Its rhe only thing I wish could change about my experience using Lemmy, for more active users in the communities like NFL or NHL and the affiliated team pages of those sports. I haven’t had any social media in decades, my main source for sporting news breaks up until 1-2 years ago was Reddit.

I love the small community that makes up Lemmy. As someone just posted, it feels like a small town community. I like the absence of corporate shills and ads and bots.

Back when I switched from Reddit to Lemmmy, I made an effort to upvote and comment on the NFL and Buffalo Bills communities. I eventually gave up because it was like months of posting, voting and commenting but when I would go back to check the communities, everything would still be sitting at like 2 up votes and 0 comment replies or if it was my own post, 1 upvote and 0 comments. For a majority of cases. Every once in a blue moon I would come accross a post where another user voted or commented but it was never more than me and one other user.

I know there is a certain demographic that uses Lemmy that is mostly driven by the required IT prowess needed to set up, use and even understand the federated concept. I also recognize that this demographic is traditionally disinterested in sports. Im not complaining about this or the users who are on Lemmy. Im also not wishing for any changes be made to aggressively expand Lemmy’s user base. Its just an impractical wish I have so I could get my sports news from the same source I get all my other news.

I will prolly spend more time this coming year settling on a 2ndary source for sports news from sources similar to sleeper app but it would be so nice if the Lemmy sporting communities blew up so I could keep everything aggregated to one source.

    • 11111one11111@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      6 days ago

      Oh shit this reminds me of a discussion I had on here a while ago when I found out there are only 40,000 daily active users on average and realizing that it was less than half of th capacity of highmark stadium. So yeah, Lemmy does have that small town vibe but its more of a small geographic community like, for example, New England or Western New York. I can go to any Bills game with 80,000 other fans and I can take a piss or grab a beer without running into someone I know. Its exactly the same with Lemmy too.

  • Etterra@discuss.online
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    5 days ago

    Dude. Sports is literally everywhere. It doesn’t need to reach its greedy tendrils into yet another corner of society.

  • mintiefresh@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    5 days ago

    Wow. I didn’t realize so many people here were anti sports. Interesting.

    I do miss the sports from Reddit so I still go back for that. But I’ve also decided to try to be the change … So I’ve started to post more in the sports communities around here.

    It’s probably the last thing I still go back to Reddit for. Otherwise Lemmy is my go to.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      5 days ago

      Yeah, the whole “anti-sports” thing always seemed like overcompensation for something? Like if you don’t like sports (I don’t, for the most part), then just don’t watch them.

      It’s strange when people get like actively hostile about the existence of sports.

  • Azal@pawb.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    6 days ago

    I’m not a sports guy, I’m pretty anti-sports actually (I can go on absolutely unhinged TED talks about how the local teams are trying to drain the city for taxes… I want to continue, so feel free to ask but not doing it here.) But I agree with you on the niche hobbies and local flavor.

    I still have to use Reddit because there hasn’t been a good community for local on Lemmy (yes, I know everyone going “it’s user generated” but I’m like 1 of 5 instead of the hundreds still on reddit) and small hobbies in a lot of the crafting world is non-existent on Lemmy.

    I don’t have an answer on this one, just sucks. It’s the trouble of being one of the first ones in the door.

    • 11111one11111@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      6 days ago

      So this is the type of discussion I was hoping for. I honestly didn’t even mean to trigger so many people by bringing up sports when the whole showerthought started cuz I missed my local team’s subreddit.

      I can go on absolutely unhinged TED talks about how the local teams are trying to drain the city for taxes…

      Don’t even get me started, we are in the same paddle boat when it comes to the ownership and the league’s use of tax payer dollars. The fucking Bills just set some sort of record I think for the new stadium they built by the belligerently small amount of money the owners are going to be contributing. The fuckin thing is costing billions and its just about entirely funded by 2 channels from the same source, the people of our our community. 1 channel is thru taxes and the other is thru some PPE shit where if you want to buy season tickets you need to give them like $40,000 as a one time fee into of the season ticket cost and also commit to like 10 seasons to even be able to buy a season ticket.

      I know your reply will be “then why are you a fan still” so ill bashfully explain why in one word, community. The WNY community is my favorite part of the greater Buffalo/Niagara region and being apart of Billsmafia is such a huge part of it. We’ve never been a champion, until 5 years ago there were no bandwagons of fans looking to become Bills fans, its something you are just born into here. We put up with 8 ft snow storms, 17 years of missing the playoffs, losing 4 super bowls in a row, Damar Hamlin going into a freak occurrence of cardiac arrest and needing 10 mins of CPR to survive, and thats just the big stuff. At the end of the day tho, it forms a bond in the community like I’ve never seen anywhere else. When Josh’s Allen’s grandmother died, Billsmafia raised millions of dollars for his charity which came in $17 increments (his jersey number), now today there is an entire wing at Oshea’s Children’s Hospital dedicated to his grandmother’s name all funded by fans and member of the community. When we got dumped on with 6 ft of snow in 2 days, Bills players drover around house to house in skidsters plowing out people’s driveways. When Andy Dalton beat the Ravens against all odds and made it so the Bills would go to the playoffs breaking a 17 year long drought, Andy isnt even a Buffall Bills player he plays for Cincinnati but that didn’t stop Billsmafia from raising hundreds of thousands if not over a million dollars for Andy’s charity.

      The idiots who own teams and run the league can get fucked, ill never argue against that but the men and women within each and every organization who have their boots on the ground, they are all amazing humans busting their ass off to make theirs and our community the best they possibly can.

