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

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

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.

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

Not even "coded" really, overtly homophobic I would say

People forget the whole "sportsball" meme came about in the first place because before the widespread adoption of nerd culture in the 2010s sports was inescapable and forced on everyone. It's hilarious that sports fans act like victims when they get any light mocking or pushback to their total cultural hegemony and imposition on everyone else. If you were a man and didn't like sports you were mocked as gay (which was seen as socially damaging).

Let people not enjoy things

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 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)

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.

I can't tell you how much growing up as a "guy" in America made me hate sports

At the very least it put some buffer up against the gate popularized bad-faith questioning tactic of saying shit like "um excuse me could you kindly point out one example of (obvious fucking thing that the bad faith questioner refuses to see)? You can not use any sources that I see as woke or having an agenda/narrative. I'll wait."

The most glaring example of that I ever ran into was a gater that pulled that about proving was a racist. Yes, this was years after the "they're not sending their best" speech.

"Sealioning" is almost as bad as "whataboutism." I've seen the comic and I still have no idea what it's supposed to mean - is it when you call out racism instead of letting it go unchallenged? And this is presented as a bad thing, for some reason??

You can't just make up words and use them to denounce things that are legit.

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"

we dont have a system that destroys the bodies of millions of child minorities trying to save themselves from poverty via dnd. no one is getting injuries in their brain that leads to them taking their own lives. theres no history of making slaves play dnd for white peoples entertainment. no local town politics are based around dnd. wizards of the coast doesn't have the American government by the balls. no dnd college player is getting cheated out of millions of dollars their labor earned, while also working minimum wage job to keep the lights on. we smash black children's brains together till its a fine goo that is not playing around.

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.

Just tell them to go play on their Nintendo. They get real mad when you misgender their consoles