my unpopular opinion is that they are a waste of time and effort.
Definitely unpopular.
However, I mostly agree with you.
I still like the idea of the Olympics in the way it’s marketed to be, a time of peaceful athletic competition and communication between nations and peoples.
And, I can’t lie, it is one of the few times that individual sports that I’m more into watching ever get air time at all. Like, you don’t see judo, or archery, or shooting, or even wrestling on regular tv often at all, even back when I still had cable. Team sports, you can see all damn day, all times of the year, but individual sports don’t usually have the same kind of industry built around them.
Which, that’s part of the problem, the way some sports turn into a money making machine rather than a genuine competition for sport’s sake.
But, yeah, I get tired of the masturbatory commentary, the circle jerk nature of opening ceremonies, the back room bullshit of how it’s all arranged and located. It’s a shit ton of resources better allocated to actually making things better instead of entertaining the masses.
Whats wrong with some entertaining sports? You don’t have to watch it. But millions of people want to.
I’m pretty sure people uninterested in the things that interest you would say the same thing.
Honestly, the problem with the Olympics right now is the same problem with FIFA. Both organizations are seeking one thing, you might be surprised what it is - profit. Just a while ago, the Olympics organization wants in on the NFT/Crypto craze that has long bypassed them. If that isn’t a sign of where their priorities are, then yes, this opinion would be totally valid.
However, just like FIFA, the Olympics is totally avoidable.
so hate organized FIFA/Olymlics but like the idea of it?
The only cool thing about it is how it unites many parts of the world through participants.
Really wish that was a real thing in other factors. I don’t understand why it takes tragedy or things like the Olympics to unify people.
Food and sports are the best way to connect people and their respective cultures
There are many reasons to oppose the Olympics, but that the athletes are wasting their time and effort is not one of them
Upvoted because this is definitely an unpopular opinion
I would have no problem with a few internationally funded standardized Olympic facilities with rotating hosts that offer their nations cuisine and hospitality to the games.
Sort of a reverse tourism thing.
The olympics pulls in significant revenues for a wide variety of organizations. Cancelling them would remove these revenues, causing the value of certain businesses to drop.
Checkmate, atheist.
I love the idea of the Olympics and would like to see a version that wasn’t an environmental, economic, and humanitarian trash fire.
Globally your position is extremely popular.
I’d agree except that the possibility remains to just build a permanent site to host both the summer and winter games, removing like 99% of the negatives that it actually causes.
It’s a drain on resources intended to boost the prestige of a nation-state and the vile, self-serving elites that control them. The IOC itself is a corrupt bribe-machine that willingly bolsters the reputation of the worst regimes in the world.
It’s the circuses part of ‘bread and circuses’ - a tool of oppressers the world over.
My similar opinion is that Americans could have Universal healthcare for a decade if they gave up the money they spend on football for just one year. NFL. College ball, etc.
Ya know, they could keep the football if they gave up the “destabilising countries and murdering brown people” thing
See!? Even in a theoretical post you’re not willing to give up football and came up with another thing to point your finger at
They could have all of that if they gave up even one billionaire. And nothing of value would be lost.
they could have even more money to murder innocent people if they just fixed their stupid system. they currently pay more per person on healthcare than countries with a functioning healthcare system.
We could have universal healthcare if we take the money the us government already spends and cut out the middleman. In fact we would save money that doesn’t even include what we spend already. Insurance is a scam and the fact healthcare and insurance became a for profit industry in 1970s…says a whole lot
They would be fine, you just have to choose a permanent location. Currently, we build the required stuff almost every time from the ground up and a lot of it isn’t used afterwards.
Sex trafficers would lose major revenue source!
I have, if anything, been watching the Olympics more now than in the past. I think the change came about due to the fact that you can now stream any event at any time without commercials, annoying commentary, interviews, etc. It used to be that coverage would focus on events featuring your own nation’s top talent, which meant that some sport that interests you but doesn’t have much traction in your country gets ignored. And during a low time, rather than showing some sport where maybe your country has no medal prospects, they’d fill the time doing athlete profiles or whatever. I hated that.
But I get that there are downsides. The cost of hosting the games have spiralled out of control, the IOC has FIFA-scale corruption issues, and the war on drugs is going about as well as wars on drugs go.
One thing I have noticed with the Paris Games is that the venues are spread around a lot more across the country. The surfing was all the way over in Tahiti, which is about as far from Paris as you can get and still be on the planet. This opens the possibility that maybe one nation, let alone city, need not supply every facility anymore. Like do we really need another luge track? Just pick one that already exists.
