Again I fail to see how that’s “worse” than watching sports.
Do you believe that studying history as a a hobby is better than watching Game of Thrones?
Sports isn’t just the team winning. People that are into it follow the lives of the players. It is a real person where the drama is from overcoming their personal challenges and inherent skill in the sport. Whereas fantasy is contrived drama. It’s invented by the author or by committee in the writer’s room.
I personally would rather watch a Trek rerun for the 10th time than a live baseball game. But I’m aware that the baseball is real rather than fantasy. The ending isn’t scripted to create the most drama to get viewers to watch and sell ads.
Do you believe that studying history as a a hobby is better than watching Game of Thrones?
Maybe! Kinda. “Better” for whom and by what metric? It really depends on the person and the “history” being studied. I guarantee the majority of the worst people on Earth (malignant politicians, war mongers, profiteers, Nazis, etc.) are very well-studied in history. I’d guess GoT has had, at worst, a neutral effect on societal progress. This is also quite a different argument than sports fans vs tv/movie/“fantasy” fans, which is what we were talking about. Thanks to documentaries, interviews, lecture series, historical fiction, etc., you could be a history buff and never have read a book in your life. It’s possible to learn the wrong thing from history or to take in inaccurate and/or biased and/or sensationalized history, and it’s possible to learn from fiction the good things history can teach. Again, largely a wash in my book.
But even restricting it just to fiction, I still don’t see the difference. Fiction isn’t just the story. People that are into it follow the lives of the creators. It is real people overcoming personal challenges with inherent skill in writing, drawing/animating, acting, directing, music, dancing, cinematography, etc, etc. Whereas sports are endlessly predictable and just as contrived as fiction. They were invented by dead people, they’re run like The Mob, and nothing new ever really happens. Someone wins the Super Bowl every year, in effectively the same exact way, we even know to the hour, almost the minute, when it will happen.
The ending isn’t scripted to create the most drama to get viewers to watch and sell ads.
Sure, if you’re watching a high school football game or a recreational volleyball league match or a T-ball scrimmage. Professional sports are 10% sport and 90% ads, and plenty of sports fans believe they’re, not rigged per se, but certainly unduly influenced for ratings and to affect the massive sportsbetting & prediction markets. One well-timed holding penalty in US football (a penalty that could be called on basically every single play) or uncalled foul in basketball or soccer (again, fouls could be called on almost every NBA possession or FIFA challenge/tackle) can completely alter the course of the game and potentially a team’s course for the season. Which affects future seasons. The NFL had non-profit status until 2015, meanwhile they claimed 11 billion dollars in revenue the previous year, and that was before the cancerous behemoths of modern sportsbetting and prediction markets.
Plus, as far as we know, no one’s ever gotten chronic degenerative brain damage from a ttrpg campaign, so there’s that I guess. Also, unscripted TV shows and movies definitely exist, and ttrpgs are usually a loose narrative framework filled out by improvised collaborative storytelling from everyone involved, not scripted.
There’s a big difference from rigging in some games and fiction where it is always rigged by design. Yes watching sports is filled with ads but the game itself wasn’t preplanned in a writer’s room to sell ads for the next game.
I disagree with the premise, any good work of fiction will be far less predictable than any sport could possibly be. One of the participants will win within the predetermined time using predetermined rules and variables, the rest will lose. Maaaaybe some people might tie every now and then. Unless you’re into like boxing or racing, then someone might die. But even that’s predictable enough to be a main draw for plenty of more casual fans, and it morally taints the whole sport imo.
Again, fiction isn’t “rigged” for the real people involved in making it. As a screenwriter, there’s no guarantee anything you write will even get read, much less greenlit, filmed, edited, sold, released, and watched. And the same goes, to one degree or another, for every person (actually) working on every project. Ever counted the names in a modern movie credit roll?
Not to mention, storylines are written all the time in sports. Have you seen the Olympics? This last one felt like every 10 minutes there was a fully written, produced, biographical segment with baby pictures and voiceover and emotional music, followed by 5 seconds of sport. And it wasn’t really doing the athletes any favors. That Ilia Malinin kid practically had a psychic break on international television, they had built so much pressure on him with that “quad god” narrative that he could never live up to it. There’s even an academic study that claims empirical evidence showing “that postseason officiating disproportionately favors the Mahomes-era Kansas City Chiefs, coinciding with the team’s emergence as a key driver of TV viewership/ratings and, thereby, revenue.” Basically, the more the NFL financially depended on the storyline of Mahome’s Chiefs, the more the refs, seemingly subconsciously, let them get away with in postseason games. And the most expensive advertising slot in the world is during a football game. The fact of the matter is, in a capitalist world, it’s all to sell ads. But that’s a different discussion I guess, lol.
Anyway, I still don’t see how any of this plays into fans of one somehow adding more value to society, or themselves, than fans of another.
I disagree with the premise, any good work of fiction will be far less predictable than any sport could possibly be.
