7 ms·

Nearly half of Americans changed sports viewing habits because of social justice

28 points by undefined1 6y ago

jmeister 6y ago
Good. People watch sports to escape from everything else. “Shut up and dribble” is the way to go.
- blacktriangle 6y ago
  I think its' more sinister than that. Keeping politics out of sports meant that sports were something that people could bond over. Sports could form a bridge between disparate viewpoints. Everybody talks about the growing political divide in America, but part of the problem is this compulsive desire to politicize everything has left nowhere for people with different views to feel comfortable congregating together.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    I think the cause and effect are reversed here. People had sports as that bridge, and the country became more divided. That division has been increasing for decades. Sports came first and they weren't creating any bonding. If they had even slowed the process, they were rapidly running out of juice. The problem with "don't politicize" is that this has a thumb on the scale of the status quo. "Politicization" means that somebody wants something done. Usually they go at it for decades until it catches some kind of national attention. At that point it's merely a tactic to say, "Well, we can't really talk about it now, because it's politicized". I'm all for bridging divides, but not at the cost of that being an effective decision to do nothing. That's not solving problems; it's dismissing them.
    - blacktriangle 6y ago
      There's a difference between "we can't talk about this" and "lets not talk about this at a sports ball game." This notion is unacceptable to the left who instead must demand dogmatic adherence to their worldview where nobody can escape. What we're seeing out of the American left is no different than Maoist struggle sessions as a prelude to full blown authoritarian communism.
      - jfengel 6y ago
        Ah, I see. Thank you for demonstrating the collegiality I've been missing by not watching sports.
    - jariel 6y ago
      " That division has been increasing for decades." Only in pop culture. Almost every single material measure of integration has been improving. Wage gap, education gap, representation gap etc.. And from 1969->2001 even in pop culture things were improved. It started to heat up with Obama (I love the guy, but many didn't) and went into overdrive in the last 5 years. Watch CNN from 2005. It wasn't directly divisive, it was just somewhat biased news. Now, it's full on culture war.
      - jfengel 6y ago
        Only in pop culture. And on the Twitter feed of the last President.
        jariel 6y ago
        Yes - Trump is an artifact of populism, and it's a tragedy that that kind of rhetoric had any kind of legitimization. But even during Trump's presidency, African Americans had their lowest unemployment rate in history. I don't credit him with much of that directly, rather, but he did preside over an area of 'open business growth' for which that was the result. Which is my point. Even despite the toxic rhetoric of a public official, things on the ground can improve.
        jfengel 6y ago
        Yes, things on the ground definitely improve. After eight minutes, for example, they'll stop cutting off your windpipe. But that's OK, because he might have had fentanyl in his system, and that means it was definitely not kneeling on his neck for eight minutes that killed him. I'm quite certain of that because HN tells me that, over and over. I'm using sarcasm because it's disingenuous to talk about "a public official". He was the President of the United States, and 75 million people voted for him. They approved that rhetoric. I think it's likely that many of them preferred that rhetoric, and why he finally won the Presidency after two losses by vastly more competent politicians. This is not just one person. Your dismissal of the seriousness of this is, in my opinion, one of the reasons it's so serious. African Americans are being mocked on one side, and on the other side they feel that their concerns about literally being murdered are being met with "Well, you have a low unemployment rate".
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    I've found bars are filled with people willing to chat. Almost as if the political bubble is just a media driven fabrication.
    - junon 6y ago
      The bar is the last place I'd want to bring up politics in the US. Then again, I come from a red state and certainly do not match the general consensus there.
  - mikestew 6y ago
    Keeping politics out of sports... That is, we do that after we do our little patriotic opening song, then we leave the politics out, right?
    - axguscbklp 6y ago
