Jock culture is not a product of nerd culture imagination, nor is it a fictional media invention. You can kind find social athletic groups/venues

Jock culture is not a product of nerd culture imagination, nor is it a fictional media invention. You can kind find social athletic groups/venues without it, but its pretty hard to predict where you will. Toxic athletic culture exists. In many cases, though, there's an extreme mismatch between what athletes experience and what non-athletes perceive. Many athletes like to compete. They like to play hard, against other people who are doing the same thing. Winning is fun, but competition is really the thing. When you train and compete hard it is not a zero-sum game; even if you lose you have sharpened yourself so to speak. If it's a team sport this is going to involve some level of sacrifice and subsuming one's self into the whole. That level can be extremely small (the ultra casual darts team at your local pub) or quite large (a professional football team). This can be hard for non-athletes to understand in a sporting context, and it all just seems like a giant incomprehensible ball of toxic hate to them because they don't understand the appeal of any of this in the first place. Jock culture is not a product of nerd culture imagination, nor is it a fictional media invention. It certainly wasn't invented by nerds or the media, but it is amplified by the media. Obviously the media doesn't typically report on healthy sports participation, you know? And the dumb "jocks versus nerds" false dichotomy is such an easy and functional Hollywood trope. I would also note that a lot of "toxic sports culture" is the product of overbearing and overcompetitive parents living vicariously through their children and forcing their kids to do things they don't want to do. So, is that really a sports thing? No, it's a parenting thing. Those are toxic parents.