If the Olympics were permanently canceled, nothing of value would be lost.
my unpopular opinion is that they are a waste of time and effort.
my unpopular opinion is that they are a waste of time and effort.
I’m pretty sure people uninterested in the things that interest you would say the same thing.
wasting time on something you enjoy is not actually wasted time. Besides, so many people get positivity from watching etc
Right!? Can we not yuck other people’s yum please?
I wonder what the response would be if the OPs unpopular opinion had been on video games and esports instead? For the record, I enjoy video games.
You don't need to bankrupt entire cities to build esports arenas so esports is better.
On a planet as diverse as ours, there should be plenty of room for both regular sports and e-sports.
There is plenty of room. But the Olympics insist on changing city every 4 years and building a brand new stadium and village every time. It's wasteful.
Honestly, not to be mean or anything, BUT, this sorta reeks of "I don't like it so nobody else should."
This is a type of mentality that I believe to be highly negative and frankly kinda toxic. Your welcome to your opinion, but I really don't think the many many hours, days, weeks, months, and years of effort, training and planning that goes into those who both run and participate in the Olympics is a waste of time and effort.
Also we live in a world that you can just block or ignore anything you don't particularly care for.
They all have their world championships already so they can already compete there (and I mean, that's exactly what a multitude of sports do in fact, hell, climbers weren't that happy about how the sport was added to the Olympics and some high ranking competitors just didn't bother even trying to go).
The environmental and socioeconomic impact of the Olympics make them something we really should consider at least making permanently held in a specific location.
The Olympics is a time to celebrate athletes in sports we don't follow every day.
I don't watch baseball, soccer, basketball, etc at the Olympics because they all get plenty of air time.
In the last week I watched water polo, gymnastics, breakdancing, volleyball, skateboarding, and more.
There's an event (modern pentathlon) that consists of pistol shooting, fencing, Horsemanship, running, and swimming. That's a fascinating mix of disciplines and there are people who train for decades to be good at it, and I think it's wonderful that they get their time in the spotlight every few years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Modern_Pentathlon_Championships
Again, just considering the environmental and socioeconomic impact of the Olympics should be enough to convince everyone that we need to stop hosting them or that we should host them in a fixed location with only the athletes going.
Homeless people get kicked out of cities and no one cares what happens to them. Billions in public funds are spent without a return on investment, very often to buy infrastructure that is then left to rot. The impact on the environment is incredibly high (this year's Olympics are evaluated to have released 1.5m tons of CO2 pretty much evenly split between traveling, construction and game operations).
If you think about all of that you then realize that the Olympics literally kill people and it's just another thing we're spending public funds on to enrich private corporations at the expense of the public's well-being.
We're not responsible enough to host that kind of events responsibly.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19406940.2023.2271487#abstract
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/economics-hosting-olympic-games
https://apnews.com/article/olympics-2024-explainer-086d71dfa93128a2c5a302cb47ec3524
Hmm, an interesting take. The Olympics, being an international multinational event, being in a singular location could cause political tension between countries. It would have to be on neutral land for such a thing to work. Maybe some of that unclaimed land In Africa?
Edit: messed up the formatting by accident.
That would mean a private company becoming the owner of land that isn't part of a country, would be kind of weird wouldn't it?
They're already registered in Switzerland so let them deal with it, countries should refuse to host them considering the cost and the fact that there's no return on investment in the end.
I mean that could work from my American perspective, I'm unsure about other parts of the world. Perhaps we shouldn't care about those sort of silly high school level drama between nations? I don't think I have enough understanding to know. But Switzerland is pretty so I'm down with it.
Also, if there’s any vision, aspiration for better, hope for improvement, expanding the limits of the human body is important, just as aspiring to ever improving science or technology
Honestly, not to be mean or anything, BUT, this sorta reeks of “I don’t like it so nobody else should.”
As someone who had to learn how to avoid these feelings after growing up with parents who felt this way about everything, OP is clearly just salty that people like something they don't like.
There are legitimate problems with the Olympics, and the scale of the spectacle, international attention and amount of people and money involved really lends itself to the worst of modern humanity. But that doesn't mean nobody can enjoy them, that just means that the world needs to push to improve the Olympics further
"...so nobody else should"
I don't think OP ever said that, nor did they imply it. I interpret OP's unpopular opinion as nothing more than "it's not for me".
