Well, I’m not American, and felt he was addressing me. Not in the specific - neither I nor anyone I know watch the superbowl. But he was addressing me in the general: enjoy being with your friends when they’re doing things they enjoy, and don’t be a douche about it.
Really, he’s just reframing The Golden Rule in a pithy and topical way. Quite that’s become controversial escapes me.
Would you suggest to a classical music afficionado to go with friends to ears-tearing heavy metal concert, even if he dislikes metal? Or, way way worse and probably in the Geneva Conventions field, to a brass band one?
I feel you have COMPLETELY missed the point here.
Let me rephrase your question, so that it’s consistent with the point of the comic:
Would you suggest that it’s ok for a classical music afficionado to sneer at friends who enjoy ears-tearing heavy metal concert? Or, vice versa?
The last panel specifically said “hooray for friendship!”, not “hooray for football!”
Yes. You can sneer at each other’s things and still be friends.
But it is better to just avoid the things that irritate you.
Which gets somewhat difficult when they ooze into EVERYTHING.
You and your friends obviously skipped the “don’t be a cunt” life-lesson. Munroe’s comic was an - apparently failed - attempt to help you learn it.
Like, “don’t be a cunt and keep your sports crap to yourself”?
On Superbowl Sunday my mother-in-law, knowing the answer ahead of time, asked if I was watching the game. I had some flippant remark, not unkind, and then she asked “but how will you teach him about sports?”
“Given the lack of resources in that area in or country, that’s a real stumper” I refrained from saying. I did, however, say that maybe he’ll be interested in other competitive activities, like programming or writing competitions, or even fulfill my unfulfilled dream of learning tap dance.
There was a large silence on the phone.
My wife has given my the business over this, too, “well, what if he’s interested in sports?”
Yeah, so? What if he’s interested in physics, or woodworking, or auto repair and restoration? I’m similarly out of water, although more respectful, there.
Yes, this, exactly.
It feels like a lot of people on both sides of this debate are (or feel they are) trapped in a world of high-school tribalism where the stuff you like or don’t like forms an impassible canyon between human beings. I felt that way when I was actually in high school. It hasn’t really been a problem in my adult life, and so I’ve been able to stop caring so much about the stuff that riled me up in school. If you’re not in a position to do that, I’m very sorry and I hope you’re able to escape from it.
I think I’m going to bow out now, as I’m not really in a position to empathize with folks stuck on either side of that divide.
That would drive me nuts too. I’m very lucky to have the in-laws I have. My father-in-law, techie geek that he is, is also a lifelong Red Sox and Pats fan. I’ve bonded with him over other things, but I earned a brownie point or two when I met him for expressing a dislike of the Yankees (based upon their 1998 World Series victory over my own hometown team, the San Diego Padres… not that I ever gave shit one about the Padres since even sports fans ignored those hapless chumps). He’s free to take his grandkids to however many ballgames they can stomach; I’m not threatened. But never once has anyone ever asked me how my kids will learn about sports. I guess plenty of American kids learned about sports from their fathers, but even though my dad taught me a great deal about auto repair, home maintenance, furniture refinishing, and basic DIYness, he was never remotely interested in organized sports, and neither was I. Our family watched two sporting events a year: the Kentucky Derby and the Indy 500, and we each picked a horse (or car) at random (except my dad always picked A.J. Foyt, while I was a Rick Mears man and mom had an enduring affection for Mario Andretti) and whoever came closest to winning got to do the dishes or something. I never felt I missed out on anything. It helped to grow up in San Diego, where the professional franchises were usually so awful that there was no point in being a fan. It made more sense to go out and play sports ourselves rather than watch the local pros lose again.
I help demonstrate to my children a love of making things, of music, of reading, of Halloween, of self-reliance, of hiking in nature, of Going On Adventures, of making up stories, of live performance, of not being afraid to try fixing something. If they want to learn how to throw or kick or bat a ball around, there’s plenty of people who can show them that more efficiently than I can. If they really wanna get involved in it, I’ll even attend their games and cheer them on. But they’ll find that particular interest, if they find it at all, without my help. And both they and I are okay with that.
[Citation needed] (at least for the obnoxiously overbearing part)
I think you and JonS have different definitions of sneering. I presume you aren’t a condescending prick who looks down on your friends simply because they like things that you disapprove of, which is the kind of sneering that JonS was talking about. But I may be putting words into his mouth.
I guess this is a very “your mileage may vary” thing. I actually quite enjoy the Superbowl, yet I saw very little about it in the week coming up to it (at least, very little that I didn’t actively seek out).
A bit more than half of my extended circle of friends (all nerds, by my reckoning) are into watching sports of some kind. I don’t know how representative that is of the population in general. However, boundaries between social groups do kind of blur over time. I knew a guy who was an offensive lineman in college, while at the same time being a math/science nerd.
My sports-conscious friends wouldn’t ask me to watch the Superbowl, in the same way I wouldn’t ask them to watch The Room. Being friends with someone involves knowing what they do and do not enjoy.
Therefore, while I don’t know why anyone who hated football would watch the Superbowl, I’ve been (involuntarily) stuck in enough conversations about sports that I feel pretty unsympathetic towards Randall’s point-of-view.
Not so much controversial as preachy, off-target, and wrong. I’m not a particularly big fan of xkcd, but the worst comics are the ones that act as thinly-disguised public service announcements. This one just happened to combine the unfunny and the self-righteous together with a poor choice of target.
Randall used to have more reasonable attitude to sports earlier.
http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1480:_Super_Bowl
He forgot hockey. I believe hockey, and basketball, occupy the entire calendar except perhaps for July and August. (Speaking as someone who doesn’t follow either sport)
True that. The soccer season ends, the hockey season begins. The hockey season ends, the soccer season begins. And the news keep reporting on it. Speaking from the affected zone; there is no respite from this treadmill!
When will this miracle come to pass?
It never truly ends, it just tapers down below a threshold. A good definition of the threshold is where the level of annoyance of soccer gets equal to the level of annoyance of hockey.
I miss bowling on TV.
This stuff?
We won’t see the likes of Allcock and Bryant these days.
WTH is that crap? Looks like Bocce, but with a bleached-out British spin. Next you’ll be showing off steroid-enhance billiard-tables with balls of a poverty of colors. Or that deeply weird version of baseball where people stand around, dressed in white, for hours at a time.
Curling, however, that’s cool. Literally.
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