We get it. You don’t like sports. Who cares. I think there’s validity to sport and I enjoy watching and playing many of them. Has capitalism ruined everything the common person holds dear in most sports? Yes. I literally wrote an article about it.
But sport itself isn’t inherently bad and being like “herp derp sportsball” makes you sound like a basement dweller incel who wants to shoot up their school because they think jocks get all the girls instead of the kind gentlesirs who study the blade.
A lot of people are only exposed to sport as a tv show and a product, but most sports have roots that go back hundreds of years, are very influenced by working class history and local teams are often at the heart of communities (although many have been stolen and turned into just another generator of capital).
Sports have also been an arena for the class struggle - aristocrats and workers battling it out over who should be allowed to play and control different games at different time, “amateurs vs professionals” (i.e. those who were wealthy enough to be able to fund their sporting career as a hobby vs talented workers who needed to be paid to play) was a controversy in sports for decades. Even today there are many teams run and owned by fans in some sports, and the struggle between workers who have been watching their teams for decades (even through multiple generations of families) vs their indifferent capitalist owners is ongoing.
Also playing sports is fun and you will make friends and get healthy.
Read up on sport in 20th century socialist states, it was treated with massive investment and athletes were awarded high honour, it was tied in to public health (along with often being integrated with making people fit enough to serve in the army to defend against all the capitalist countries wanting to invade you for trying to not be capitalist). Even in capitalist countries today grassroots sport is one of the only real community/social circles people have that isn’t tied to working for a capitalist.
Leftists hating sport is so weird as a non American. Maybe it's because American sports broadcasts are filled with ads and fash military nonsense, and Americans don't have the opportunity to play sports themselves due to their horribly designed cities and crushing work hours, bit but still. Hating the fundamental concept of competition with your fellow humans is just always going to be weird to me.
Obviously I hate the capitalistic nonsense and most sporting organisations, but competing against others is fun in the right environment.
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My entire direct experience with playing sports involved getting called gay a lot and my parents signing me up for stuff against my will and it killed any prior enthusiasm I had.
I don’t think it's a leftist thing though, it's an online American thing to hate sports. Go ask any weird libertarian forum what they think about football. Because sports here are only two things: memories from high school (where you were a bully or bullied) or a capitalist product with military theatrics attached. The only time I hear about sports being anything else around here is a way to get laid on the weekends.
People offline are usually indifferent or into it.
Sport is often pay to win in America
The big American sports leagues are actually better in some respects than say, most of soccer/football worldwide. They at least have a draft system and stuff vs whoever has the most money gets the best players.
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