I’ve no difficulty understanding lads being thirsty and attracted by a lovely lady who appears to be into gaming and hey, you can even interact and try to get her attention!
Now, explain to me lads getting super invested in some lads running around a field chasing a ball. Like, literally having their lives revolve around it, their identity entirely centered on it. Now that’s a complete mystery to me.
Practicing masculinity, delighting in skilled human action, and bonding with peers.
Not my thing, but I get it.
I actually understood sports fandom for the first time because of watching streamers play video games. I was like ooooohhh, this is a very challenging skill, and I’m watching someone do it very very well, and I’m fucking hyped and I want to see more.
I never in my life had that for basketball or anything. But it made sense when I saw it for video games.
Each to their own pal. I’m sure there are things you do that others find a mystery.
That is a magnificently executed thought-terminating cliché, but if I may offer a rebuttal: nuh-uh!
Hey, no hate on people loving sports!
My point was it’s super clear why a teenager wants to thirst on a pretty woman playing vidya.
Now, my irish mates all having their club and being all very serious about it, when they’ll curse the English in the same sentence has always been hilarious to me.
And I’m talking people from fecking Donegal, who lived through the Troubles and shit. Never understood that one.Why?
Their mad at the English government, not the English people. An English football club is entirely separate from the English government.
It’s cool.
I’ve never really understood it either to be honest. I’ve gravitated to solo sports and more admiration at the ability than the winning per se.
I’m from Manchester, UK, so been around a lot of Irish people. Had a lovely time in Port-Stewert once. (Port-Stewart?) At the same time I’ve put countless hours into Minecraft, Factorio, Running, or climbing and people wonder why.
Most of the time it’s the social aspect that is infectious. It gives you something in common with other fans that would otherwise be strangers to you
I never understood sports fans until walking around Key West with my Navy buddy who wore a hat for the Browns. Random dudes kept cracking jokes at and/or with him the whole day. Still ain’t enough to get me into the cult, but I get the appeal now.
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Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
What was Wenger thinking, sending Walcott on that early?
Thing about Arsenal, they always try and walk it in.
As a dude who’s sometimes socially awkward and struggles to connect with men, becoming invested in football seemed like a serious cheat code to me tbh. Sit with random strangers at a bar? They’re wearing something that makes their club affiliation obvious, or they spot yours? You’re there talking how is the season going, is their keeper recovered, when will your striker score again? And maybe throw some well-meant insults while saying cheers.
As a guy who is socially awkward with other men, the longer I’m around them, the more difficult it is for me to conceal how very different I am from them.
Aye, like wearing a cool metal shirt and getting the horns from a complete stranger. We do like our tribe(s), don’t we?
As long as we get to pick our tribes, realize that it is all good-spirited tribalism and banter, and are able to tolerate if people pick a different tribe, I’m cool with it. Hell yeah, brother 🤘
Holy fuck I wish lemmy gold was a thing i could give you. Sport fans always seemed like cultists to me.
As someone who was born into the ball chasing cult, there are three things:
- The social aspect. It’s the one thing that brings my family together, each week, to watch the game. For away games, you have a cookout with some family friends, buy some drinks and then you watch the game. If it’s in the evening, then you go out afterwards. For home games, you gather the same group, but now you’re gonna meet more people in the arena, people you know because they’re also in the cult. You have a drink, you have a laugh and you catch up with them. Our team is a second division side with some okay players and a great goalie, so the game is almost relegated (heh) to play second fiddle.
Oh and don’t get me started on the choreos.
- Hometown pride: This team has been here since the 19th century and for me, going to the games or even having just a passing interest in the team is part of being from that town.
You tag lamp posts in your town with their stickers and you do the same in the surrounding smaller cities. By looking at the stickers in any given town, you can see to which city their youth gravitates, which tickles my brain in ways I can’t explain.
- It’s fun to watch: Arguably the weakest reason, but God damn, sometimes even second division footy just looks so good! When you see someone pull off a sick trick or make a clean tackle or catch, you get that sweet dopamine kick, it’s insane.
I’d never beat someone because of their allegiance. Those people can kick rocks.
I appreciate the summary and I think i get why people like sports ball… but I really enjoy having a sports ball free space to talk about how absurd it is the way our society obsesses over it. on the internet, you’re the weirdo, not me!
It’s weird to be both somewhat of a nerd and a sports ball person since birth, so I get your comment :)
Fair-play to you for a thoughtful answer. Much appreciated and it certainly matches my personal experience.