      Throw the patriotic and military-worshipping stuff out too. It annoys me as much as the "social justice" stuff annoys me. Perhaps more. I'm in principle opposed to the patriotic and military stuff, although I'd probably make an exception if the country was actually being militarily attacked for some reason other than because of blowback for its meddling overseas. I could imagine supporting some social justice messaging in sports, I just don't like it when the messaging is based on highly questionable arguments but promoted as obvious truth. Most BLM-type messaging falls into that category for me. The theory that minorities are disproportionately shot by police started to seem questionable to me once I corrected for things like police encounter rates and homicide rates. I should emphasize, questionable - I'm not saying the theory is false, just that it needs to be investigated further as far as I'm concerned.
      - blacktriangle 6y ago
        It's okay, you can say the narrative is false, the data supports you.
        axguscbklp 6y ago
        I'm not trying to conceal my opinions though, I'm actually undecided on the matter.
      - mindslight 6y ago
        > The theory that minorities are disproportionately shot by police started to seem questionable to me once I corrected for things like police encounter rates and homicide rates You don't have to fully subscribe to the intrinsically-racist Black Lives Matter narrative to agree that unaccountable police are a major problem regardless of race. And IMO unaccountable police is a more fundamental issue than the newly-stoked racism.
- Eleopteryx 6y ago
  Strange comment. I have to imagine that the part you find "good" is the lowered viewership? Or what is the "good" part to which you're referring?
  - jmeister 6y ago
    People are voting with their TV remotes. Now the sports orgs have to wake up and stop politicizing their content.
blacktriangle 6y ago
Shoulda learned from the best guys. Michael Jordan: "Republicans buy sneakers too."
- Larrikin 6y ago
  The world will be a better place when people are ok being wealthy without feeling the need to make every single penny possible. Being ok with cops killing unarmed minorities so you can sell more shoes shouldn't be a defensible position. Being ok with child labor and internment camps so you can make and sell more phones shouldn't be a defensible position. As an extremely minor example it seems like nearly every food chain starts off actually amazing and then eventually becomes crap through incremental bottom line savings that simply open up the market for a new chain to come in and all the MBAs who ruined the company can jump ship to.
  - blacktriangle 6y ago
    I think its less about making money and more about focusing on what he was actually good at. In later reflections on that line, Jordan goes on to say he never saw himself as a role model, just as a basketball player. I'd say the world will be a better place when people who are famous for X focus on their love of X and shut up about everything else about which they probably know less than the average citizen due to being hyperfocused on X.
    - Larrikin 6y ago
      So in an ideal world only politicians and political pundits would be allowed to voice their opinions on issues and not people actually effected? LeBron isn't kneeling because he thinks the police will shoot him, he's kneeling for his family, friends, and people he grew up with that aren't famous athletes that he would like to stay alive.
      - blacktriangle 6y ago
        LeBron is a wonderful example of people who shouldn't open their mouth about things they don't understand, like the actual police violence stats which show that blacks are underrepresented as the victims of the police as a function of criminality.
Google234 6y ago
It should be noted that the NBA is only woke with respect to the US, with China there’s no politics or social justice.
- bopbeepboop 6y ago
  Which is particularly galling: LeBron et al talk about how they won’t back down confronting wrongs! — except for China, who is actually racist and actually abusing human rights, right now. He shut up, sat down about that and read the script like he was told. It’s beating your wife because you’re scared to confront real issues — and I don’t respect that behavior from pampered circus acts.
  - Google4567 6y ago
    Lebron James, a black man in America, spoke out on issues affecting black men in America. He did not speak out on issues in China, nor does he speak out on issues affecting the First Nations in Canada, the Native Americans in America, the Aboriginals in Australia, and neither did he protest injustices in Africa, Europe nor the Middle East. Terrible behavior indeed not shouldering every injustice in the world.
    - KlinkEastwood 6y ago
      Funny how it works. Black people's struggle is always my people's struggle, but it's never the other way around. Injustice toward black people anywhere is injustice everywhere, but it's never that way when it's not black people. they don't have principals, they have a shallow and myopic self interest. and you are wrong - he did speak out on issues in china, he said shut the hell up about it because they will stop buying my shoes if you don't shut up. for all the good he does, when it comes down to it, when his bottom line is marginally affected he is a coward just like everyone pimping out wokeness to sell garbage.
    - bopbeepboop 6y ago