Planned drama doesn’t mean random. In fact my premise means that fiction will be more random because that heightens drama. Drama is the underdog winning against all odds. That’s what keeps you coming back to watch the next episode. Picard and the rest of Earth dont die to the Borg in Best of Both Worlds. Frodo (gollum) destroys the Ring.
Again, fiction isn’t “rigged” for the real people involved in making it.
The level you are talking about is like owners/managers/referee/waterboy. Google says the New York Yankees has a staff of 1500 employees.
The difference is still the players are real people.
Not to mention, storylines are written all the time in sports. … 10 minutes there was a fully written, produced, biographical
BIOGRAPHICAL. Not fantasy.
that postseason officiating
You already linked that and I refuted it.
Rigging that is so limited that it requires statistics to tease out a correlation is very different from completely planned fantasy written by a committee in a writer’s room. Even overt rigging like Pete Rose betting on baseball games is still a real person.
Anyway, I still don’t see how any of this plays into fans of one somehow adding more value to society, or themselves, than fans of another.
Sports are real events that become history. Fiction is fantasy. That’s why I opened by comparing studying history as a hobby to the hobby of watching Game of Thrones.
Again, creations of fantasy are also real events that become history, involving real people. And again, none of this sport vs fantasy discussion is actually even relevant since your original comment was “sports stats (fans) are better than tv/movie aficionados”. And I still haven’t heard who or what they’re better for and by what metric. And yeah, I already addressed the GoT comparison at length, you ignored it.
Edit: But you’re right, at this point we’re just repeating ourselves ad nauseum on a topic neither of us cares about 😂. Good banter, catch ya next time.
Arya Stark is not a real person. You brought up the creatives involved but sports have many people involved too so that’s neutral. That there were millions involved in the fandom of Game of Thrones does not make it historically equivalent to the millions involved in World War 2.
, I already addressed the GoT comparison
Your response was that you agreed so it didn’t need further addressing.
" Maybe! Kinda."
Claiming that people could take the wrong interpretation of history is neutral because people could take the wrong interpretation of fiction. So we are left with reading history is “maybe kinda” better than reading fiction.
I still haven’t heard who or what they’re better for and by what metric.
“Maybe” means could be yes, could be no, and the “kinda” modified the “maybe” to be even more doubtful. Not sure how you figure that’s a metric or an indication of who benefits. Honestly I was just trying to couch my response in a way that made it clear I wasn’t just being contrarian or a troll. By the end of that paragraph, you’ll see I say it’s a wash. Just like you said about the “creatives” argument, which I agree it is a wash. The people creating sports and the people creating TV shows are all people doing what they love and creating a product. Both products are performances. To bring it back to DnD, one performance being more dexterity and strength based doesn’t diminish the other being charisma and wisdom based. Different skills, different performances, same amount of social value.
Though here’s one more somewhat petty argument: afaik, no TV show or movie has ever caused a riot or a subculture based in violence and otherism. I honestly believe tribalism is cancerous to modern society, and sports aren’t helping.
Do you believe that studying history as a a hobby is better than watching Game of Thrones?
Sports isn’t just the team winning. People that are into it follow the lives of the players. It is a real person where the drama is from overcoming their personal challenges and inherent skill in the sport. Whereas fantasy is contrived drama. It’s invented by the author or by committee in the writer’s room.
I personally would rather watch a Trek rerun for the 10th time than a live baseball game. But I’m aware that the baseball is real rather than fantasy. The ending isn’t scripted to create the most drama to get viewers to watch and sell ads.
Maybe! Kinda. “Better” for whom and by what metric? It really depends on the person and the “history” being studied. I guarantee the majority of the worst people on Earth (malignant politicians, war mongers, profiteers, Nazis, etc.) are very well-studied in history. I’d guess GoT has had, at worst, a neutral effect on societal progress. This is also quite a different argument than sports fans vs tv/movie/“fantasy” fans, which is what we were talking about. Thanks to documentaries, interviews, lecture series, historical fiction, etc., you could be a history buff and never have read a book in your life. It’s possible to learn the wrong thing from history or to take in inaccurate and/or biased and/or sensationalized history, and it’s possible to learn from fiction the good things history can teach. Again, largely a wash in my book.
But even restricting it just to fiction, I still don’t see the difference. Fiction isn’t just the story. People that are into it follow the lives of the creators. It is real people overcoming personal challenges with inherent skill in writing, drawing/animating, acting, directing, music, dancing, cinematography, etc, etc. Whereas sports are endlessly predictable and just as contrived as fiction. They were invented by dead people, they’re run like The Mob, and nothing new ever really happens. Someone wins the Super Bowl every year, in effectively the same exact way, we even know to the hour, almost the minute, when it will happen.
Sure, if you’re watching a high school football game or a recreational volleyball league match or a T-ball scrimmage. Professional sports are 10% sport and 90% ads, and plenty of sports fans believe they’re, not rigged per se, but certainly unduly influenced for ratings and to affect the massive sportsbetting & prediction markets. One well-timed holding penalty in US football (a penalty that could be called on basically every single play) or uncalled foul in basketball or soccer (again, fouls could be called on almost every NBA possession or FIFA challenge/tackle) can completely alter the course of the game and potentially a team’s course for the season. Which affects future seasons. The NFL had non-profit status until 2015, meanwhile they claimed 11 billion dollars in revenue the previous year, and that was before the cancerous behemoths of modern sportsbetting and prediction markets.
