(no subject)
Jan. 26th, 2012 07:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vicarzToday is one of those days where I lament my choices and make them again.
I'm watching my daily newsertainment, astonished, as a university is mourning over the death of a sports coach (rather than say, an academic professor). I'm probably going to go to a superbowl party when I don't watch football (I may just throw in the towell and use the time to do my favorite superbowl activity - shop in abandoned grocery stores). Normal people care about sports, even freaky slutty club alt culture people "do it their way." It makes sense, the affiliation motivation that drives sports "clubs" would appeal to those who seek affiliation through projections of commonality. We wear black, or green + yellow, is the base for a belief in commonality of beliefs? Sports are more emotionally compelling than economic, political, or military events?
"I don't do politics," is a common quote - often by people who spend many hours "doing sports." I'm thinking the effort is about the same, yet the interest or possible importance is inarguable.
I'm reminded that if I took some small regular actions I'd potentially have more friends. I don't totally mind watching football - I just don't care. There is no illusion or suspension of reality for me. For any sport, professional or college I can't block out my perspective:
It's a game, and grown men are playing.
It's a business more than a sport.
These people are often raging assholes in real life (and often in the game as well).
Those members are not from the cities they play in, and often don't live there except to work.
There are things that may affect me going on and this is not one of them.
However, if I chose to fake liking a team, followed their players and record, went to sports bars, and engaged...I could make friends and have regular social activities. I could wear their colors and have short conversations with strangers, friendships, and fun rivalries based on the show. I could go to bars anywhere and engage strangers socially on a commonly-held interest. I could swap figures and projections with lawyers and janitors with ease. There would be a base common experience upon which to base talking, drinking, and fucking.
There would be more crossover between my social life and gym life.
People would care about my gym success that I know in RL.
I can't do it. I mean I could, I see the road and I can even get "involved" watching a game, enjoy plays, and kind of enjoy the outcome. I mostly know the rules. It's just not real. I can't turn off, nor do I want to turn off, the part of my brain that questions and thinks about the idiocy and problems with that experience. I realize my dumb illusions of social connections are probably no better, but I'm able to do them more naturally. The club illusion makes more sense to me. Watching horrible movies and enjoying unintentional humor is fun. Music is fun, dancing is fun, even if I don't know how to bridge that into conversations with strangers.
I kind of wish for more social connections, but when faced with conscious choices I continue to re-chose where I am. I do have pangs where I wish life could be more like a college dorm and I could visit any of a group of friends in my socks.
I'm watching my daily newsertainment, astonished, as a university is mourning over the death of a sports coach (rather than say, an academic professor). I'm probably going to go to a superbowl party when I don't watch football (I may just throw in the towell and use the time to do my favorite superbowl activity - shop in abandoned grocery stores). Normal people care about sports, even freaky slutty club alt culture people "do it their way." It makes sense, the affiliation motivation that drives sports "clubs" would appeal to those who seek affiliation through projections of commonality. We wear black, or green + yellow, is the base for a belief in commonality of beliefs? Sports are more emotionally compelling than economic, political, or military events?
"I don't do politics," is a common quote - often by people who spend many hours "doing sports." I'm thinking the effort is about the same, yet the interest or possible importance is inarguable.
I'm reminded that if I took some small regular actions I'd potentially have more friends. I don't totally mind watching football - I just don't care. There is no illusion or suspension of reality for me. For any sport, professional or college I can't block out my perspective:
It's a game, and grown men are playing.
It's a business more than a sport.
These people are often raging assholes in real life (and often in the game as well).
Those members are not from the cities they play in, and often don't live there except to work.
There are things that may affect me going on and this is not one of them.
However, if I chose to fake liking a team, followed their players and record, went to sports bars, and engaged...I could make friends and have regular social activities. I could wear their colors and have short conversations with strangers, friendships, and fun rivalries based on the show. I could go to bars anywhere and engage strangers socially on a commonly-held interest. I could swap figures and projections with lawyers and janitors with ease. There would be a base common experience upon which to base talking, drinking, and fucking.
There would be more crossover between my social life and gym life.
People would care about my gym success that I know in RL.
I can't do it. I mean I could, I see the road and I can even get "involved" watching a game, enjoy plays, and kind of enjoy the outcome. I mostly know the rules. It's just not real. I can't turn off, nor do I want to turn off, the part of my brain that questions and thinks about the idiocy and problems with that experience. I realize my dumb illusions of social connections are probably no better, but I'm able to do them more naturally. The club illusion makes more sense to me. Watching horrible movies and enjoying unintentional humor is fun. Music is fun, dancing is fun, even if I don't know how to bridge that into conversations with strangers.
I kind of wish for more social connections, but when faced with conscious choices I continue to re-chose where I am. I do have pangs where I wish life could be more like a college dorm and I could visit any of a group of friends in my socks.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 01:21 pm (UTC)I also don't hate but don't care about sports, but I realize as a woman there is less societal pressure on me to do so. Of course, I'm excluded from the Mommy Club here at work...maybe I should fake a kid.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 01:58 pm (UTC)*shrug*
What I do see with sports is it IS escapism for so many. They find a way to identify with their team, or a specific sports star, and fantasize from there. I mean, for fuck's sake, school kids and teenagers murdered for a pair of shoes with Michael Jordan's name? Really?
There is another argument that team sports are the sublimation of our anger and frustration, and we channel it into the cheers and aggressive-spillover enthusiasm for our team. It beats fighting in the streets (ref: reds and greens and Nika riots see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots). Unfortunately, in recent years, the economic dislocation or renewed xenophobia has brought many, especially blue-collar and the "labor class" to evolve into actual fights from cheers and jeers.
We smile and point at "football hooligans" in Britain, and we turn a blind eye to the fans who beat people in baseball stadium parking lots, or fail to consider the link between the aggression of athletes and other fringe personalities in high schools.
Me -- I can't even watch the commercials anymore without becoming angry and the use of the female body and hypocrisy involved in not the commercials, but those who ... never mind. time for more coffee.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-27 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-03 06:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-03 12:41 pm (UTC)I'd already agree with what you took from it, and throw in a big punch about the change of medium - in the US people don't know their neighbors but feel connected with an icon from Montana that agrees with what they are told by a pundit would fix the coast, farmland, and cities of this country.