people involved.

I literally hate every single thing about football, it has crafted the most disgusting social groups the world has ever seen, the fact that the players are held up as role models and paid millions is nauseating.
 

Pete Oddly

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I find a lot of people in this thread are posting with their reasons for not liking sports. However; there is a key difference between simply not liking sports and having an active animosity towards them and people involved with them.

Personally, I don't like many sports either. I like watching hockey, I like playing darts (though it's not really a sport, honestly), and I LOVE watching MMA (though that has more to do with my savage lust for watching people beat the tar out of each other rather than the sport itself), but I'm not a sports fan, in general.

However; nor do I hold any sort of grudge against jocks. Fandom in one thing does not mean you must automatically be at odds with fandom of something else. This is a high school mentality, and rightly belongs in that immature headspace we all used to occupy in our youth. When this sort of animosity (from either "side") bleeds into adulthood, it simply shows how little growing up the person in question has done.

That's the way I see it, anyway.
 

Methodia Chicken

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Personally sports themselves aren't the problem, it's professional sports.
I am perfectly happy to watch local games involving my friends/family or get my ass handed to me playing them casually (somehow 6 totally uncoordinated geeky people playing with 2-4 very good geeky people is a lot of fun?)

It's when watching professional games becomes a thing that I immediately switch off, it's super hard to care or build a narrative or connection to anything going on, besides "I like that rich man's group of pet rich men better" (not to mention professional athletes have a weird habit of being horrible human beings).
I'm just being bored in a room with a bunch of super excited people that I think Garfunkel and Oats sum up my feelings on quite well.

besides the Olympics where I always get super patriotic and also love all the silly/epic events like marathons and horsey-dancing.
 

renegade7

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I think most of it is holdovers from back when there was a huge distinction between "nerds" and "jocks". Nowadays, the "geek" or "gamer" identities are so nebulous that it's pointless trying to define who belongs to which label. I say this because I've found it very rare to actually see someone of the "gamer/geek" persuasion to have any active dislike or disdain for sports and the people who play them.

As for why comparatively few of them seem to be interested in sports, I would say that's simply because if their interests were in sports they would be spending more time on that. Team sports are a very time-consuming interest what with competitions and daily practice. So if you're the more introverted, indoors-y type you're not going to be as interested in sports and not going to get as much exposure to sports, and if you're the opposite then you're not going to have as much interest in video games.

Or maybe, if I was feeling less charitable, I'd put it up as one of the aspects of the elitism that sometimes rears its head in the gamer community coming from the same impulses that lead to the Console Wars ("I'm existentially invested in my chosen device for playing video games so the decision of another person to not acknowledge my clear superiority makes me feel deeply threatened and insulted!") or rants about how some game series is becoming "too casual" for their refined pallets.
 

sageoftruth

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For me, it's because I live in Boston. The train station I take to get to and from work is also a stadium. In Boston, there is no middle ground for sports. If you're not a fan, then you won't be able to put up with the crap those drunken fans put you through. Is there a sports game playing tonight? If there is, all the fans rejoice and all the non-fans go "Crap! There's another sports game tonight! There goes my night." I find myself grinding my teeth every time I see someone wearing a sports jersey.

On the other hand, I do enjoy playing sports, as long as it doesn't get too competitive. I play them to have fun and won't put up with someone ruining the experience just because winning is so darn important. Doesn't mean I won't try hard. I just care more about doing well individually and as a team player than I do about winning. That's why I quit playing on teams back in high school. That may also be a part of why I'm turned off to watching sports really. At professional sports, it's all about winning. When I deign to watch a game, I'm there to see impressive feats from both sides, but everyone around me just wants Team A to beat Team B. Such a turn-off.
 

mitchell271

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Superiority complex?

The sports guys that I make fun of fall into 2 categories: the super egotistical ones and the ones that play fantasy sports but make fun of D&D.
The most arrogant people I've ever met have all been rowers and lacrosse players. I used to row, not all of us are like that, but goddamn some of them are horrible people that think they're God's gift to Earth. The fantasy sports guys is pretty obvious, they're just playing D&D, just with real people instead of elves.
 

SonOfVoorhees

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Geek is just a name for obsession. You can be obsessed with IT and gaming. Or you can be obsessed with sports. Think about it, people that love sport remember old match scores and how different players played. They even wear jerseys with the players name on the back......thats cos play when you think of it.

Just that obsession in sports is seen as more normal than IT. Though thats just a left over from when computers first appeared and only smart people saw them as interesting.
 

Secondhand Revenant

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Good question. I mean personally I have no interest in sports but I have no animosity towards them or sports fans in general. I do dislike the idea that sports are something men should be interested in, but that's a particular attitude and not sports or their fans in general.
 

Belaam

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Part of it may be generational/geographic. I feel as though in the 80s and 90s (when I was in K-12 education), there was a definite jocks vs. nerds divide with a lot of bullying and harassment. I got some of it, but far less than many as I was always a pretty big guy. It's a little humiliating for a jock to run up onto a table of 8th graders playing D&D, kick some books over, but then be hauled down and punched in the face by a DM who was a good 6 inches taller. I feel like the mix of anti-bullying efforts and nerd culture becoming mainstream has lessened that (though not eliminated it) today. Finding a jock who doesn't also play video games and go to comic book movies is a lot harder today; you can probably find some who enjoy manga or anime without much effort.

But I think the bigger part is the general rejection of something popular if you don't agree with it. Look at the anger against the pop star of the moment, all things Frozen, games journalism that includes critical analysis of the content, or even sports that the person in question doesn't consider a True Sport(tm). Soccer took a long time to overcome that.

SO I think it's a mix of remembered (or present) school age bullying by "jocks", a general disdain for something that is found to be boring in the face of those for whom it is a major event, and I think, a bit of elitism as sports fans tend to be seen/portrayed in problematic ways. Just look at marketing during your average night football. From the amount of beer, viagra, and truck commercials, even the marketers seem to think that football fans are all impotent alcoholics who want to pretend to be cowboys or construction workers.

Personally, I find watching other people play a game to be boring as all get out, whether I'm watching the Superbowl or a global League of Legends tournament.
 

Dogstile

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Kenbo Slice said:
I've seen this happen a million times on sites like imgur and here and across the web. Somebody wants to talk about sports but then they usually just get shut down because "hurr durr sportz r dum." I really don't understand what geeks/gamers/nerds/whatever have against sports. I'm pretty fucking geeky but I also really love sports. So, why is this?
Because gamers are assholes and if someones talking about sports and they don't like sports, they will threadshit until it gets nuked so that other people can't enjoy sports.
 

FriedRicer

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ZiggyE said:
I like playing sports, I don't like watching sports.
^Said it for me. As an add-on sports politics just annoy me. I hate hearing about locker room antics or gossip and watching just feels boring.
 

marioandsonic

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I actually enjoy the NFL quite a lot, and even follow fantasy football (which is pretty much just a more acceptable form of Dungeons and Dragons, really). Go Eagles!

I also follow MLB, and I'll occasionally watch it, but I can't stand watching more than a few games a season. I do enjoy going to the ballpark, though, as long as I have a good seat.