Introduction and Standing on Sports

[Sojin]

Hello there everyone,

I stumbled upon this site and I have been reading it for the past hour or so, and decided to make an account, because I'm *gasp* someone that likes sports, but I'm also what most people would lump together in a group known as "Nerds".

From experience, at least in my location (Maryland), most of the people I played with were really cool guys and had no desire to pick on other people or consider others as inferior to them, but I do know where most people are coming from.

Neither the stereotypical jock or nerd sound good to me, not all jocks are stupid, even though there really are some stupid jocks, which can't be helped since for some odd reason the USA over-hypes sports in our nation...OVER-HYPES.

What I really want to say is that it's not jocks who are really shallow, but a lot of jocks you will find who are part of this shallow majority that hurt others just to look cool are popular people. The most popular people in school settings are usually retards and total jerks that have over inflated heads that should be popped with some kind of needle or something >.>

If it wasn't sports, and instead let's say video games, that were over sensationalized by our media and deemed what is popular, you can expect many asshole gamers that believe how much better they are than everyone else, and most of the shallow people will then try to be gamers instead of like football or baseball players.

But like I said before, I'm on both sides of the spectrum, if I just played Football all day I'd probably die of boredom, so that's where I have my video game fix, but more than playing them I like to make them. I'm an avid RPG gamer, so even more-so than making the games, I love to make a good story. I was in my high school football team, and went to every practice and was praised by coaches and fans along with the rest of my team, so you could say I was a jock, but I'm not a retard, and I'm certainly not some sex crazed maniac.

Everywhere you go there will be poor sportsmanship, it's just that sports being physical, jocks have strength to show how much of an ass they are. There are poor sports in gaming too, believe me, I've met many people who get pissed off easily and try to make you feel like less of a person, especially if you beat them (ESPECIALLY MMOS)

And the only thing that irks me is how people say that football or any sport in general, is mindless. When you look at the fundamentals and not actually enjoy/participate/understand it then yes, it is very simple sounding and boring. I'll explain more about it if you want me to, but as I've read sports bore most people here and wouldn't want that I'll just explain more to back up what I mean if you need, just don't dismiss something you don't like. I could say that game's are very simple as well, the fundamentals ARE very simple, that's why you've got small children able to play games very efficiently, but of course past the fundamentals games are much more than pressing buttons. The same can be said for any sport.

Anyway, I'm not here to stir up any trouble o.o I like you guys, and based off of what I've read I deeply respect Earl. Sorry if this post is huge, just wanted to place my views on here, I'm in both sides, except I don't think a sport should be the most important thing in a man's life.

[Sergey]

Hello and I welcome you to the forums, your intro was better than Sportsguy92's who's ended up criticizing some of us.

[Fat Man]

Good evening Sojin.

Even though you played football, it's good to know that you're not the typical jock, and also, you do understand where we are all coming from.

Welcome to the forums.

[Sojin]

Thank you two for the welcome!

Actually I went through a few stages when I was a kid all I did was play sports because everyone I hung around with played them too, and my mom's brother, being a sports fanatic (fanatic is actually an understatement) he would get his son and me to play games together and with other kids in his community. It was kinda forced but I had fun while it lasted, then in the later years I got away from it when I met a gamer friend of mine.

Basically he got me into RPGs, and me being someone who loves strategy, took kindly to them. Maybe a bit too much, as that was all I would do for a lot of my middle school career. My jock friends made it their mission to at least keep me outside, and I'm glad they did. We were able to hang out and explore random places, I lived in a trailer park by this time and behind the trailer park was a large landscape with a large watering hole. We made a clubhouse near there with stuff that was thrown out by others and swam a lot by the water, but overall it wasn't that much out of my day, and most of it even through the nights I would play a bunch of PSX RPGs. After I started gaming the concept of football was pretty boring to me actually.

But once I got to high school, I had the desire to play again. For gamers, think of football as just another multiplayer game to play with others. Instead of football though, I ended up joining a soccer team, because most of the smartest kids that were physically active had been a part of the soccer team, and what I wanted was to be able to use my physical ability as well as strategy. I had a hell of a time learning in order to be good enough to compete, but thanks to one of my other cousins I was able to learn the basics and do the rest on my own. I ended up playing through my first high school year, then something fun happened.