      Yep, and a man should focus on discipline in his house instead of confront the injustice of the world — that’s why he beats his wife instead of confronting real problems. LeBron happily accepts Chinese money for his work to be aired in the Chinese market: focusing his criticism on the less problematic customer is exactly what I’m calling out. China pays money he wants, and will stop if he talks, so he doesn’t talk about it — because he’s a cheap hypocrite. More than that, your portrayal of him not speaking on those issues is plain false: he was happy to discuss Hong Kong. He just doesn’t speak about issues in China which would negatively finically impact him. How do you think black people are treated in China? My hunch is “not well” based on how they hid Finn on the Star Wars poster. Why doesn’t LeBron talk about the treatment of blacks in China, where the NBA also airs? LeBron runs his mouth, but he sits down and shuts up for a check. He knows that China is racist against him and treats him like a trained dog, telling him to sit or speak on command — and he does it. So he lashes out at other people about the fact even though he’s an overpaid circus performer, he’ll always be a bitch like that.
sethc2 6y ago
I watched sports then and watch them now. I just love to see awesome athletes who have honed their bodies and reflexes to such a crazy degree do things I could never do. The interjection of social justice issues hasn’t yet taken anything away from the joy of the game from what I’ve seen. Kneeling for the anthem, wearing armbands with messages doesn’t change any of that. If they start saying we need more diversity in sports and pay athletes who aren’t the best because of their skin color or sexual orientation I’d be annoyed. If someone is gay or straight or white or black and is the best at his position but he doesn’t get a job because of his orientation or skin color then I’ll stop watching. The only thing I hate is how many athletes who have such short 3 year windows have half their income taxed for those three years then go on to work “normal” jobs for the next 30 years, and someone who ultimately made the same income over 30 years at a high paying “normal” job got taxed so much less over the same time span.
- jariel 6y ago
  The interjection of SJ makes the moment 'very serious and contemplative'. Like being in Church, listening to a Sermon. That's the complete opposite of sports where people spectate to literally get away from controversy, 'serious' things. For many Americans, especially men, it's their '2 hour safe space' where they can have a beer and not worry. Imagine if you're doing Yoga, and the well meaning instructor starts in about a rant about the importance of 'American Defence Spending'. Most progressives might have to agree with that on some level, but it's the last place they want to hear about it. Or even BLM for that matter. The worst part is that the popular antagonism towards the keeling is misrepresented as a general malaise towards 'Social Justice' - which is generally false - as if to say the people having dinner interrupted by slightly violent BLM protesters must be 'anti Black' or whatever. It's reasonable that athlete's want to use their voice for change, and I think most people would accept that, but they way they've gone about it is wrong. I don't think many people realize how much 'bubble thinking' is going on, it's really bad. I've lost interest in so many things 'American' I feel almost everything is inundated with culture war toxicity from every side.
  - ljp_206 6y ago
    I agree with you that our society is rife with culture war toxicity. But I'm confused with the whole 'shut up and dribble' mentality. Sure, sports fans may not want politics to bleed into their sport-viewing time, but as long as athletes do not exist in a vacuum, what do they expect athletes to do? Be mindless entertainers? Ignore their conscience and pretend like they have no qualms with the status quo when they are on the national stage? > It's reasonable that athlete's want to use their voice for change, and I think most people would accept that, but they way they've gone about it is wrong. What are the acceptable ways to use one's voice for change? If that question is too broad, what is the acceptable way for an athlete on the national level to use their voice for change?
toomuchredbull 6y ago
It just offended me that someone like Kyrie Irving, literally thought the world was flat in 2018 and now we are suddenly supposed to respect and listen to his voice. He's the Vice President of the player's association. Guess what some of these players are morons and they don't necessarily have to be listened to.
- soared 6y ago
  I agree with your statement, but do not agree with your sentiment. Being offended over something that really doesn't impact your life seems troublesome.
notwoke 6y ago
I stopped watching sports because of the social justice bs
soared 6y ago
The title and content of the article (and therefore discussion here) do not follow what was actually asked in the poll. The question asked was, "How has the discussion of politics in sports on social media impacted your viewing habits?" Social media was the focus of the poll, which is not mentioned in the article or comments here. The poll was clearly not asking about politics in sports, but rather discussion of politics in sports on social media.