As I said somewhere else : seeing my mates being all up in arms about ManU when they live in fecking Donegal was always funny to me, but I totally see the social aspect.
So much banter at the pub! If there is a thing the Irish love, it’s a good banter.Shame about the assholes who use it as an excuse to get into fights. Fecking idiots the lot of them.
Thanks for the kind words, I really have to take every excuse to practice writing in English ^^
Yeah, I definitely forgot about the banter and storylines.
I think what contributes the most to the sports ball hype is that a lot of people play sports ball themselves. And just like gamers watching streams of people playing the games they want to play or are playing, ball cultists wanna see guys do the shit they do on some backwater pitch. You know, for the “damn, I know that’s difficult” or the “I could do it better” - factor.
Man, the “damn, I know that’s difficult” is strong in every sport. I can appreciate a sport so much more if I did it myself, even just a few months. Fencing? No idea, people waving some sticks around.
Soccerfootball? Sick volley shot, man, I saw a mate to the same thing back in 2006…Yeah, I think it’s also “I saw like 10 of my mates shit the bed trying to do that”.
Thanks for avoiding the s-word btw ^^
ball chasing cult
lol yeah :D
Hometown pride
Do you also refer to your city’s sport team using “we”, “us”, and “our”? I’ve always found that weird, because while I’m a fan, I don’t consider myself being a part of what the team accomplishes. I’m just a spectator. I just refer to them as the team name.
I have pretty deep roots within the city, and I could not imagine not rooting for my team (within limits, I wouldn’t tolerate bigotry, but as of now, they behaved pretty good on that front), so yeah, I use “wir” and “uns” :)
Not the person you replied to but yes I do. I used to think it’s weird but there’s a few things that made me change that feeling.
One, I’ve been at games decided by fans. Players said they couldn’t hear anything on the pitch. Home sides shat their pants during warm up. I wasn’t on the pitch and didn’t touch a ball but I was part of one of the reasons we went home happy.
Two, and more importantly: when I think of the club I don’t think of the players and the managers. I think of my friends, I think of the crowd in the stands. My team has a crazy successful time right now (Football fans will surely be able to guess by now) but it wasn’t much different when we were playing 2nd division. Players leave all the time—currently my team has like one player who was part of the team for the whole successful run—but the club isn’t defined by the players, but by the people in that stands. They don’t change. And while football is certainly an enjoyable sport to watch, I wouldn’t care about it half as much without the fan culture surrounding it. Over the years I’ve become part of that as well, so fuck yes I say “we”.
I am with you: I’ve been there when we played in the 4th division, outside of professional football and within my lifetime, we made it back into the top flight, with one player scoring in each division on the way. He was the first German player to do that, and while I know of another German who got there 2 years later, I don’t know if this happened anywhere else.
Now I’m curious. It sounds like SVD?
Nope, I’ll give you another hint: we had the most chaotic promotion match in the history of the Bundesliga
Expanding on the penis in vagina theme for a minute…
Now that’s a bit of a stretch
its like joining a cult, you swap your weaker identity with the stronger cult identity
Isn’t that Pokimane? She’s ranked in League. Cute women can do great things. If you sexualize it maybe you’re a creep. Go watch her play.
And non-cute women can do great things. Watch people play who entertain you, and if they’re attractive, that’s cool too.
I loved watching her play Among Us because she was so damn good at it.
What does ‘ranked’ mean? Doesn’t basically every player have a rank?
Ranked, meaning above a certain rank making you one of the top tier players.
You can be ranked as a bronze sure. But no one goes around saying I’m ranked bronze. Means you’re trash.
According to Google she’s Emerald+ (I have no idea what this means as I never played LoL. She apparently reached immortal status which makes her the top 0.5% of players.
Emerald+ is somewhere around the 93rd percentile. So she’s definitely good, (better than over 90% of players), but not as good as the true Diamond/master/grandmaster players.
A lot of those grandmaster-level players don’t even have their face on stream; They’ll just silently stream with a camera on their keyboard, because the people watching them want to see their inputs just as much as they want to see the the match. When it comes to streaming, there’s a golden triangle of “Looks”, “Charisma” and “Skill”. In order to be a good streamer, you need at least two. But those grandmaster players are so insanely skilled that they’re able to ignore the other two completely.
Not really, you can play league entirely unranked though the matchmaking will still try to put you in similar skill matches. So you will get an ELO/MMR but that’s not a rank anyone sees.
The curse of heterosexuality.
