I’ve seen tables flipped, tv sets punched through, furniture thrown. And that’s just in the home.
How does one get to a place mentally where burning and destroying things, over a sportsball game seem a reasonable thing to do?
Sportsball is kinda a shit term - you don’t have to like sports and yes society venerates it over far more important achievements/pursuits, but it’s a bit childish to refer to it in that way.
My theory is that a lot of that kind of poor behaviour is generally from men who have grown up with the toxic masculinity traits of believing that sad is bad, angry is manly. I’ve seen people openly weep over the outcomes of a game - I think these people are feeling the same emotions but haven’t been given the societal permission to express it in its true form. So they do angry instead. It’s not acceptable at all but that’s what I think the reason is.
I would go ahead recommend and not be a pompous ass who says sportsball, you are not better than others or unique because you don’t like sports.
And then to answer your question I don’t think it has much to do with the sport itself.
- i think it’s the trigger not the cause.
- Big crowd+alcohol and other substances
- the crowd anonymity effect or whatever if it even has a name, if only one person in a crowd starts kicking over a trashcan and gets some cheers, it can and will quickly spread through the crowd who will start doing it and/or escalate what they do as they feel kinda safe, because they are not doing it alone. The same way when you do something you are kinda afraid to do doing it with a friend (if you had any) gives you more courage.
Or to quote Man in Black “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals, and you know it.”
Think about January 6, you think if you ask then individually if it’s a good idea to go to the capitol alone and overthrow try to overthrow a government and theyd probably call you stupid for the idea, but put them in a crowd where they mutually encourage each other and give each other a sense of security and they will go ahead and do it the dumb bastards.
As on reddit, no one who does this is ever going to take accountability for it.(And no one who does this is going to be on Lemmy to begin with)
When I was a kid I would get emotionally invested in the game, hoping my team would win and gritting my teeth because they might not.
I really cannot relate to this at all anymore. I might wish for my home team to win but if they don’t play well then that’s on them, and I am not going to lose sleep either way.
I can only guess that I got caught up in the games as a kid because my whole family was into them, rooting and clapping and groaning and swearing at the refs. I was small and my brain wasn’t fully formed and I just got caught up in that culture.
It looks patently ridiculous from the outside. But I guess some people’s entire society is so into sports that they reach adulthood with this tribalism intact. It is after all a form of entertainment and people crave excitement and something to care about.
I got sick of my emotions being caught up in an arbitrary thing that might go either way. It’s the same reason I hate holding stocks. When you wake up each day and see that you gained or lost money based on arbitrary forces you can’t control, it’s like having your emotions manipulated by RNG.
Gamers know that when a game is entirely driven by RNG its bullshit not worth playing.
It’s called displacement aggression The sportsball fan identifies with his team to the point that it feels like he lost the game himself. Since he can’t express his frustration and subsequent aggression towards the opposing team (since he is in front of his TV several 100km away), he expresses it towards the next best thing that is weaker and accessible, e.g. furniture, walls, wife and kids…
It’s also really heavily about tribalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribalism
Because people like to be part of a specific group and feel like the goals of said group are their goals, regardless of the reality of the thing
I personally find it weird when fans use “us” and “we” when discussing their sports team as if they have anything to do with how the team performs or is managed. I just call my local/city sports teams by their name.