28 points by undefined1 6y ago

jmeister 6y ago

Good. People watch sports to escape from everything else. “Shut up and dribble” is the way to go.

blacktriangle 6y ago
I think its' more sinister than that. Keeping politics out of sports meant that sports were something that people could bond over. Sports could form a bridge between disparate viewpoints. Everybody talks about the growing political divide in America, but part of the problem is this compulsive desire to politicize everything has left nowhere for people with different views to feel comfortable congregating together.
- jfengel 6y ago
  I think the cause and effect are reversed here. People had sports as that bridge, and the country became more divided. That division has been increasing for decades. Sports came first and they weren't creating any bonding. If they had even slowed the process, they were rapidly running out of juice. The problem with "don't politicize" is that this has a thumb on the scale of the status quo. "Politicization" means that somebody wants something done. Usually they go at it for decades until it catches some kind of national attention. At that point it's merely a tactic to say, "Well, we can't really talk about it now, because it's politicized". I'm all for bridging divides, but not at the cost of that being an effective decision to do nothing. That's not solving problems; it's dismissing them.
  - blacktriangle 6y ago
    There's a difference between "we can't talk about this" and "lets not talk about this at a sports ball game." This notion is unacceptable to the left who instead must demand dogmatic adherence to their worldview where nobody can escape. What we're seeing out of the American left is no different than Maoist struggle sessions as a prelude to full blown authoritarian communism.
    - jfengel 6y ago
      Ah, I see. Thank you for demonstrating the collegiality I've been missing by not watching sports.
  - jariel 6y ago
    " That division has been increasing for decades." Only in pop culture. Almost every single material measure of integration has been improving. Wage gap, education gap, representation gap etc.. And from 1969->2001 even in pop culture things were improved. It started to heat up with Obama (I love the guy, but many didn't) and went into overdrive in the last 5 years. Watch CNN from 2005. It wasn't directly divisive, it was just somewhat biased news. Now, it's full on culture war.
    - jfengel 6y ago
      Only in pop culture. And on the Twitter feed of the last President.
      - jariel 6y ago
        Yes - Trump is an artifact of populism, and it's a tragedy that that kind of rhetoric had any kind of legitimization. But even during Trump's presidency, African Americans had their lowest unemployment rate in history. I don't credit him with much of that directly, rather, but he did preside over an area of 'open business growth' for which that was the result. Which is my point. Even despite the toxic rhetoric of a public official, things on the ground can improve.
        jfengel 6y ago
        Yes, things on the ground definitely improve. After eight minutes, for example, they'll stop cutting off your windpipe. But that's OK, because he might have had fentanyl in his system, and that means it was definitely not kneeling on his neck for eight minutes that killed him. I'm quite certain of that because HN tells me that, over and over. I'm using sarcasm because it's disingenuous to talk about "a public official". He was the President of the United States, and 75 million people voted for him. They approved that rhetoric. I think it's likely that many of them preferred that rhetoric, and why he finally won the Presidency after two losses by vastly more competent politicians. This is not just one person. Your dismissal of the seriousness of this is, in my opinion, one of the reasons it's so serious. African Americans are being mocked on one side, and on the other side they feel that their concerns about literally being murdered are being met with "Well, you have a low unemployment rate".
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  I've found bars are filled with people willing to chat. Almost as if the political bubble is just a media driven fabrication.
  - junon 6y ago
    The bar is the last place I'd want to bring up politics in the US. Then again, I come from a red state and certainly do not match the general consensus there.
- mikestew 6y ago
  Keeping politics out of sports... That is, we do that after we do our little patriotic opening song, then we leave the politics out, right?
  - axguscbklp 6y ago
    Throw the patriotic and military-worshipping stuff out too. It annoys me as much as the "social justice" stuff annoys me. Perhaps more. I'm in principle opposed to the patriotic and military stuff, although I'd probably make an exception if the country was actually being militarily attacked for some reason other than because of blowback for its meddling overseas. I could imagine supporting some social justice messaging in sports, I just don't like it when the messaging is based on highly questionable arguments but promoted as obvious truth. Most BLM-type messaging falls into that category for me. The theory that minorities are disproportionately shot by police started to seem questionable to me once I corrected for things like police encounter rates and homicide rates. I should emphasize, questionable - I'm not saying the theory is false, just that it needs to be investigated further as far as I'm concerned.
    - blacktriangle 6y ago
      It's okay, you can say the narrative is false, the data supports you.
      - axguscbklp 6y ago
        I'm not trying to conceal my opinions though, I'm actually undecided on the matter.
    - mindslight 6y ago
      > The theory that minorities are disproportionately shot by police started to seem questionable to me once I corrected for things like police encounter rates and homicide rates You don't have to fully subscribe to the intrinsically-racist Black Lives Matter narrative to agree that unaccountable police are a major problem regardless of race. And IMO unaccountable police is a more fundamental issue than the newly-stoked racism.
Eleopteryx 6y ago
Strange comment. I have to imagine that the part you find "good" is the lowered viewership? Or what is the "good" part to which you're referring?
- jmeister 6y ago
  People are voting with their TV remotes. Now the sports orgs have to wake up and stop politicizing their content.