They very much know what they’re doing. In an era where legit anyone can do this stuff now, they gotta stand out or just have vagina. Not all streamers are baiting hormones, but incidentally I don’t get being a streamer fan such that you’re even paying money to someone to play a video game. Makes about as much sense to pay someone playing sports millions of dollars but hey, that’s just me. Peace
I used to somewhat regularly watch streams before going to sleep. I’d just have the computer set to shutdown at a given time and just be in bed, watching, listening. Even crafted me own script, to activate the shutdown popup and slowly lower the volume. Better than the computer suddenly shutting down, and allowed me to easily cancel shutdown if I wanted. Once the computer turned off, put my stuff to the side and go to sleep (not sure how often I’d end up on my phone instead)
That being said, I don’t have a Twitch account, never interacted. Just sometimes watched, when certain people were on, at the end of the day. Not like I was the whole day in chat or something. And lately I’ve lost the habit. Back then, I lived alone, and with a job,.had a regular routine. Plus, the computer was right ahead of my bed. Now? No more. I usually end up on my phone instead (and when that happens, it usually is not limit in time… it don’t shutdown.)
Edit: not interested in gaming, though. I’m more of a “Just Chatting”
Male Loneliness Epidemic is mostly just broke teenagers trapped in the suburbs who haven’t figured out their girl peers are just as lonely, broke, and horny as they are.
As soon as they crack the code, they’re at it like jackrabbits
He might have described why a chunk of guys pick up learning how to play the guitar.
Poki definitely has fans like that, but she has plenty of other fans too. You dont get to be that popular if all you have is looks
Have you ever been on pornhub?
You think porn is just looks?
Not for the men.
Kinda answered his own question there, didn’t he.
I mean, have you ever had your penis in a vagina?
Gross, no.
Uh… no?
Have you?
A few times, yeah.
Besides your own?
With the exception of some c-section babies, every penis has been in a vagina, even if only in passing. It’s the “but I didn’t inhale” of peepee in the vajee.
Wait you can do that?
You can’t, but others can.
How much money you got?
(I don’t have a vagina but money is money)
We been trying to go backwards ever since the first life form split. Some are more motivated than others. The hive mind explores every potential ctrl+z for mitosis… Put it back! Stop! No, go away!.. Lone star the barbarian just wanna get merged n go home.
We’re all just animals under the surface. Human exceptionalism is a fallacy. The hormones are just as much a part of you as any conscious thought.
The stranger thing to me is why this type of performance is a thing people watch in the first place. I do not mean that in a judgemental way at all. I am more interested in what it says about the nature of entertainment and human social behavior. This seems like a glitch in the meaning and value of tribalism. The potential benefit is very limited. The person performing has obvious returns on investment. It is the others that I question.
Monkey brain horny.
But why not porn then?
Because she might see my message and talk to me? Then maybe more? While many other factors going on see Taylor Swift?
It is the others that I question.
Loneliness meets parasocial relationships
What makes a man do anything now days lol
Anon can’t fathom being interested in people if the reason is not sexual.
1 way streamer ‘relationships’ feel super weird and impersonal to me. It’s like there’s some kind of fantasy the streamer is personally invested in, and interested in, you, too.
Like maybe I’d watch a bit out of curiosity, like watching a sports team or something. But become paying ‘patron’ and watch them all the time?
To me it’s just entertainment, not a relationship. But I’m starting to wonder if I’m the weird one. I often just watch the archives too, not even live.
I find some of them consistently amusing so I keep watching. At some point I think that it’s only fair to contribute monetarily to help incentivize them to keep producing the entertainment I like.
To me it’s just entertainment, not a relationship.
I suppose I didn’t mean to overgeneralize, this may why most watch streamers.
It seems more like a relationship to many, especially those that throw big bucks at these streamers, and basically live in the comment sections saying weird things.
I found out that some female streaming voices give me some asmr. And overall can be more pleasant to hear. And less prone to have “youtube accent”. I take that as a win.
I don’t watch Twitch but the youngin’s in my family do.
Female streamers don’t have that fake obnoxious rage yell/scream the guys do.
Last streamer I watched by choice was Skyrim Grandma BTW.
The only “streaming” I can watch are Game Grumps, but I get that’s not live, and it’s by and for a completely different demographic.
I’ve tried, but I find a lot of Twitch play-throughs to be low-stimulation, low-information, and low-entertainment. I think they’re better suited to a dual-screen kind of situation, but then I’d rather be doing far more engaging things like playing games myself.
I miss when GameGrumps wasn’t so corporate
I miss it too. If I had to guess, Arin sees a day with wall-to-wall recording sessions and meetings, and misses those chaotic early days.
