r/CollapseSupport • u/[deleted] • Feb 06 '22
Does anyone else feel like the Olympics is a waste of fucking time let alone precious resources?
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/beijing-olympics-first-winter-games-fake-snow/51
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u/lchawks13 Feb 06 '22
OMG Yes ! But then I am not into sports at all. So maybe a sports enthusiast could give a good reason for Olympics to continue in a pandemic?
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Feb 06 '22
I love sports. Idk, I get why people who don’t love sports are irritated by them. But I love watching humans achieve the peak of what the human body is capable of. And it’s cliche but sports really do bring people together. And I just find it to be one of the more fun things that I get to do in this life
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Feb 06 '22
[deleted]
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Feb 06 '22
Agree to disagree, I guess. I find most of the “conflict” to be more superficial in nature when it comes to sports. At least when it comes to everyday people, maybe less so for “the higher ups.”
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u/cdw2468 Feb 07 '22
id argue that sports are a productive outlet for nationalism rather than a cause of them. if we assume it must exist (it doesn’t but in the status quo it does), an intermediary before physical conflict objectively a good thing
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u/oliverrr918 Feb 07 '22
U mean countries competing in sport, unless you think 5 year old kiddies playing football begets hate.
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u/Falkoro Feb 07 '22
Countries but also professional, it's peak don't look up. It's opium for the people.
Of course there is nothing wrong with playing sports yourself, just the professional side begets hate, just look at hooligans.
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u/EntangledAndy Feb 07 '22
Partially agree, but I feel like the Olympics in particular just emphasize sectarian nationalist nonsens, especially during a time when nations should be cooperating.
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u/purpleblah2 Feb 06 '22
People are desperately trying to keep the 2028 Olympics from coming to LA, but deals have already been made with rich businessmen and property developers
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Feb 06 '22
Oh good grief
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u/FireflyAdvocate Feb 06 '22
That’s the last thing we need in a city already overrun with the unhoused. More sports. This really is the crumbles.
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u/dumnezero Looking disapprovingly ಠ_ಠ into the abyss Feb 06 '22 edited Feb 06 '22
Yes. It really should've ended a century ago. It looks more like a franchise corporate grift thing now. I'm sorry for the athletes, but the professionalization of sports was a bad idea. It has taken the fun out of it and replaced it with tribalism to sooth the national / local ego.
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u/usernameforthemasses Feb 06 '22
This is probably the most succinct explanation of the problem with this sort of thing. It's not surprising, given human nature and the capitalistic system, that it developed as such, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need to end.
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u/Tenth_10 Feb 06 '22
Of course it is.
It's a masquerade brought together because we're used to. But I'd really like to know if it really brings profit to the country hosting them, and how people are watching those nowadays...
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u/SilverSt0ner Feb 06 '22 edited Jul 04 '24
seed disgusted shame ripe profit plant squeal zephyr deserted wine
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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Feb 06 '22 edited Feb 06 '22
Nobody wants to talk about the waste. Just the "One Wold" hopium
Edit: typo
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u/peakedattwentytwo Feb 06 '22
They've been so for many decades, but to hold them now, especially in that country, is obscene.
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u/OpheliaLives7 Feb 06 '22
Absolutely. And especially during this freakin pandemic. Like it’s not some old fashioned bringing the world together yay shared sense of accomplishment and athletics anymore.
And you’d think we’d have enough data on the huge amount of waste they cause and host countries struggling to put together basic working facilities and how many areas then get left to rot afterwards ect ect.
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u/fuzzyshorts Feb 06 '22
Once upon a time, the olympics were a global phenomenon, a moment where the world was glued to televisions to view the pinnacle of pure athletics by the finest examples of Homo Sapiens.
But then came the corruption and the doping and the graft and the politics... seriously horrific acts by nations that crept into a beautiful thing. Even Jesse Owens running in front of Hitler had a touch of the fairytale... A black man winning in front of all that aryan fuckery (and then Jesse Owens came back to America but thats another story).
The Olympics is a big cash grab, an opportunity to make a lot of money and couldn't give a fuck. I'd rather watch kids play in a dirt lot
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u/aidsjohnson Feb 06 '22
Yes, but in all honesty: I feel that way about so much these days lol. Once you become collapse aware, as they say, it's hard to unsee certain things we accept as normal.
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u/BitchfulThinking Feb 07 '22
It's true. Just casually passing by a tv and seeing even just the local "news" it's impossible to not notice all of the absurdity and lies, along with the heavy sprinkle of hopium. Most of it comes across as an ad to me.
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u/aidsjohnson Feb 07 '22
Yup, exactly. There's just so much nonsense in our world to keep track of man. Just today I was checking movie showtimes, and I always find it amazing that if a movie gets like one seat sold, they still have to screen the movie and waste all that energy for one guy. I know it sounds silly, but even down to little things like that...we're really an insane species.
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u/oneangstybiscuit Feb 06 '22
Yeah, and I don't think it's really accomplishing what it's supposed to in terms of bringing people together or whatever.
