I found my home!

[rotten]

Hi, im new here and just wanted to say, i f'ing hate sports. I never hated it with a passion so much, until a couple of nights ago. It's going to be kind of a long story, so grab a drink and sit back.

I was vising a long time friend. I'm 34 and he is old enough to be my dad. We had connected because he liked to juggle, and he was one of the few people in the small town i live in who did. I've been friends with this guy for 15 years. He has always been into sports, and i never really have. I was a big kid and everyone was always harassing me when i was in school, "why aren't you in football?" I just don't want to be. Even if i had been interested, because i wasn't popular, i would have just been the grunt man that gets crushed, and who really wants to do that? I was more interested in video games and computers, and reading.

Anyway, this guy has been a big influence on my life dispite the fact that we are very different. He was a counsler at a school, and i was a computer teacher/ construction worker. He has always given me sht about video games and i have always gave it back to him about sports. No big deal. Heck, to be nice i even went golfing a time or two with him. I've sat around with him and watched a game or too before as well. Any comments i had to him were pretty much in jest.

So a few nights ago, i bring over a copy of the movie "chasing ghosts" It's a documentary about the early days of video arcades. It kind of details the golden days and has a lot of current interviews with some of the old game masters, and kind of some "where they are now" moments. It's also has someone in it we both knew. So i though it would be a fun thing. The whole time were watching it he is telling his kids what losers these guys are(in a round about way) and how their lives suck because they don't do any social activities. The whole time! At one point he proclaimed that video games are what made public schools fail. The only thing nice he had to say about the video was, that it was good to see the person he had known again.

So after some pretty light-hearted debate, it was time to go home. I got up and told his son, that no mater what he does in life, if he doesn't become a big sports star his dad will always be proud of him. At that point my friend became FURIOUS! He told me how he had 3 college degrees and none of them were in sports. I never could get the guy to say that he would always be proud of his son. My wife and i left. This guy has always pushed all his kids into sports, and he was always there to coach. He thinks, lives and breaths sports. We've cut social occasions with him short so he could go watch a game. He has visited our house and taken control of our tv so he could watch a game.

I called him back later to tell him that i was sorry if i had offended him and never wanted to do anything to hurt him or his family. He told me he felt like he always had to defend his sports. "we should celebrate our differences rather than fight over them" Whatever, guess he is too thick headed to see that he had dished out, basically my whole childhood as being rubbish. Mind you, this is the same guy who calls me whenever he needs a computer fixed, well from now on, i guess since he is so smart and has 3 college degrees and i have none, he ought to be able to fix it himself. I'm too busy running my 20 million dollar a year construction company. Too bad i'm a dummy.

I've been beating myself up over this for several days and feeling bad that i made my friend upset, but now, after getting this all out, i don't really care. I never really hated sports as much as i do now. They are just a game! No different then a video game, it is just a game!! A waste of frikin time!

If you made it this far, thanks for listening. I feel like i have finally found the right support group for me.

[Katrin]

Hello and welcome to the forums! It was interesting to read your story as pretty much everyone here hates sports because other people can't shut up about them and insist on forcing them upon us few who have no interest in sports whatsoever. Why can't they accept the fact that not everyone likes them and just move on? There aren't many of us you know... but at least we don't have to be the sheep they are! We can be ourselves if we want. It's a free world... or is it? Laters. I'll be back...

[Fat Man]

Good morning Rotten, and welcome to Sports Suck.

Yeah, I found this forum recently, and I joined back in February 12, 2009 which incidentally happend to have been Charles Darwin's 200th birthday.

You should know, we also allow sports fans or even sports bores to come here and post their asinine opinions, then we have the pleasure of tearing them a new one if they should ever get rude and crude as most of them tend to be.

Then there are even some ex-jocks who have quit sports after becoming disgusted with the antics of their fellow team mates.

So, there are a few jocks who are half-way decent, but they do not make up 99% Percent of all people in sports as Polite24 likes to contend. That's just some number he keeps pulling out of his ass and rubbing in our faces.

As for me, I'm known as The Judge here on these forums, a unique custom titled that was generously bestowed upon me by the forum moderators before I even reached a thousand posts.

Anyway . . . . .

Once again, welcome to Sports Suck.

[Earl]

Welcome to the website! I discovered this website in late December of last year. It actually has been comforting to me. Iâ??ve even learned from it. â??Sports hatersâ? actually are a rather diverse group of people. Any stereotypical characterization of us will fail upon close examination.