The football team from our school had these two main star players that annoyed the hell out of me, basically they were the stereotype that every "nerd" here hates, and they had the nerve to say that what we (as soccer players) did was pointless. So since I used to play football I challenged the two of them to get 4 other friends and I would get 5 others and we'd play a grudge match. I got one of my best friends who played football in another school as well as others from the soccer team to actually participate, and when the time came, long story short, thanks to us being smart and using our own plays(strategies), we actually won. By no means were we stronger, we still have strong bodies being athletes, but at this time I didn't weight train at all, but what separated us was our brains.

From then on I treated Sports casually like I would a multiplayer game with others, and I love to play as long as it's a challenge for me. I still do, though not as much because everyone I liked to play with and I have jobs now, but we still get the chance to play around every now and then.

Anyway, another long ass post but I hope it gives you more insight on why I can be on both sides.

[Earl]

Welcome to the forum, Sojin. And thanks for the compliment. Your comments are very interesting. Donâ??t worry about your posts being too long. (Just take a look at this one. ) When youâ??re trying to convey an idea, you sometimes have to use a lot of words so you wonâ??t be misunderstood by anyone who reads your comments.

I discovered this website less than a year ago in late December. I have no problem with any of the currently active members of this forum. (At least for the most part. ) Those of us who are â??anti-sportsâ? (a label that doesnâ??t always reflect my views) are a rather diverse group. Some of us are sedentary (and thereâ??s nothing wrong with that), but not all of us. I happen to be a member of a health club. A perusal of the Letters and Links will show that men who donâ??t like sports include physical fitness enthusiasts, bodybuilders, and even former athletes. Politically we range from liberal to conservative or even apolitical. Religiously we range from atheist to Bible-believing Christian. We certainly donâ??t think alike, not even about sports. But each of the members of this forum has a legitimate point of view.

I prefer that people use this forum to try to understand points of view that are different from their own. To borrow from a line of dialogue in an old Twilight Zone episode, Iâ??d like to find out what makes people tick and what makes some particular individuals tick so loudly. Of course, as the old cliché goes, it takes two to tango. Some people just aren't interested in having a dialogue. Usually what happens is that people react self-defensively and lash out at the other person in anger. Thatâ??s exactly what I did when I started posting at a few websites earlier this year in the spring. Iâ??ve had to learn the hard way over time not to do that.

Although my background is not the same as yours, I also can see both sides. Compared to the traditional sports-centered P.E. classes that I and other nonathletic classmates were forced to take in school (which did absolutely nothing to promote physical fitness for us), working with personal trainers on a bodybuilding program at my health club has actually been psychologically therapeutic for me.

Thereâ??s a lot more that I could say at this time, but this is enough for now. One final comment, though: For years Iâ??ve been fascinated with instances of individual men who have defied one stereotype or another. My sister, who is older than I, attended an out-of-state college in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She was not a sports fan by any means, but her friends included a few of the athletes. One of them, whom I will refer to by his first name (which was Keith), was on both the hockey team and the football team. He was physically aggressive in the games in which he played; but off the playing field he was a pacifist, which defies the â??machoâ? stereotype. He had been psychologically abused when he was a young boy by his father, who was a professor. In a curious mirror image of the athletic father who ridicules his nonathletic son for not being interested in sports, Keithâ??s intellectual father cruelly rejected him. His father would frequently call him â??Bubba the truckdriverâ? simply because he had a husky build. I wonder if Keithâ??s paternal grandfather had abused his father when he was a boy. Not surprisingly, Keith ended up with an anger management problem. Sometimes he would tell my sister that he was feeling particularly angry and that he therefore needed to go to the gym so he could take it out on a punching bag. I donâ??t know if Keithâ??s pacifism was based upon religious teachings or if it was based upon philosophical convictions, but he could not be provoked into a fistfight off the playing field. Of course, other students heard about Keithâ??s pacifism; and in a curious reversal of the â??jockâ? picking on physically weaker guys, smaller men on the campus would bait Keith with the purpose of trying to cause him to lose his temper and violate his conscience by reacting physically against them. But they always failed to provoke him. Needless to say, by any standard of decency, their conduct towards Keith was despicable. His restraint was quite admirable. He was a big guy who could have taken his anger out on those who were physically weaker than he was, but he chose not to do that. If he had not been afraid to have children, he and my sister possibly could have ended up getting married. Regretfully I never had the opportunity to meet him; but speaking as someone whose brother was stillborn, he would have been a great brother-in-law.