But I guess there is some room for ambiguity.
Sure, but plenty of things I don't like I still wouldn't call a waste of time and effort.
I believe there is a lot of positive reasons to have the Olympics. It’s a symbol of peace. Nations joining together in the spirit of competition to send their best athletes to compete. Culture is shared. Cities hosting it put their best foot forward. Everyone comes together.
As far as the negatives. The amount of money and work required to host is getting out of hand. They should seriously pair back the amount of competitions. I just freaking watched break dancing. Seriously? Dressage? Should we just cut to the chase and award medals to the horses? Maybe we stick to athletic human sports and drop some of the frivolity, or artistic endeavors where judges are required to decide style points when a stopwatch or a tape measure should do. The sheer amount of resources required to support this bloating competition has gotten out of hand.
Nations joining together in the spirit of the rich lording it over everyone else, I think you mean? Or the spirit of sport-washing dictatorships, maybe?
Well now... break dancing was actually pretty fun to watch, in my opinion. Perfect balance between rhythmic gymnastics and dance.
The fact that the Olympics committee doesn't answer to anyone and it's rolling in cash is reason enough to cancel them.
Have ever tried riding a horse? Dressage is not just the horse, it's exhausting for the rider as well.
It's a horrible and cruel sport full of animal cruelty so no sympathy if they get a bit tired
While I certainly believe many sports events are really just a waste of money, Olympics is probably not.
Not only does it serve as a way to promote sports worldwide, boosting public health and inspiring people, it also is a remarkable feat of international cooperation, contributing to the relative peace and harmony.
Now, all those football leagues and stuff should really vanish. They cost way more than their benefit could ever be.
contributing to the relative peace and harmony.
There's no way you're talking this way about the Fucking Olympics...
remarkable feat of international cooperation
But it shouldn't be political. Get rid of the countries endorsement of said athletes, so that both israeli and russian athletes can compete, instead of deciding which one depending on political affiliation.
Of course that would turn the olympics into a purely individualistic endeavour¹, and funding for training athletes would likely fall on private enterprise² who would likely only fund already good budding athletes³ instead of funding schools and communities in general.
¹ - read: "Go Bell!" instead of "Go GB!"
² - read: replace country badges with BMW logos
³ - read: rich kids from good homes
So, in conclusion: *shrug emoji*
For the athletes, it's a not a waste of time and effort.
For the hosting countries/cities?
They cost a TON of time and money, and it's a dubious proposition that the host cities ever recover that investment. Olympic villages are also rarely the best possible use of prime land, and often involve buying up and gentrifying entire neighborhoods for the purpose of building the facilities, and for the duration of the event, and the planning leading up to it, your city basically gives up autonomy to an organization that spends your resources as if they were their own in order to create a platform to sell advertising rights in the guise of sportsmanship. For the Olympics to be more sustainable and less corrupted by commercial interests, they should focus less on spectacle and expenditure and rely more on existing infrastructure.
Furthermore, while sport is an important and noble endeavor, it is by no means any more important than any other human endeavor, and every four years we have to be exposed to the intersection of sports and politics in discussions about nations that, for example, allow medalists to avoid conscription or escape poverty in various countries in exchange for bringing national prestige, and rarely do we take the opportunity to discuss what this says about our priorities, simply accepting the elevated prestige we place on this particular sporting event without question.
In short, I don't agree their cancellation would cause NOTHING of value to be lost, but the Olympics as an event in its current incarnation has PLENTY worth reevaluating, and we could all benefit greatly from reexamining its scale and role.
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.
It's not even a fair competition. How rich a country is and how much they spend on sport and sport science is the largest determining factor in medal count. Just another way for the evil to buy legitimacy.
There are no fair competitions. That bar is impossible to achieve. You can only create rules to make certain aspects fair. It will always be true that some athletes and teams are coming in with obvious advantages, no matter what anyone tries. And that's kind of the point, right? It's the best in the world, and the best are not distributed evenly for a variety of economic and cultural and demographic reasons.
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
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
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.
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
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
Didnt the CBO say we'd save like 5 trillion dollars over 10-20 years if we did that filthy socialist thing of giving Americans universal healthcare "Medicaid for all"
I love the idea of the Olympics and would like to see a version that wasn't an environmental, economic, and humanitarian trash fire.