I look at it this way: it’s a lot less home-grown now that it’s grown up. In exchange, they employ people, make Starbomb tours actually possible, and fund wildly off-the-wall games. Along the way, Dan was propelled into modest stardom, a lot of other folks from their camp got a boost for their endeavors, and they got to make some memorable moments with a few celebs. They’re not at “Liquid Game Grumps” levels yet, but it’s amazing to watch unfold. Maybe that’s worth it.
Completely agree. Just missing the good old days of being able to make whatever joke/comment they found funny, advertisers be damned
Female streamers don’t have that fake obnoxious rage yell/scream the guys do.
Eh, guys with the fake rage scream are about as common as the ladies who see Twitch as essentially a starter camsite/way to advertise their OF and are trading on boobs more than anything else. There absolutely are streamers on Twitch that are exactly what OP suggests, but they’re far from a majority and probably not the one used in the picture.
I don’t understand watching any video game streams. It just makes me want to play video games myself, why would I spoil video games by watching someone else play it?
Here in Brazil, a lot of kids watch streamers because their families can’t afford any gaming devices :(
I don’t understand watching any video game streams. It just makes me want to play video games myself, why would I spoil video games by watching someone else play it?
I don’t understand watching any football streams. It just makes me want to play football myself, why would I spoil the fun of playing by watching someone else play it?
I don’t watch sports either. That said, that’s not a bad point, I suppose if I got into it I theoretically could watch and enjoy competitive games. Not the same as streamers playing singleplayer games though.
Actually though. I can’t bear football and I’d still rather kick a ball around than sit and watch it
I like to watch high level gameplay to see what others are doing. There are streamers who talk through their decision making and you get really valuable insight. YouTube just isnt as good because the games and lessons are cherrypicked instead of being able to see how they play winning and losing.
There are some games I can’t “git gud” at but I enjoy seeing the gameplay, so I watch edited playthroughs.
I don’t watch streams much, for a multitude of reasons.
I’ve just recently gotten into this. Gotta find someone with good commentary skills, and doesn’t have an annoying voice.
Also, speedrunners aren’t who I thought they’d be, was expecting a bunch of nerds cracked out on adderall. I don’t seek out the genre, but the ones I’ve stumbled across accidentally are older, with a technical background and do well-spoken commentary. Makes it much more interesting when they can articulate what they’re doing as they’re doing it.
This, for real. I love people who like think their way their way through, or add thoughtful commentary. They’re the interesting people who don’t even need prodding with remarks from chat; thoughtful, chatty people make good background TV for me.
I immediately close streams where they play their own music or refuse to fix their audio issues.
The appeal isn’t in the games themselves, it’s in the personality playing them.
I got pretty into watching twitch a couple years back, and yep, the streamer and community are what made my favourite streams. I mostly watched streams for one or two games I knew, but would watch others because it was one of the streamers I liked
made for a nice change from podcasts or music
I have limited time, watching certain gaming channels lets me know about games I might be interested in.
Then I can wishlist them, purchase them when they’re on sale, and never find the time to play them.
I also have limited skills. Watching certain gaming channels lets me experience games I wouldn’t be able to progress in if I played them myself.
Also, some are entertaining because of the way the person plays. Watching Jon forget about his damn blunderbuss cavalry until they are again slaughtered to the last man amuses me.
I don’t play for an audience, so I can constantly pause and micromanage the game, and therefore don’t tend to make these amusing mistakes. I’m also not as good as most professionals. Therefore watching certain professionals play certain games can be more entertaining than playing them myself.
Finally, there’s also the reaction factor, same as with film or TV or music reactions. Watching someone experience that surprise or shock for the first time triggers the mirror neuron, and is the closest I can get to experiencing it myself for the first time again.
background noise.
i put it on while i work for games i’ve already played or would never play
I used to hang out with friends in college, and I’d do homework in the same room while they’d play videogames (or vice-versa). Throwing a streamer on while I’m working gives the same vibe.
Nobody is watching for the game. Everyone is watching the cute girls and the bewbss.
I’d argue that’s not completely true because in that case why not just watch porn or why watch non-sexy video game streamers who also get plenty of viewers?
I do think you are partially correct though in a way that makes it a little more depressing, I think a lot of viewers see a cute girl playing video games specifically as a combination they like so they can fantasize about specifically having a “gamer girlfriend”. But if they like that, then they’re also there for the gameplay or will inevitably get at least a little invested in it as they watch.
people want some fun storyline around their porn.