[Skul]

Greetings, Sojin!

You sound kind of like my dad -- someone who likes sports (but not obsessive about them), but is also a nerd. Seriously, my dad is one of the smartest people I know!

And I know how you feel about over-hyped sports. Over here, it's football (or soccer, for those overseas). I've got no problem with people playing and no problem with the game itself, but the extent it's hyped to is ridiculous. It's treated like some kind of god.

Video gamers -- yeah, there are some people who take video games waaay to seriously. They're supposed to be about fun and relaxation. They definitely used to be. Back in the day, you'd be congratulated on making a spectacular headshot and there would be some friendly smacktalk (different from trashtalk, which is the norm, nowadays) throughout the match. Now, if you kill someone, it's "OMG HACKIN CHEETAR N00B OMG AIMBOT!!1!!111"

Anyway, welcome to the forums. I take it you've read the rules? If not, make sure you do so. I'm not going to mention any names, but there's a few members here who could do with re-reading the rules.

By the way, Sojin, is your avatar Vega from Street Fighter?

[Sojin]

One final comment, though: For years Iâ??ve been fascinated with instances of individual men who have defied one stereotype or another.

There actually are a lot of people who avoid stereotypes, but the problem is there are also a lot of people who do fit them (otherwise the stereotype wouldn't exist) and I've seen my fair share of idiots, actually one of my gamer friends back when I was barely out of middle school had so many run ins with jocks, which is the only time I'm aggressive off field is when I'm defending someone who doesn't have the means to defend themselves from certain people.

And I know how you feel about over-hyped sports. Over here, it's football (or soccer, for those overseas). I've got no problem with people playing and no problem with the game itself, but the extent it's hyped to is ridiculous. It's treated like some kind of god.

Oh yeah, things are so over-hyped, people really do see it as a way of life and somehow get to follow their players across the world during football season. (here it's American football, so yeah, only football that isn't soccer) For the average income though, you've still got the TV that won't fail to play the programs on regular channels to follow, even a sports channel, so it could even be football year round. (which I actually think is cool, but I know people who ONLY watch them) This goes with every major sport, and I myself do watch and keep up with football, but I don't watch the whole thing, just enough to maybe see a couple of plays and see who's winning, and then check back in another hour or so. Oh, and yes, I've read the rules. I make that a custom before I post something in any forum usually.

By the way, Sojin, is your avatar Vega from Street Fighter?

Why yes, yes it is.

[Sergey]

Before this thread gets polluted let's debate verse vs verse... at least we should do something...

[Earl]

What's to debate? It's just his intro.

[Sergey]

What's to debate? It's just his intro.

It'll be polluted by the bores sooner or later.

[Sojin]

Um, well let's see...verse vs verse, well what are a few games you're interested in Sergey?

[Sergey]

Um, well let's see...verse vs verse, well what are a few games you're interested in Sergey?

Let's see, um... Fallout 3, Resident Evil 5, Left 4 Dead, DoW 2, TF2 and etc. But since the majority of these games aren't really a verse let's start of with 40k vs Star Wars , Fallout 3 vs RE5 would be cool though.

[Sojin]

let's start of with 40k vs Star Wars

A full head on battle? In that case I think that The Empire can put up a good fight, but will ultimately be crushed, even if they range a galaxy. The Imperium has been putting up with attacks for thousands of years and have only gotten stronger each time, and always keeping their own territory so it does not fall.

The Empire on the other hand...well a rebellion that consists of small woodland dudes called Ewoks that actually helped the shield generator to be destroyed, and in turn the second Death Star.

There is hope for them yet though...if it's not a head on fight and The Empire can send their Death Star directly into warp space to the Imperium's command and fire everything they've got to destroy it, we might have an equal terms fight on our hands

Fallout 3 vs RE5

As far as game quality and such go, RE5 has the upper hand in terms with graphics (very slight upper hand) and difficulty (actually challenging). I miss the zombies though I'm a zombie nut. But either way, in terms of everything else including sound, story, replay ability, I'd have to go with Fallout 3. I own both for the Xbox360 and both are pretty awesome, but overall I have to go with Fallout 3. Gameplay only wins for Fallout 3 because of VATs and slow motion head-shots.

[Sergey]

Good, now Galactus vs Eternity vs Mistress Death.

[rotten]

Welcome to the board.