Why are sci-fi/film/comics fans mocked in America, but sports is not?!?!

[DerekG]

Seriously, why is it acceptable in this country to have an emotional investment in games where grown men throw a friggin' ball around a field, yet people interested in stories involving subtext, archetypes and mythology (you know, the whole CREATIVITY thing) are insulted?

Chime in, folks.

[commander bunnypants]

1. beats the heck outa me

I dont think there are any sports I like

DDQM

[7th_Sephiroth]

2. thats a good point

fut whenever i go into a comic shop someones allways argueing that fred flintstone could kick george jetson's ass or some shit, its kinda stupid

[Borgnine]

3. You got me.

I guess it's the same reason a dimwit President can be praised for being stubborn, ignorant, and narrow-minded.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

4. Dumb goooooooooood. Brains baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. (nt)

[redqueen]

11. Yep, that's it

Anything that involves reading or thinking about nuanced subjects = bad.

Dedication to sports requires rudimentary math skills, but little else.

[NewJeffCT]

5. they shouldn't be, but

A lot of comic book readers (myself included, though I stopped collecting in the early 90s...) aren't exactly the most socially skilled people out there, to put it delicately.

Same with sci-fi geeks.

Sure, these people are often intelligent & creative, but that makes them intellectual elitists as well.

[Ducks In A Row]

6. because the sports fan are in charge of the media

the fix is in.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

7. To some of the sarcastic geniuses above

Some sports fans just happen to also be fans of sci-fi/film/comics too! :think: :wow:

[Kid_A]

8. It's because the sports fans can beat up the Star Trek fans.

That's it.

I'm a regular customer at my local comics shop, and I love discussing things like whether "Ultimate Spider-Man" is better than the Spidey movies, or whether Garth Ennis should go back and write one more "Preacher" story. But even I get annoyed at some of the people who talk endlessly about whatever role-playing game they're hooked on this month. These people are incredibly easy to mock, and their appearance only makes it easier.

But the comics that I love and analyze are ones that reward people who look for deeper meaning and hidden subtext. Books like THE SANDMAN, PREACHER, TRANSMETROPOLITAN, SUPREME POWER, EX MACHINA, Y: THE LAST MAN, 100 BULLETS, THE INVISIBLES, WATCHMEN, SIN CITY, etc, etc, are as good as a lot of literature being written today, but most people can't take them seriously because they have people in tights and talking with word balloons.

[Khephra]

25. BTW, I managed to pick up the first three issues of EX MACHINA

I haven't read them yet, but I'll let you know what I think of them once I do.

[ComerPerro]

9. Beats me. Never thought of it that way

I don't know.

[bkcc]

10. You've obviously never heard of Fantasy Sports.

That brings it right into the geek realm.

[Parche]

12. sci fi

Its illogical, Captain

[UrbScotty]

13. Because at least sports is real.

</sarcasm>

[frylock]

14. people who dress up in costumes, and wait for days in line..

for the latest release of Harry Potter or the next installment of Star Wars bring it upon themselves. People who obsess on their fantasy football team or rotisserie league lineup should also be mocked.

Watching sports should be a form of entertainment, not unlike watching a film or a show on the TV box. Allowing your emotions to hinge upon the outcome of a game is just as ridiculous.

For the record, I used to read quite a bit of Sci-Fi/Fantasy in my youth, but I also participated in many sports. It's all about balance. But I will say this; before they took MST3K off the SciFi Channel, I never missed an ep.

[HughBeaumont]

15. Dumberica is jock-and-beauty friendly

and we just do not qualify.

[MrBenchley]

16. Because a 41 year old virgin in pointy rubber ears

is inherently ridiculous...

[DerekG]

17. As opposed to the average male sports fan?

I've been to the stadium, and those fans are hurtin'....

[Khephra]

27. I lost my virginity BECAUSE I was into comics and RPGs

True story--she was one of the few early women gamers in the 80's. She was also beautiful too. I actually managed to get laid because I read the right books and was smart--go figure.

[charliebrown]

39. Was it the pointy-eared amazons of Alpha Centouri?

That got me layed too....Go Chiefs!!!

[liontamer]

18. short answer:

violence good, thinking bad

[DS1]

19. Anime

I'll mock and piss on Anime till the day I die.

[Swamp Rat]

20. Because they unwittingly mock themselves in public every weekend.

[mitchum]

21. Well, I think both groups are dorky...

but I'm an elitist prick :)

[HalfManHalfBiscuit]

22. This will make it very clear to you

[asthmaticeog]

23. Wow, I didn't realize Tron was Jewish.

[HalfManHalfBiscuit]

24. Yes, the helmet gives it away.

[Uzybone]

35. LMAO

well that settles it.