LA's transit plans are all aiming for a 2028 Olympics launch. If it was not for that, I doubt any of these projects could get the funding in time.
And people should be fucking angry about it instead of being happy that it will get done for tourists instead of the residents, just like the cleanup of the Seine that should have been done decades ago.
my unpopular opinion is that they are a waste of time and effort.
Let's go further and remove Soccer, American Football, Basketball, Hockey and other sports.
All of that is IMO a waste of time, with no value /s
What's the /s for? Watching millionaires play with a ball to make corrupt rich assholes even richer is dumb as fuck
We really should. Sports aren't only a waste of time, they're a waste of money, too. It infuriates me that taxpayer money is used to build stadiums.
The modern concept of spectacle supports is a waste, not sport itself. As a psych nurse I wish a lot more people would do sports, especially team ones for the social aspect. The best exercise is one that brings you joy; making people run on treadmills to keep their hearts and muscles functioning isn't even one of my preferred dystopias to live in. I'm not even fundamentally against spectator sports in and of themselves; just the modern commercialization and the way universities in particular have essentially become sports franchises with side hustles in education. I even enjoy watching the artistry and human physical prowess in the Olympics. But again the issue to me is the commercialization. Capitalism has taken so much from us and to me reclamation is more important than elimination in most if not all contexts.
I don't disagree with you. I don't enjoy playing sports personally, but I recognize that they are good exercise, and playing games is fun.
What I don't understand is spending billions so that people can watch others play games. It makes no sense to me at all. Not only is it a waste of resources, but where is the fun in watching someone else participate in a recreational activity?
For the athlets they are evercise andethus of value I don't understand why you would watch someone exercise though. Much better to watch someone play mandolin...
Because it's generally fun to watch people be really good at stuff. The competition aspect of it creates stories that people get invested in too
The sports and competition are not. Will my kids ever be Olympic athletes? Probably not. But there's been a hell of a lot of pretending going on at my house the past month, and I like that.
Is moving the Olympics ever 4 years and building bigger, more elaborate facilities purely as a dick measuring contest a waste of time and effort? Absolutely, 100%.
They should just pick a location and stick to it. Same with the World Cup.
Think of it as a prototype of a better form of complex social hierarchy, and an expansion of human thought.
Our primary form of hierarchical display is wealth. Future peoples will reflect on this as a most primitive barbarism. This form of display places fundamental human needs of survival opposite the fulcrum of social hierarchy. Even at a fundamental level, this form of display is primitive nonsense, as it is largely dominated by hereditary factors instead of individual merit. This system is a major incumbrance of progress, placing incompetent persons in prominent roles of society based solely on inheritance.
The Olympics is a far better prototype of a complex meritocracy and regulating structure.
The other primary forms of hierarchy can be seen in academia's reputation and accolades, and in The Academy Awards of Merit.
Sometimes I feel this way too, most of the competitions don't interest me much.
One benefit that does happen is it spurs mass public transit expansion (Peertube version) big time in the host city. The sheer volume of athletes and visitors to one area means that your usual 1 hour or more commutes on already congested roads aren't going to cut it.
This event makes a city/country get off their ass, stop being complacent. It makes a convincing case for deficit spending to meet public infrastructure needs, which are so often neglected when left alone.
It makes the public go into massive debt for the benefit of corporations who make bank. It leaves the city with a dozen world-class sports venues that will never ever be used to their capacity again and which the host city will be unable to maintain, but which they paid for with public money.
What you're saying is true, there is definitely corruption, useless building and parking and unequal wealth transfer that happens with the Games in its host cities.
However, my point is that there is a subset of that built infrastructure that does eventually see its capacity realized again, and that's mass public transit. It's easy to see the value of that infrastructure in hindsight, but many politicians and residents are skiddish about making the short and long term investments needed to provide transportation services and meet future movement needs of a population. The Olympics provide a guarantee that the infrastructure will be used even for just a few weeks, which help quell fears that the transit spending would be wasted money. Seeing that we still benefit from transit infrastructure built for that short event, should make people see that transit investment is valuable for all of us.
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.
You still get a ridiculous amount of emissions over two weeks to bring all the tourists there.
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.
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.