airrow

I saw this stat in a few places, you can find one for yourself on a search engine, here's one random article: https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/05/17/gen-z-live-sports

Not a zoomer but I have not liked sports for a long time, anyone else feel the same way?

Online people call sports "sportsball" sometimes with intended negative connotations

Esports

Unfortunately, my hope was sports was being replaced with something better, but it seems like zoomers might be replacing sports with "esports", aka video gaming... and I'd probably like esports even less than sports in some ways

Why Interest is Declining

I was joyfully researching this topic as a sports fan lamented to me that people are losing interest in sports, so I was wondering why, and a lot of the reasons do become somewhat obvious: sports can often be boring and long games and content today can be short instead online. Sports have become competitive to a point that it can't relate to the average person. The competitiveness of sports at the current level makes injuries that were less known, more common today. The cost of sports gear, travel, and so on makes them a bigger commitment than a lot of people want to make. There are more "entertainment" options available today over sports. And so on.

Qualities of Alternative Activities

I think for me, there's just a lot of things that are left to be desired with sports versus some other activity, so it always feels like there's something else I'd rather do than play or watch sports. Take contributing to an open source program for example. There may be a sense of competition, but usually it's not as zero sum or "winner take all" in creating some software. If you create new software, it can be used, even if some better software comes along. With sports if you lose, you simply lose, and there's only one winner of all of it. Or likewise with music, when the orchestra plays together, everyone's efforts can create an even better musical production.

Other individual physical exercises, like simply walking, may avoid the unpredictable injuries of contact sports.

If you're creating a work of art for example, it either has a technical aesthetic quality or not; I suppose there is some subjectivity is involved ("beauty is in the eye of the beholder") however it avoids the problem of there being corrupt officials to make bad calls which destroy the integrity of the game (as there have been accusations of officials doing so in sports games in recent years).

I've seen sports rivalries, even on a local level, inspire vandalism and acts of violence. Naturally such "toxic" cultures exist in other places, but I guess I would find ways to steer clear of them. I don't know of as much "toxicity" for example among farmers and gardeners, who are just focused on creating a tangible project. Maybe corn and potato producers feud more than I'm aware of? That brings up another issue, where sports is often a consumptive activity - it doesn't really create something tangible like a "piece of art" or a food we might eat.

Anyway, some of these concerns with sports might be applied to examples I gave, but usually have enjoyed finding alternatives to sports.

Ways to Fix Sports?

A lot of times I've found ways to convert sports into something that's not a sport, but might be related to it, in a way that's satisfying to me.

Like there are "freestyle footballers" (soccer in the U.S.) who just do a bunch of "tricks" with soccer balls. Alternative contests like the "home run derby" (baseball) or "slam dunk contests" (basketball) seemed like an interesting side "contest" that felt a little less sports-like in a good way, maybe a little more fun.

One thing that limits the sense of hypercompetitiveness is in switching things up like this, so that there may be less people competing at a narrow goal - to that end people are maybe creating new "sports".

In BMX riding there are "best trick contests", which do have negative features of sports to me, but perhaps just a "best trick" event without choosing winners would be exciting to see (informally this happens sometimes at skateparks or trails, people are showing off the best things they can do and each person is judging what they like best from what they're seeing).

Conclusion

There also used to be more of an "nerds versus jocks" divide, perhaps implying that being too interested in sports was a betrayal of the intellect. I share some of this oldschool attitude, but I acknowledge my interest in other things might be more due to personal preference. Maybe I am simply yearning for a "reform" of sports, or want to see them become something different? But I hope to open up the conversation on the topic, to see what maybe we should be doing, whether it's playing and watching sports in our free time or if we should be doing something else.

Overall what's your thought on the state of sports?

Geese overpopulate in some areas due to government protections

They arrogantly clog up driving spaces without moving unlike other animals

They spread waste all over sidewalks in some areas

They are a source of food and should be hunted down to smaller populations or gotten rid of in some areas as they weren't as populated there before

Opinions on legalizing geese hunting and encouraging it more?

I see some articles REEEEEEing because AI trains on copyrighted data, so certain artists feel they aren't going to get compensated for their work, and there's a lot of question about if AI creations even can be protected by copyright

Yet there seem to be very few questioning the assumption that we should have a thing such as "intellectual property" in the first place. It's kind of a fiction, it's not like physical goods where I either have a thing in my hand or it's in your hand. We can take a copy of a picture and share it freely with very little cost.

Personally I find "intellectual property" to be anti-capitalist and it seems to stand in the way of innovation and growth (and that isn't even getting in to how it's been "weaponized" like with big companies acting as "patent trolls" who buy up patents and make it difficult for small businesses to create and sell anything without infringing on an obscure patent of these large corporations)

Intellectual Property: sounds good in theory, creates too many problems in practice

This came up as being discussed somewhere else but it's a conclusion I've drawn as well or had my own thoughts on

Many women are being educated to have careers "like men" today (women don't work all the same jobs as men, but that's the idea that's put out there)

So they both are often educated alongside men, and then are supposed to work alongside men. Only a couple generations ago this was not the case.

Men likewise are being educated alongside girls, and are being taught to be girls basically. They aren't taught to "be real men" except maybe retroactively sometimes after some problem arises where some "masculine skill" is demanded of them.

This at the root of it leads to a loss of "gender identity" and easily leads to people wanting to date or "marry" the same gender as them, or to switch their genders. The society itself literally has "gender dysphoria" and doesn't treat men as men or women as women. (You could by the same token call the society as a whole "gay" or "bi" in how it acts at times)

Legal barriers like the unConstitutional "Civil Rights Act" have also been erected to prevent people treating men and women differently.

So essentially without correcting these "feminist" developments, it won't be surprising to see people continue to have problems with things like "gender identity" and "who they are attracted to".