Iâ??m very sorry to hear about your friend reacting the way he did. I know how you feel. Iâ??ve gone through the same experience, although sports was not an issue. In 1993 I lost my best friend through no fault of my own. I should point out that my friend, who had played basketball in high school and had continued to play basketball for recreation, became a wimp, morally speaking. I say this because the designation â??wimpâ? is often given to nonathletically inclined boys and men simply because theyâ??re not good at sports. Never mind that there is absolutely no correlation between athletic prowess and moral courage one way or the other. Funny, but my former best friend (a guy with an athletic background) even sounds like a wimp in the way he talks. You know, with that whiny tone in his voice.

You need to remember that you did not end your friendship with this guy; he ended the friendship himself. He clearly has a double standard. When you called him back and he said that he felt like he always was having to defend sports, you should have pointed out to him that you felt like you were always having to defend video games. Apparently he thinks that criticism of video games should be allowed, but criticism of sports (or, rather, sports culture) must not be tolerated. Again, this is a double standard.

Your friend claims that video games are what made public schools fail. His claim is nothing but pure baloney. My wife was a high-school math teacher for eleven years, which included the years of the video game craze. She just told me that most of the students she, as a teacher, knew who played video games were at the top of their class. So your friend is dead wrong.

Your friend told his kids what losers the old game masters were and how deficient their lives supposedly were because they supposedly didnâ??t do any social activities. (Incidentally, your friend was teaching his kids to be prejudiced.) I wonder how he would react to anyone telling him that some individual athletes are not exactly decent human beings. (To any sports bore who may be reading this, Iâ??m not making a negative generalization, unlike you guys when you subject us to negative stereotypes. Iâ??m talking about individuals, not a group. So donâ??t even begin to object to what Iâ??m about to say.) I wonder how he would react to anyone telling him about individual junior-high, high-school, or college football players who are arrogant jerks, or show their moral cowardice by bullying those who are physically weaker than they are and therefore are not able to defend themselves against them. I wonder how he would react to claims that individual football players have actually gotten away with committing rape. (Gang rape seems to be quite popular these days.) Iâ??m sure he would get quite upset by anyone even daring to suggest that some athletes are less than noble human beings. Again, the double standard.

I could say a lot more, but for now Iâ??ll just say that your friend sounds like a very insecure man who lives out his fantasies through his children. Sports are his god. So please stop beating up on yourself. I donâ??t believe youâ??re at fault.

By the way, Iâ??m very impressed with the great success youâ??ve achieved with your construction company. Thatâ??s certainly more than Iâ??ve done. Again, welcome to the Forum. I look forward to reading your posts.

[Lewis]

Welcome to Sports Suck rotten.

[Earl]

Rotten, I just want to make sure that Iâ??m not misunderstood. Iâ??m not saying that your friendship with this guy has to come to an end. Iâ??m not meaning to tell you what to do; but if there is even the slightest chance for a reconciliation, give him a chance to talk to you. Perhaps he will reconsider how he spoke to you in a few more days. But the fact remains that he was the one who has put the friendship in jeopardy, not you. You did nothing wrong.

[Earl]

Hey, I should have said, "Welcome home!"

[blackdog4444]

Greetings, Rotten!
I happened to find this site on a slow afternoon in July, whilst the damn buzzing of the cars from NASCAR on the neglected T.V. screen ran about.
Your situation is quite a one, indeed. Though I have seen things like this in different scenarios and of different factionalities - typically of that between single people and the... ehem... crudely popular...
Though what is the most unique of your case is not only the severity of how it came upon itself but how two considered "in serious stereotypical conflict", the crazy jocks and the "nerds" or "geeks"[which the two interchangable titles are equally undesirable], got along so well as to the point that it seemed like the two were family until something as minor as the documentary you described came into play. That reaction is indeed too volatile and shouldn't have been so - only children would go that crazy over something so minor as being just minorly insulted. Most people would simply brush it off.

Welcome Home.

[Millhouse]

Welcome to the forums. Your story interests me and saddens me simultaneously. And to think, one particular sports fanatic on this site says that we, the 'sports haters', need to grow thicker skin.

I don't really need to reinforce it, but this again is a prime example of what it is about sports that drives us away from it. The overbearing fanaticism of the type of people it attracts.

[rotten]

Thanks for all the kind words!
It is so nice to know i'm not the only one out there.