[Khephra]

26. Well, things have been slowly changing over the past decade

The reason?

WOMEN. They helped double the potential market.

(For this post I'm going to be mixing comics, RPGS, computer games, and sf/f/horror all together in one big mess as I think all of these fields influence each other)

RPGs got revitalized with the introduction of LARPing, which brought in tons of women who would have never sat down and played a RPG and once they opened themselves up to LARPS they started playing sit-down games too. Thank the Gods for White Wolf for no other reason than it brought up the % of female gamers.

SANDMAN and Vertigo did the same thing for comics that LARPS did for RPGS.

And now Anime and Manga are bringing comics and animation (which then brings all SF/F/Horror with it) into the mainstream. It's becoming harder and harder to find someone who isn't interested in something that's comics/game related. I went into the local bookstores this weekend and there were whole walls with nothing but comic TPBs and Manga. Just two years ago the SF book sections were disappearing and horror totally disappeared.

We now have a whole new audience buying SF/F/H because of manga and books like Harry Potter. Personally, I think we're at the edge of a new dawn of S/F/H related pursuits. Smart is sexier these days than ever!

[Rabrrrrrr]

28. Because in America, intelligence is verboten; stupidity is celebrated

So the bigger question is "Why is that?"

And I don't have the answer.

But check your local schools in which the sports departments get more funding and more accolades than the science or math or literature or even shop departments.

America celebrates ignorance and despises intelligence, thoughtfulness, and creativity.

maybe it's because they think thoughtful, intelligent, creative peple are communists and untrustworthy and "full of ideas".

it's sad, really.

[Mr. Blonde]

29. Why are athletes considered dumb?

From my experience athletes are like any group of people. A few winners a whole lotta losers (in the brain power realm of course). A lot of sports actually do involve brain power. It is like war, are all soldiers dumb? To develop strategy intelligence is involved.

[Rabrrrrrr]

31. A lot of them are dumb

Certainly not all, by any means. And I didn't call the sports players dumb - I said that America prefers stupidity and dumbness.

Meaning, watching guys slug it out on each other, and preferring not to read literature of merit, learn new things, or having to think about things, etc.

Certainly all professional sports people have to be smart in their sport - otherwise, they wouldn't be there. But listening to many of them speak, they sound dumb as posts otherwise. I know the majority of the jocks in my high school were ignorant. Not all - our Valedictorian was a wrestler - but the majority.

The celebration of sports is, IMO, a celebration of intellectual mediocrity. Not because the PLAYERS are dumb, but because a lot of the people choosing to watch sports also choose to be ignorant.

That's why the evening news has 3 minutes of world news, and 15 minutes of sports. And why newspapers have daily sports sections, but only have weekly (if even that often) science and/or arts sections. And when those sections do exist, they tend to be the sections that also get the classified ads.

That's why the Nobel winners get a brief nod on the news on the day they win, but the SuperBowl goes on for a week or more. And has a hundred million more people who care about it.

Blah blah blah. I could go on and on, but I'm even annoying myself with my blah blah blahing.

[Mr. Blonde]

32. I would say

that in the case of most athletes uneducated is a better adjective than dumb. A smart person to me is the one who can go in and do well on a test with little to no testing. As most athletes can pass (sometimes with help I'm not kidding myself) without dedicating themselves to studying. However, for the most part they don't seek out new knowledge which I see as the hallmark of the educated person. Someone who knows something and wants to know more.

It is the same with the fans. They may not be dumb, but it is more interesting to them to watch a football game than to read anything more in depth than Maxim.

Speaking of wrestlers I have found them to be smarter than most athletes because they have far more stress on them than most school sponsored sports. Of course I could be stroking my own ego there.

[Rabrrrrrr]

34. You make some good distinctions which I should have been more

careful to make. Thanks for the correctives - educated versus uneducated, and curious versus uncurious.

That's what I was shooting to say - the lack of curiosity, the lack of interest in knowing more, and pursuing knowledge for the sake of it itself. Though I also found in the jocks a much slower ability to process information. So, whatever that means - lower intelligence, I guess, as I understand the word intelligence meaning "ability to process data quickly and make intuitive leaps based on experience". Lower intelligence, and also a low interest in the fact that they have a low intelligence, and have a small base of knowledge frmo which to work. The willingly ignorant, as I like to think of it. Like many of the freepers.

And as you point out, same with the fans - MAXIM or Survivor or basketball finals. That's about it, curiosity-wise.

