The Bay has a kind of a specific moral view, which is sometimes applied in a fairly authoritarian manner.
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For example, all sorts of activities which are common and normal in the rest of America and the world are either frowned upon, or considered fully uncool in the Bay. Things like fishing. Hunting. Most sports. Talking about sports. Twangy accents. Country music. This is a long list.
To be fair, pro sports are an obvious waste of valuable time and attention.
Personally, I’d rather actually connect with someone (or not) than use such mindlessness as a social crutch. I don’t find the extremely common phenomenon of people who don’t like sports forcing themselves to pretend they do for career-related reasons to be particularly healthy, either.
"To be fair, pro sports are an obvious waste of valuable time and attention."
Ha ha ha - this is so funny.
If this comment is not satire, then I think I just made my point!
I hope that readers here realize how fairly uncommon (and elitist, i.e. everyone is obviously wasting their time) this kind of statement is. Surely, a lot of people don't like pro-sports, but most are not so antagonist about it.
My gosh, if you want to connect with people from anywhere, the first thing you can do is talk about sports!
I only wish I cared about sports, it would be so much easier on sales calls and hanging out with regular people!
Netflix and video games don’t directly promote tribal bullshit, and they generally don’t infect the workplace with career-impacting social expectations. I have seen the latter in various workplaces, indeed nearly all of my prior workplaces. The former is just patently true.
I’ll believe this when I see riots in the streets where the local clan win a championship, and/or when spectators with no relationship to the players routinely come to blows over which clan is better.
I come to my disdain for pro sports honestly, it’s not an intellectual virtue signal. I played baseball, basketball, and (later) American football from childhood (~5yrs old on) through high school. I think the sports themselves to be great, with the exception of some obvious problems with football. They help build so many hard and soft skills, and in their best forms they really help build character.
All that said, pro sports culture is basically a social cancer for various reasons, including some that are illuminated directly in that article. The “but how will you relate to the working class” argument is weak, and gives the reader permission to use social crutches rather than useful, generalizable social tools. Indeed, the idea of “becoming” a pro sports fan to be able to socialize with a certain class of people is rather condescending.
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For example, all sorts of activities which are common and normal in the rest of America and the world are either frowned upon, or considered fully uncool in the Bay. Things like fishing. Hunting. Most sports. Talking about sports. Twangy accents. Country music. This is a long list.
So true.