I'm sure watching sports was the undisputable pinnacle of passive entertainment in the 40s and 50s, you know, back when the only alternative hobbies were skipping ropes and clinging to your virginity — but times have changed.
And you can't really blame new generations for moving on to day trading cryptocurrencies and making TikTok careers, because ever since we removed the cocaine from carbonated soft drinks people have slowly started to come out of their k holes and opium dreams to realize that watching sports is, and has always been — well, quite boring actually.
Yes, I'm aware that some of you may "get" sports. Congrats on being able to see the fun in watching a bunch of millionaires half-heartedly chasing after a ball whilst trying not to get featured in whatever song Shakira drops next. But dare to tune into the PGA Tour and I guarantee even the most galling autograph beggars amongst you will find at least 18 reasons to start day drinking again.
Ever tried to get through a regatta? I have.
It's like a race but on top of the only surface on Earth known for its inability to command enough friction to reach exciting speeds over it. The last time I made a 3-hour commitment to one of these snoozefests my zest for life went missing and I had to spend half the gig with a lost-and-found strike team on the phone waiting for instructions.
And not that I'm profiling racing sports here, but nothing needs a 100% money-back guarantee quite like a NASCAR race in which crash barriers and engine fires don't make at least a couple of cameos.
I guess my point is, don’t make me go to a figure skating event unless the venue comes with an EpiPen vending machine at the entrance. I’d rather be home putting together a rulebook for this wrestling game idea I had called "Nether parts Vs wasp nest" and hope it can get me through the weekend.
But oh well. I guess this is what happens when we put algorithmic slot machines in our pockets.
Genitals get microwaved, attention spans reduced, and some teen's allowance almost invariably ends up being wasted on a monthly OnlyFans subscription. The long-term ripple effects are yet unknown, but they can't be any good if we're already noticing our brains not settling up for anything less gripping than thirsty cleavage selfies.
This is not to say all modern entertainment is fantastic. In fact, I bet sports could crossover with that recent Velma show and Rob Lowe's sex tape to launch a Cinematic Universe® of disappointing television. But at least modern entertainment rightfully assumes we have the attention span of a goldfish who forgot to take his Adderall for several fortnights.
Meanwhile, the multi-billion dollar sports industry thinks young people are still up for slow burns, long chunks of time with nothing happening, and matches more predictable than the ending to 1994's Free Willy and whatever's left of the NFT market.
And they're wrong.
The threshold of instant gratification has been dramatically shortened, but cricket somehow still thinks that it's a good idea to have a match last 5 days — that's 30 times longer than Tim Ferris' entire workweek. And it doesn't matter how much cutting-edge refereeing technology, cinematic camera work and dramatic post-match interviews you deploy, you'd still need jumper cables and a 4-hour audiobook on the history of competitive Captcha testing to match pulses with the audience of a chess tournament.
Make a zoomer watch any of those and I believe we're gonna see a dopamine deficiency worth studying by science. I'm talking "vitamin B12 when first-wave veganism went mainstream" levels of deficiency.
And despite all these problems, sports still have the audacity to charge premium prices? I mean, the fact that they still dominate Ebay's memorabilia market after Belle Delphine started selling used bath water is quite impressive, but c'mon — 200 dollars for a pair of shoes? What are they made of, the cure for cancer? I thought you needed a coordinated attack from the entire /WallStreetBets subreddit to get this puffed up about a price tag.
Especially when the Vietnamese kid that made them probably got paid in arcade tickets and bathroom breaks.
But look, I know expensive merch and mildly disappointing fun is not all that sports have to offer. Their main appeal is that they're still a convenient group-identity hobby to get into.
These are not the good ol' days of figuring people out, when you could always count on a Buzzfeed personality quiz to tell you exactly what type of milk you are — now, you either get a hobby, a bunch of custom pronouns or a haircut that very clearly communicates what type of podcasts you listen to, or you'll end up talking with some Scientology scouter about recruitment. There is no middle point.
But if we can learn anything from radio astronomy and the furry community, is that people can bond over absolutely anything. So, for how much longer can sports keep their position as staple community-building hobbies when there are much more entertaining things to do instead?
Don't get me wrong, I don't want sports to disappear. It's a shame that we're gonna force Michael Phelps to pivot his career over to terrestrial habitats, but I don't see competitive swimming getting any more fun without them evolving gills and turbines.
This happens to everything I guess.
As chariot racing went obsolete once we figured out the combustion engine, so will other sports adapt to the current times — or disappear altogether. I just don't see how can we make something like golf more fun, not unless Tiger Woods enters mating season again and National Geographic happens to be around to document it.
And maybe that's precisely the problem with sports: watching other people exercise for fun is something you can only optimize so much before you end up opening up a porn site.
The Most Boring Kind of Voyeurism
Another witty, trenchant gem, my friend!
Here is some anecdotal data. My GenZ/millennial kids will absolutely not watch baseball. OK, my 22-year old will sometimes flip iton for 45 seconds so he can make sarcastic remarks like "Why are all of those fans in the bleachers asleep?"
Golf. That's not even on the table. No NASCAR, we live in a blue state.
So what will my kids watch. Basketball, Lots and lots of it. Olympic events like swimming, skiing, and snowboarding. World Cup soccer. Extreme sports. Football, only to the extent they have fantasy football players involved.
As you wrote, they just don't have the attention span for anything that is slow. But when there's a lot of action, they're all over it.
This post was a golden muffin I enjoyed with my coffee this morning. Thank you for the extremely fun ways you dress up truth ☕️