Katrin,
We are definitely a small number, but we still count!

Fat man,
Thanks for the welcome. I've seen a lot of your posts and you always make me laugh!

Earl,
Very insightful post as always. I hung out with a lot of video game players in high school, and we were definitely some of the best students. So i knew that line was BS.

When i called him back, i would have told him how he had made me feel, but because i cared about him so much, i put his feelings above mine and how i had made him feel. But being a big sports guy, he has no idea that other people have feelings. He doesn't realize for every team that wins, and it's the best moment in their life, at the same time someone else looses, and it's the worst moment in their life.

As far as i'm concerned, our friendship is pretty much over. I love this man and his family, i would rather say nothing to him and not be his friend as risk hurting him or his family. So basically, my friendly gesture, because i care so much about him and his family, is not to be his friend.

Thanks for your kind words about my company, it's tough being in construction, and not liking sports. The men always come in in the morning talking about the big game. I guess they have gotten used to me ignoring their sports mumbo jumbo.

Lewis,
Thanks for the welcome.

Blackdogg,
I truly felt as though we were a family, and now i have lost a member. His reaction was that of a child, or a sports nut, which as you know, are nearly interchangeable. By the way, i'm your neighbor to the south. I'm in missouri. You wouldn't happen to be near Ottumwa, would you?


Millhouse,
As a sensitve child growing up, i was always told, that i need to have a "thicker skin" by all the teachers, coaches and counselors. I guess i got a "thicker skin" for being told that i need to have a "thicker skin". It's funny when you think about it, because, if the roles had been reversed, and i had reacted the way he had, that's what he would have told me.




Thanks again to all!
Definitely not a great moment in my life, and a very sad one at that. One of those moments, when you actually feel the scar on your brain that forever changes how you view things. I've never really liked sports, but now i hate them.

[Earl]

I have a hard time calling you â??rotten,â? but having that word for a username is funny. Seriously, in my humble opinion, youâ??re showing wisdom by not wanting to be confrontational or even self-assertive so as to not inadvertently hurt him or his family. At the risk of being repetitive, the men who truly are secure in their masculinity and also happen to like sports really donâ??t care if someone else likes sports or not, except as a shared interest for the sake of conversation. People who are insecure want everybody to like what they like, or believe what they believe. In time you will get over this loss. Just be easy on yourself in the meantime. Believe me, I know from my own experience. (When I lost my best friend, aside from being angry over his cowardice and ingratitude, I was hoping that after a few years sanity would return to his way of thinking. Despite my wifeâ??s better judgment in this matter, I called him nearly two years ago, hoping that our friendship could be restored. But even though he had at least sounded friendly over the phone, after I had talked to him, I felt something about him that I had never experienced before. I had lost all respect for him, and no longer cared that we were not friends. My wife actually knew that this would happen. The woman I married is smart.) BTW, some of these adults who were telling you, when you were a boy, to grow a â??thicker skinâ? were probably some of the biggest babies around. You call them practitioners of double standards.

[Fat Man]

Good evening Rotten.

I don't know why a nice guy like you would choose that name, but I guess it does sound kind of cool, and it probably describes the mood you're in concerning these sports bores and monkey-boys.

I know when I feel in a rotten mood, I like to verbally toss these monkey-boys into my verbal wood-chipper, and verbally make mulch out of them to spread all over the state of Texas.

So, anytime you feel like doing the same, feel free to borrow my Verbal Wood Chipper at anytime!



The same offer goes to all of my fellow sports haters here on these forums.

Please do feel free to borrow my Verbal Wood Chipper!

[sports rox1234]

Welcome to the forums rotten!

[blackdog4444]

OH crap. How'd he know that I lived in Ottumwa??

[rotten]

Thanks Sports

OH crap. How'd he know that I lived in Ottumwa??

You're kidding! Lucky guess, but you live in the video arcade Mecca!
Twin Galaxies arcade was started there by Walter Day. He started compiling all the high scores from across the country. He had all kinds of contests and events. You should see if you can catch the documentary i was talking about above. I think it is being aired on showtime some, but their are other ways of getting it too.
Here's a photo that was in life magazine that was taken in Ottumwa when the arcades were in their golden age.



Of course, all good things must come to an end and the arcade bubble burst. Twin Galaxies arcade closed in 1984, but the scoreboard remained alive and now there is a pretty big internet forum based around it.