blacktriangle 6y ago

Shoulda learned from the best guys. Michael Jordan: "Republicans buy sneakers too."

Larrikin 6y ago
The world will be a better place when people are ok being wealthy without feeling the need to make every single penny possible. Being ok with cops killing unarmed minorities so you can sell more shoes shouldn't be a defensible position. Being ok with child labor and internment camps so you can make and sell more phones shouldn't be a defensible position. As an extremely minor example it seems like nearly every food chain starts off actually amazing and then eventually becomes crap through incremental bottom line savings that simply open up the market for a new chain to come in and all the MBAs who ruined the company can jump ship to.
- blacktriangle 6y ago
  I think its less about making money and more about focusing on what he was actually good at. In later reflections on that line, Jordan goes on to say he never saw himself as a role model, just as a basketball player. I'd say the world will be a better place when people who are famous for X focus on their love of X and shut up about everything else about which they probably know less than the average citizen due to being hyperfocused on X.
  - Larrikin 6y ago
    So in an ideal world only politicians and political pundits would be allowed to voice their opinions on issues and not people actually effected? LeBron isn't kneeling because he thinks the police will shoot him, he's kneeling for his family, friends, and people he grew up with that aren't famous athletes that he would like to stay alive.
    - blacktriangle 6y ago
      LeBron is a wonderful example of people who shouldn't open their mouth about things they don't understand, like the actual police violence stats which show that blacks are underrepresented as the victims of the police as a function of criminality.

Google234 6y ago

It should be noted that the NBA is only woke with respect to the US, with China there’s no politics or social justice.

bopbeepboop 6y ago
Which is particularly galling: LeBron et al talk about how they won’t back down confronting wrongs! — except for China, who is actually racist and actually abusing human rights, right now. He shut up, sat down about that and read the script like he was told. It’s beating your wife because you’re scared to confront real issues — and I don’t respect that behavior from pampered circus acts.
- Google4567 6y ago
  Lebron James, a black man in America, spoke out on issues affecting black men in America. He did not speak out on issues in China, nor does he speak out on issues affecting the First Nations in Canada, the Native Americans in America, the Aboriginals in Australia, and neither did he protest injustices in Africa, Europe nor the Middle East. Terrible behavior indeed not shouldering every injustice in the world.
  - KlinkEastwood 6y ago
    Funny how it works. Black people's struggle is always my people's struggle, but it's never the other way around. Injustice toward black people anywhere is injustice everywhere, but it's never that way when it's not black people. they don't have principals, they have a shallow and myopic self interest. and you are wrong - he did speak out on issues in china, he said shut the hell up about it because they will stop buying my shoes if you don't shut up. for all the good he does, when it comes down to it, when his bottom line is marginally affected he is a coward just like everyone pimping out wokeness to sell garbage.
  - bopbeepboop 6y ago
    Yep, and a man should focus on discipline in his house instead of confront the injustice of the world — that’s why he beats his wife instead of confronting real problems. LeBron happily accepts Chinese money for his work to be aired in the Chinese market: focusing his criticism on the less problematic customer is exactly what I’m calling out. China pays money he wants, and will stop if he talks, so he doesn’t talk about it — because he’s a cheap hypocrite. More than that, your portrayal of him not speaking on those issues is plain false: he was happy to discuss Hong Kong. He just doesn’t speak about issues in China which would negatively finically impact him. How do you think black people are treated in China? My hunch is “not well” based on how they hid Finn on the Star Wars poster. Why doesn’t LeBron talk about the treatment of blacks in China, where the NBA also airs? LeBron runs his mouth, but he sits down and shuts up for a check. He knows that China is racist against him and treats him like a trained dog, telling him to sit or speak on command — and he does it. So he lashes out at other people about the fact even though he’s an overpaid circus performer, he’ll always be a bitch like that.

