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Athrelon comments on Why do people ____? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Sports is fun to watch for the same reason watching any other form of skilled competition can be fun.
Identifying with a far removed team is a way to join a tribe, and get all the fun results thereof. It doesn't matter that much that you're identifying with a bunch of players who are hired by an organization that is nominally affiliated with a location far away from you. People subscribe to really tenuous group membership all the time: they feel affiliated with faraway centers of government, ideologies that have no geographic location, etc. What does matter is being able to find people, preferably nearby and in person, you can signal your group affiliation to.
In Germany the sport of choice is soccer. From time to time I notice how people (a) put in serious effort to watch the game on TV, and (b) complain about how bad it was afterwards. Some regularly complain about how bad the sport has become, but still eagerly watch it again next time. For me it looks like a weird tribal ritual, thats just stupid.
It's fun to have something to complain about with your friends.
That some people steadily complain about some activity they regularly voluntarily participate at is an existing phenomenon, but not something specific to spectator sports.
Also, even if the very act of watching the match is unpleasant, it may be offset by subsequent pleasant discussions about the game, to which having seen it is a natural prerequisite. And even if the discussions weren't pleasant, they may be an easy way to strengthen tribal membership.
What exactly is stupid here?
1) doing something you do (claim to) not enjoy 2) Participating in a tribal ritual that seems to make everyone worse off by having to do an activity they dont enjoy. (A group that is locked into doing something few members actually want to do.)
1) Even if the group would be better off if nobody did the activity, it doesn't follow that the individuals are stupid if they are participating. (I don't think the adjective "stupid" is applicable to group decisions which are a Nash equilibrium.)
2) I seriously dispute the assumption that everybody is doing an activity they don't enjoy. Most sports fans enjoy their fandom. Now I watch sports much less than in my high-school years where I had much more opportunities to discuss football or ice hockey with my friends - therefore I know how important part social reinforcement plays. But never I watched a game with a sense of obligation or feeling that I am doing an unpleasant work. (Edit: most of the complaints about how the last night game was horrible are simple signals of sophistication - a true connoisseur can't enjoy every game. The presence of such signalling doesn't necessarily imply lack of enjoyment.)
By the way, a better example of a Nash equilibrium where everybody would be better off if nobody had participated in the activity is advertising. Even here, I wouldn't talk about stupidity.