Also interesting about the wrestlers - we had a guy in my school, big guy (as in big boned, but also heavy, though not obese). Smart in the sense that he wanted to know more, and could laern and do well - it just took him a lot of time. But he had interest in knowing more. "Slow" is maybe the word, though not learning disabled or a SPED or ADD or anything by any means, just one of the slower ones. he was always a jock, a fantastic wrestler, plus also the football team. Other than that, those were his activities in the school. No high honors, no stellar acadmeic achievement, no interest in any of the clubs or anything.

Friendly guy, and we liked each other, which was nice. He was absolutely not one of the prick jocks at all.

Well, come senior year, he totally surprised everyone, especially me - I was a drama guild guy, total nerd and geek, blah blah blah. So he's taking a class in Shakespeare our last semester, totally not his speed, but for some reason he's loving it. We're doing Midsummer's Night Dream for the Spring play. His teacher - older woman, like 65 years old, says to him "You should try out." He says, "No way! I've never acted!" She says, "Yes, you should." So he did! Ended up with the part of Bottom, did BRILLIANTLY, and took home the best new actor award for that year. He should have won the best actor overall award, as well, IMO.

Unbelievable. Totally pulled it off, and outshone a lot of the guys and gals who had been doing plays for years. Also astonished a lot of the other jocks who teased and derided him for doing something so 'sissy' and 'stupid'. But to their credit, they came to the play, and supported him.

[Mr. Blonde]

37. I always thought that

smart in the school sense wasn't a very good way of judging it. Good grades are easy to make. If your willing to put in the time the grades will come. I always thought the smarter kids were the ones who did stuff outside of studying and still did well in class. It was never that impressive to me when someone went to class went home and studied and didn't have a life outside of that.

[Taverner]

30. Nothing wrong with admiring physical prowress

Nothing wrong with admiring mental acumen either.

But sci-fi (especially Larry Niven) is often hard to follow unless you are a physicist. Oh yeah, and Niven is a RW nutjob too...

[mr blur]

33. Sports are MANLY... reading makes you think...

Dangerously subversive... you might end up thinking the wrong way. I'm just astonished that neither Rollerball nor The Running Man have become recognised and approved national sports.

[DrWeird]

36. America got an A in PE, D- in science.

that's why we kick ass at the Olympics, not so hot at the Nobels.

[FrankBooth]

38. What about people who like sports and stories?

I, for one, don't think that liking sports and liking comics/scifi/films are mutually exclusive, I happen to love both.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

40. Because sports are the True Religion of America

Nothing comes close to the devotion enjoyed by professional sports teams.

There's no news about state and local government or the arts on the typical local newscast--no time, you know, once we finish with the crime stories and the kitten-in-a-tree stories, but there's always at least ten minutes of sports.

High school athletes are featured in long articles in newspapers. No other kind of accomplished high schooler can even dream of such adulation. Budding young scientists? Maybe a tiny little filler article in the B section if they win a Westinghouse Talent Search prize. Young musicians? Maybe a few paragraphs in the Entertainment section on Sunday.

Cities may be rusting away, cutting employees right and left, cutting social services and infrastructure repairs, closing schools, and losing residents, but man, you gotta have that brand new stadium financed by the taxpayers, or else, horror of horrors, the team might leave! (That's sort of like being in a marriage where one spouse keeps demanding expensive presents and absolute devotion, even though the other spouse can't afford them, but the demanding spouse threatens to leave if no presents are forthcoming, and the other spouse starts whimpering and trying to scrape the money together.)

The Super Bowl is treated as if the Fate of the Earth depends on it.

People send their kids to summer camps where they do nothing but practice one sport.

Teachers and college professors will tell you that students grumble about doing tiny little homework assignments, but willingly spend hours running and weight lifting and attending practice and watching films of their old games and restricting their diets, just because the coach says so. The coach's word is Law. The teacher's word is A Nuisance, to Be Ignored if You Can Think of Another Way to Get the Almighty Grade, Preferably Without Learning Anything.

Are kids drifting into delinquency? The answer is...sports programs! Yeah, that's the ticket. Take kids whose problem is being too aggressive and put them into an activity that requires vanquishing the other side. What about getting them involved in non-aggressive activities that provide other outlets for their emotions: taking care of animals or plants, building or making things, non-team sports, even, dare I say it, the arts or creative writing?

Noooo...Sports are God. Sports are the American Way. If you don't like professional sports, there's something wrong with you, especially if you're male.

There have always been team sports. But today they're out of control and taking money and attention from other areas of life.

If Karl Marx were alive today, he'd say, "Professional sports are the opiate of the people."

If I were to say "professional athletes should be paid no more than the median salary in their communities and all collegiate sports should be intramural only, and there should be no public financing of sports stadiums unless the local government actually owns the team and retains all the profits," I would get flamed worse than either side in a debate on actual religion.

But those are my actual beliefs. :-)