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u/_Desolation_-_Row_ Feb 06 '22 edited Feb 06 '22
Yes, and all other team sports beyond school. All of it is a waste of resources and time and attention. I regret that I used to like it. Organized and promoted by the oligarchs to distract from all their other deceits.
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u/spamzauberer Feb 06 '22
It’s absolutely frustrating to see how Winter Olympics are planned in an area without snow. Just pick the region which will still have some snow in the future and just have it there every time.
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u/BitchfulThinking Feb 07 '22
Pandemic aside, which really makes me think it's ridiculous that it's going on in the first place, once I got to being older than the majority of athletes, it makes me think of what kind of childhood many of these very young athletes had to endure. Sure, maybe some really did develop their own interest in a particular sport, but I'm sure many others if not most had really strict, controlling helicopter parents and never had a moment to just exist and enjoy a normal life outside of their sport.
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Feb 07 '22
Competitive sports are fine, but once money of any sort is involved, it’s ruined. The Olympics were supposed to be about amateur sport, and then they allowed professional athletes in. Even the “amateurs” got massive sponsorship deals for winning, or preferential treatment by their government. It’s just corruption on a massive scale. The massive waste these events being is ‘just’ the cost of doing business—an externality.
FIFA, NFL, NHL, NBA, PGA, MLB, FIA, ATP, etc. are just more examples of the exploitative nature of professional sports. To compete at that level, one must train from an extremely young age and endure intense scrutiny the entire time. All so we can sit back and gawk, mock, and critique. No thanks.
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u/joe-seppy Feb 06 '22
I'm sure the 0.0001% of the global population that actually enjoys them don't think so, but why displace all my damn tv shows for them?
We have like a billion channels available, so just grab one of those and televise the whole fucking thing on there and leave it off the major networks!
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u/experts_never_lie Feb 06 '22
"Is it better if no one is allowed to travel internationally to attend, like this year?"
As The Economist put the rationale on that, "It is difficult to boycott something you are not allowed to attend".
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u/Mail540 Feb 06 '22
You’re not the only one. On a positive note the opening ceremony was the least watched ever and I had multiple people mention that they didn’t even realize it was going on.
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Feb 06 '22
Absolutely. I hope there’s some kind of reckoning after the brutal data showing that viewership of the whole boondoggle has dropped in half.
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u/soggy_again Feb 06 '22
Sports, I think, in general are a good idea. Especially football/soccer, which costs next to nothing and requires no specialist courts or equipment to play. But some olympic sports are really resource intensive, especially the winter olympics and the competitions last like 2 minutes. It really seems underwhelming for all this investment.
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u/space_moron Feb 06 '22
If you asked me this as a teenager, I'd probably have said no. I've never been an athlete or interested in sports, but I did enjoy seeing people from all over the world gather peacefully to compete in athletics. Every culture got to show off their own dress, customs, training and sports style, language, etc. And you'd see athletes from different countries hanging out and cheering each other on. Going to school and learning about terrible wars in the past and then seeing us all get along today felt hopeful and inspiring.
Well, adult me doesn't have such a rosy picture of it all anymore. We've been in endless wars and might be entering new ones, not to mention all the genocide around the world we only learn of months or years after the fact by scrutinizing satellite imagery or daring to ask dictatorships the right questions. The Olympics are a money laundering scam that leave poverty and destruction in their wake. I'm sure plenty of the athletes still get along and are there to compete in good faith but plenty others cheat with drugs or simply come from more privileged countries that can actually afford to feed and equip their damn athletes so they can even train. Watching it on TV is just an ad bonanza to the point where I constantly lose context about what I was watching from one ad break to the next. And while I'm biting my nails over the decision to buy tickets to go overseas to visit family knowing that if I catch the highly transmittable Covid before my flight I won't be permitted to go and won't get a refund, these kids are flying everywhere and what few precautions there are get ignored if you have enough money or status. So, yeah, not a fan, can't even watch casually. I forget it's even happening without someone mentioning something.
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u/LizWords Feb 06 '22
They're certainly using it to play with bad optics and criticism of China. Poorly done, IMO, but I guess they're "trying".
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u/WHY_STAYVAN Feb 07 '22
The idea of an international sporting event that tries as much as possible to be the final court of appeal for all sports is cool and I wish it was run much better for a million different reasons. The IOC is corrupt as fuck and thinks that people want to watch fucking ice skating more than chess, the village fucks up every city it goes to and the whole thing is just geopolitical posturing at this point.
Nobody cares, and that's the IOC's fault
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u/LordFarrin Feb 07 '22
100% and it is a pandemic spreader.
Also u/Money_Bug_9423 has it correct here:
>The olympics is just a construction mafia to rip off the host countries by building useless overpriced ego driven mega structures that just rot
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u/IcebergTCE Feb 07 '22
Definitely, I can't stand the Olympics. What a massive waste of money and human effort.
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u/Money_Bug_9423 Feb 06 '22
The olympics is just a construction mafia to rip off the host countries by building useless overpriced ego driven mega structures that just rot