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You’re not alone. I think it’s strange too. There are a lot of strange things other folks find entertaining though. Also for the record, I love playing sports.

by jb510 6y ago

You’re not alone. I think it’s strange too. There are a lot of strange things other folks find entertaining though. Also for the record, I love playing sports. I’ve just never really understood sports spectators, nor those fans that rabidly follow sports stats. The caveat being I can understand parents watching their kids play, just not this whole watching strangers called “professional athletes” play sports.

shadowgovt 6y ago
I didn't used to. A couple of stats wonks helped me understand it. Sports spectating is about stories. What ends up woven together out of individual matches is patterns, and humans love sussing out patterns and identifying them... There's a whole psychological reward system that is triggered by forming a prediction and watching it come true. So a lot of sports wonks watch for that hit... When their favorite player does his signature play, or their favorite team uses the strategy they've honed to a fine point to win a game. In a sense, I personally watch SpaceX launches for the same thing. Does my day-to-day hinge on whether an additional 60 Starlinks get to orbit? Definitely not; I'm not in the aerospace field, and I'm fortunate enough to have a high-speed fiber landline plumbed into the side of my home by a previous owner. But I get to see whether the rocket will land this time (or, for that matter, whether it'll go up or something will violate expectations and the whole mission will go off the rails). I derive catharsis from the expectation / tension / satisfaction loop of a successful launch, landing, and deploy. It's a story of successful engineering.
NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
Contrary to many other comment assumptions that I do not like sports, I do, but just struck me that it is similar like any other entertainment, movies, music, radio, internet ... but they do not have dedicated block each day.

by jb510 6y ago

shadowgovt 6y ago

I didn't used to. A couple of stats wonks helped me understand it. Sports spectating is about stories. What ends up woven together out of individual matches is patterns, and humans love sussing out patterns and identifying them... There's a whole psychological reward system that is triggered by forming a prediction and watching it come true. So a lot of sports wonks watch for that hit... When their favorite player does his signature play, or their favorite team uses the strategy they've honed to a fine point to win a game. In a sense, I personally watch SpaceX launches for the same thing. Does my day-to-day hinge on whether an additional 60 Starlinks get to orbit? Definitely not; I'm not in the aerospace field, and I'm fortunate enough to have a high-speed fiber landline plumbed into the side of my home by a previous owner. But I get to see whether the rocket will land this time (or, for that matter, whether it'll go up or something will violate expectations and the whole mission will go off the rails). I derive catharsis from the expectation / tension / satisfaction loop of a successful launch, landing, and deploy. It's a story of successful engineering.

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago

Contrary to many other comment assumptions that I do not like sports, I do, but just struck me that it is similar like any other entertainment, movies, music, radio, internet ... but they do not have dedicated block each day.