Plus, as far as we know, no one’s ever gotten chronic degenerative brain damage from a ttrpg campaign, so there’s that I guess. Also, unscripted TV shows and movies definitely exist, and ttrpgs are usually a loose narrative framework filled out by improvised collaborative storytelling from everyone involved, not scripted.
There’s a big difference from rigging in some games and fiction where it is always rigged by design. Yes watching sports is filled with ads but the game itself wasn’t preplanned in a writer’s room to sell ads for the next game.
I disagree with the premise, any good work of fiction will be far less predictable than any sport could possibly be. One of the participants will win within the predetermined time using predetermined rules and variables, the rest will lose. Maaaaybe some people might tie every now and then. Unless you’re into like boxing or racing, then someone might die. But even that’s predictable enough to be a main draw for plenty of more casual fans, and it morally taints the whole sport imo.
Again, fiction isn’t “rigged” for the real people involved in making it. As a screenwriter, there’s no guarantee anything you write will even get read, much less greenlit, filmed, edited, sold, released, and watched. And the same goes, to one degree or another, for every person (actually) working on every project. Ever counted the names in a modern movie credit roll?
Not to mention, storylines are written all the time in sports. Have you seen the Olympics? This last one felt like every 10 minutes there was a fully written, produced, biographical segment with baby pictures and voiceover and emotional music, followed by 5 seconds of sport. And it wasn’t really doing the athletes any favors. That Ilia Malinin kid practically had a psychic break on international television, they had built so much pressure on him with that “quad god” narrative that he could never live up to it. There’s even an academic study that claims empirical evidence showing “that postseason officiating disproportionately favors the Mahomes-era Kansas City Chiefs, coinciding with the team’s emergence as a key driver of TV viewership/ratings and, thereby, revenue.” Basically, the more the NFL financially depended on the storyline of Mahome’s Chiefs, the more the refs, seemingly subconsciously, let them get away with in postseason games. And the most expensive advertising slot in the world is during a football game. The fact of the matter is, in a capitalist world, it’s all to sell ads. But that’s a different discussion I guess, lol.
Anyway, I still don’t see how any of this plays into fans of one somehow adding more value to society, or themselves, than fans of another.
Planned drama doesn’t mean random. In fact my premise means that fiction will be more random because that heightens drama. Drama is the underdog winning against all odds. That’s what keeps you coming back to watch the next episode. Picard and the rest of Earth dont die to the Borg in Best of Both Worlds. Frodo (gollum) destroys the Ring.
The level you are talking about is like owners/managers/referee/waterboy. Google says the New York Yankees has a staff of 1500 employees.
The difference is still the players are real people.
BIOGRAPHICAL. Not fantasy.
You already linked that and I refuted it.
Rigging that is so limited that it requires statistics to tease out a correlation is very different from completely planned fantasy written by a committee in a writer’s room. Even overt rigging like Pete Rose betting on baseball games is still a real person.
Sports are real events that become history. Fiction is fantasy. That’s why I opened by comparing studying history as a hobby to the hobby of watching Game of Thrones.
Again, creations of fantasy are also real events that become history, involving real people. And again, none of this sport vs fantasy discussion is actually even relevant since your original comment was “sports stats (fans) are better than tv/movie aficionados”. And I still haven’t heard who or what they’re better for and by what metric. And yeah, I already addressed the GoT comparison at length, you ignored it.
Edit: But you’re right, at this point we’re just repeating ourselves ad nauseum on a topic neither of us cares about 😂. Good banter, catch ya next time.
Arya Stark is not a real person. You brought up the creatives involved but sports have many people involved too so that’s neutral. That there were millions involved in the fandom of Game of Thrones does not make it historically equivalent to the millions involved in World War 2.
Your response was that you agreed so it didn’t need further addressing. " Maybe! Kinda."
Claiming that people could take the wrong interpretation of history is neutral because people could take the wrong interpretation of fiction. So we are left with reading history is “maybe kinda” better than reading fiction.
By your own metric, “Maybe! Kinda.”
“Maybe” means could be yes, could be no, and the “kinda” modified the “maybe” to be even more doubtful. Not sure how you figure that’s a metric or an indication of who benefits. Honestly I was just trying to couch my response in a way that made it clear I wasn’t just being contrarian or a troll. By the end of that paragraph, you’ll see I say it’s a wash. Just like you said about the “creatives” argument, which I agree it is a wash. The people creating sports and the people creating TV shows are all people doing what they love and creating a product. Both products are performances. To bring it back to DnD, one performance being more dexterity and strength based doesn’t diminish the other being charisma and wisdom based. Different skills, different performances, same amount of social value.
Though here’s one more somewhat petty argument: afaik, no TV show or movie has ever caused a riot or a subculture based in violence and otherism. I honestly believe tribalism is cancerous to modern society, and sports aren’t helping.