Correlation is not causation. The popularity and success of games and entertainment are causally related to disposable income availability. They aren’t related to the state of an empire or its decline. The games are also present during the growth of an empire too.
The only relationship between these things and decline is: during decline, the importance of tradition and patriotism increases. If the games are solidly entrenched as a tradition at that point, it becomes hard to cancel them, because doing so acknowledges decline.
So in the USA’s current case… causation
Or ppl would like an escape from their shitty lives for 3 to 4 hours a week before going back to their soul crushing jobs Monday to avoid becoming homeless while paying 2/3 of their paychecks on rent
I can’t tell if you were being tongue-in-cheek or not, but that sounds exactly like a game distracting people from the harsh reality that their society has failed them.
That’s the exact point being made
I think the point they are making is that has always been the case. It’s more apparent when things are so bad. But I think everyone needs an escape of one thing or another.
that’s exactly the crux. when your life is so miserable watching men in tight pants scramble over a field for a couple of hours playing a children’s game for millions of dollars more than you’ll ever see is an escape from your misery. Interrupt the proceedings every 3 second or every significant advance to keep their blood pressure high. panem et circenses.
The most obvious of these harms is the long-term injury — specifically brain injury — to players. There is continued evidence of football’s relationship with traumatic brain injury, dementia, memory loss, depression and premature death.
A 2017 study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, said 177 of 202 former football players studied of all levels had Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), including 110 of the 111 NFL players studied.
By all means, enjoy the game, but remember this.
How is it any different than movies or games or music or any other form of entertainment?
Because sports inspires tribalism, which is different than pure entertainment. Sports forces people into camps, gives them a common identity, and defines an “enemy.”
Except movies, gaming, music, etc also inspires tribalism, like the console wars or declaring one genre better than another.
How dare you talk shit about dubstep you probably don’t even know what good music sounds like.
That sounds more like people enacting tribalism on an activity than tribalism being an intrinsic and necessary part of the activity, like in organized sports.
The tribal part is also a shared experience in a stadium. Roman games also had advertising and the gladiators endorsed products.
You’re right. I hadn’t thought about that aspect. I am not a sports person so I couldn’t imagine a difference.
Relevant
The superbowl is not new.
ancient Rome
decaying empire
You’ve never taken a history class have you?
Edit for everyone who thinks this is some “End Woke” thing: Ancient Rome =/= Empiric Rome. Those epochs are separated by thousands of years
Couldn’t have used a Chiefs-Niners photo? The masses are not bright and this will elude us if we don’t put the finest of points on it.
Oh, that’s the teams. I didn’t know.
The part that always surprises me is how boring sports are for most of their duration. I’ve had played pathfinder sessions that had better tedious downtime to actual excitement ratios.
Interesting thought- Sports are a substitute and an extension of community. If sports didn’t exist, we would invent it. The problem with sports manifests when we worship the sport itself, instead of the friendship and camaraderie it conveys.
Nah, football is not that epic, its cool when you see a man at the peak of athleticism being mauled by a tiger, but seeing them tackle each other in protective gear takes something away from it for me
When the entire contest can be decided by a 155 lb. kicker that used to be a soccer player, your game has failed as a concept.
I would gnaw my leg off to get away rather than be forced to watch a whole game of this shit.
It has become a 4 hour commercial with some football thrown in.
To be fair, TV in the US appeared like that to me a long time ago.
American football is military training disguised as sport… it is the sport of the modern Empire State… poser empires like China envy it, mostly for its masculinity…