sethc2 6y ago

I watched sports then and watch them now. I just love to see awesome athletes who have honed their bodies and reflexes to such a crazy degree do things I could never do. The interjection of social justice issues hasn’t yet taken anything away from the joy of the game from what I’ve seen. Kneeling for the anthem, wearing armbands with messages doesn’t change any of that. If they start saying we need more diversity in sports and pay athletes who aren’t the best because of their skin color or sexual orientation I’d be annoyed. If someone is gay or straight or white or black and is the best at his position but he doesn’t get a job because of his orientation or skin color then I’ll stop watching. The only thing I hate is how many athletes who have such short 3 year windows have half their income taxed for those three years then go on to work “normal” jobs for the next 30 years, and someone who ultimately made the same income over 30 years at a high paying “normal” job got taxed so much less over the same time span.

jariel 6y ago
The interjection of SJ makes the moment 'very serious and contemplative'. Like being in Church, listening to a Sermon. That's the complete opposite of sports where people spectate to literally get away from controversy, 'serious' things. For many Americans, especially men, it's their '2 hour safe space' where they can have a beer and not worry. Imagine if you're doing Yoga, and the well meaning instructor starts in about a rant about the importance of 'American Defence Spending'. Most progressives might have to agree with that on some level, but it's the last place they want to hear about it. Or even BLM for that matter. The worst part is that the popular antagonism towards the keeling is misrepresented as a general malaise towards 'Social Justice' - which is generally false - as if to say the people having dinner interrupted by slightly violent BLM protesters must be 'anti Black' or whatever. It's reasonable that athlete's want to use their voice for change, and I think most people would accept that, but they way they've gone about it is wrong. I don't think many people realize how much 'bubble thinking' is going on, it's really bad. I've lost interest in so many things 'American' I feel almost everything is inundated with culture war toxicity from every side.
- ljp_206 6y ago
  I agree with you that our society is rife with culture war toxicity. But I'm confused with the whole 'shut up and dribble' mentality. Sure, sports fans may not want politics to bleed into their sport-viewing time, but as long as athletes do not exist in a vacuum, what do they expect athletes to do? Be mindless entertainers? Ignore their conscience and pretend like they have no qualms with the status quo when they are on the national stage? > It's reasonable that athlete's want to use their voice for change, and I think most people would accept that, but they way they've gone about it is wrong. What are the acceptable ways to use one's voice for change? If that question is too broad, what is the acceptable way for an athlete on the national level to use their voice for change?

toomuchredbull 6y ago

It just offended me that someone like Kyrie Irving, literally thought the world was flat in 2018 and now we are suddenly supposed to respect and listen to his voice. He's the Vice President of the player's association. Guess what some of these players are morons and they don't necessarily have to be listened to.

soared 6y ago
I agree with your statement, but do not agree with your sentiment. Being offended over something that really doesn't impact your life seems troublesome.

notwoke 6y ago

I stopped watching sports because of the social justice bs

soared 6y ago

The title and content of the article (and therefore discussion here) do not follow what was actually asked in the poll. The question asked was, "How has the discussion of politics in sports on social media impacted your viewing habits?" Social media was the focus of the poll, which is not mentioned in the article or comments here. The poll was clearly not asking about politics in sports, but rather discussion of politics in sports on social media.