The Sport
This seems like a good time to make my periodic affirmation of values:
I will stop calling it "sportsball" and "handegg" on the very day that a science-fiction program pre-empts a football game, and not an hour sooner. :)
I've got nothing against sports per se, I swear. I've got nothing against sports fans... per se. I have a _huge_ issue with the way the world grinds to a halt for sports culture the way it doesn't for other cultures. I don't really mind the Superbowl; I mind the assumption that I care and I'm the weirdo if I don't.
I even have a low-value trauma card to play: I was stuck working overnight downtown when the Red Sox won the pennant in 2004. It wasn't a terrible experience, nothing exactly happened, but the noise and chaos genuinely scared the shit out of me and I didn't dare set foot outside until morning.
I've also come back from a friend's wedding on the day of a Superbowl and been subjected to some asshole subway bro's long angry rant about how "crazy" someone has to be to get married on Super Bowl Sunday. I guess I've always resented that a little. Nobody who doesn't want to hear about my hobbies gets to make my whole day about theirs, to the point where I have to plan my transit and shopping habits around it.
Oh, and my dad was kind of an asshole. Not abusive or anything, but very stubborn and very determined to get me into something athletic. He chilled towards the end of his short life, and accepted I was going to win him spelling bees, not superbowls, but... yeah, there were some tense times, and sports was a real wedge issue for us.
We're in a predominantly queer community. A lot of us have some serious issues regarding sports as an injection medium for toxic masculinity and unswerving expectations of how we were supposed to behave. You're _going_ to get some residual resentment there. And as long as that culture prevails, you're going to get "handegg," "superb owl," and "sportsball" out of people like me.
It's how we deal. It's not about degrading your hobbies. Your hobbies are fine. The very fact you're our friends means you're probably Not That Kind Of Sports Fan to start with. This is just a little thing we do to show the world "This is something we chose to keep our distance from and that's OKAY." It's like the Little Drummer Boy challenge. It's all in good fun... even if there's a core of real resentment there.
re: The Sport
@zebratron2084 I have a particularly weird resentment of football as this mandatory social lubricant, mandatory liking. Back in Georgia everything was required, nothing was eh, if you don't like it it's cool. Then there was my introduction to actually playing football, which was another excuse to bully or neglect me - by comparison to how I wasn't encouraged to run, do gymnastics, row, or any of the really physical stuff I like. And last I don't find football particularly compelling - soccer and basketball have this furious passing game which slams to a halt regularly in football.
I dunno, I figure sports - football included - is and should be like any other intellectual thing. It's like concerts, Mozart, Duke Ellington, art museums, Kurosawa films, whatever - if someone likes it that's great, but that doesn't mean it should be mandated for everyone.