      • Azal@pawb.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        5 days ago

        Oh I get it completely. There’s a bunch of subreddits I miss, my industry I work in which is very niche, leatherworking, heck even the motorcycle community in Lemmy is… lacking.

        On the other part you brought in… OH BOY! Unhinged TED talk time.

        So I live relatively close to the Royals and the Chiefs stadiums. John Sherman, gas magnate, the owner of the Royals decided he wanted to move the stadium to downtown, where things have been picking up. Specifically he wanted it in the Crossroads where there’s a lot of local community shops and everything, because he wanted it near Power and Light district where there’s bars and the like which… oh right, he owns a lot of. Troubles came up that the stadium proposals took foooooooorever to even come up, looked like it was drawn on a napkin instead of anything serious, and wanted a tax levy to be put on the city to continue one that still hasn’t been paid off for the last time the two stadiums were built. The whole time saying “Look how the stadiums bring business in!”… the area around the two stadiums have managed to keep a Denny’s and a Taco Bell alive, the big resort hotel couldn’t even survive. Yea… real great for business.

        Another trouble is… as I say, I am one of those who actively detests sports… I wish I could find the post, there’s an old Reddit post describing what not liking sports was like and used archeology in how it invades everything around you so it’s easy to go from “I couldn’t care less” to “Okay, I hate this thing now. It is insufferable.” I say all that to say, just paying any attention to the news I knew at the time the Royals was the second worst team in the MLB, they were that bad. So they knew they couldn’t get this move off the ground so they went to the Chiefs who was the most recent superbowl winner which of course was happy to get money their way, and the ad campaign went out. And despite the Royals/Sherman being the push on getting this going, it was all Chiefs all the time. I literally even got a flier in my mail “The liberals are trying to take away our teams!” paid for by the team push, so yay politics even drug in. The whole time threatening “Well if you don’t vote it in, we’ll move. Maybe to Kansas (right over the border) or hey, even Tennessee.” Thing is, the state remembers St. Louis on the other side had the rams, built them a stadium and whoopsiedoodle they packed up and moved to California leaving a city with a stadium and fuck all to do with it.

        So we’ve got all sorts of issue in state and local level, but holy fuck all the political pressure since the voters turned down the tax is “How can we keep these teams in Missouri!” And it’s funny, I said I’d be more okay paying for it if we got ANYTHING out of it… I don’t mind paying taxes to keep our zoo going and it’s nice I get a hefty discount when I go, but the Royals and Chiefs are giving a nice hearty “go fuck yourself” for us paying taxes so the billionaires have their teams.

        On to the “Why are you a fan?” question you brought up. I don’t question it… but I’ve never understood it. I grew up in Arkansas that never had a pro team so college sports was big… I got to hear the “calling the hogs” my entire life and never comprehended the why. Probably because dad was not a sports guy and had the opinion “Why do I want to watch people play a game?” even though he played in high school and I’ve been pretty much the same. I get the community stuff, and that’s fantastic. I’ve just found a community outside of sports so it doesn’t resound to me. The reason I’ve become so against sports beyond it’s completely impossible to ignore it it’s so inundated in culture, is the sheer amount of money that goes into it in all levels. High school, if you’re one of the “football” schools, your school only has 3-4 sports, all the big stadium ticket getting team sports, the smaller less prestigious schools get more sports like wrestling and the like… guess which situation I ended up in? And watching schools dump money into the sports above all other things like theater, labs, etc. “But it brings in money for the school.” Cool cool… so why are we getting asked for a tax levy so the school can build yet another stadium? Repeat this for the college level so the “Hogs can have a proper place to play!” and now the city with pro teams level. And I hear the ticket prices and think I wouldn’t pay those prices to see my favorite band… and again, those ticket prices and yet we have to pay for their shit?

  • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    42
    arrow-down
    17
    ·
    6 days ago

    And all I want is to never see sports related communities. So I guess I win there…

    Unfortunately I also never want to see anything that mentions anime or manga and in that department it’s serious whackamole for me.

    • 11111one11111@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      19
      ·
      6 days ago

      So learn how to fuckin filter and subscribe to take control of your feed and go piss and moan in those threads.

      • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        arrow-down
        15
        ·
        6 days ago

        I can and I do. Its easy enough to block simple angry fuckers like you one at a time. Thanks for volunteering to sit down and shut up in my feed.

        • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          6 days ago

          As an outsider looking in with only this thread for context. I feel like you’re gazing into the mirror a bit there and also need to chill.

          • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            14
            ·
            6 days ago

            Whatever you say man :).

            I don’t do “turn the other cheek” on the internet, but you can if you like. I prefer to deliver a pique and block; it doesn’t raise my blood pressure any, but hopefully there’s a lingering rankle for anyone who doesn’t have anything nice to say and can’t keep their emotions in check. A little sprinkle of sand in the old underoos if you will.

  • One of Many@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    6 days ago

    “I like the absence of corporate shills and ads.” Also, why doesn’t anyone talk about sports teams owned by billionaires and corporations?

  • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    6 days ago

    As a sports fan (NHL, NFL, NBA, ATP) I feel lucky to have a bunch of sports fan coworkers. We talk sports and joke around at work all day.

    I do wish the sports communities on lemmy were more active. It seems like lemmy’s left-wing community does not have very many sports fans.

    • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      6 days ago

      Leftists usually love sports for supporting other cultures but hate commercial teams and sponsorhips. Enes Kanter was banned from NBA for talking about human rights as example.

      Also most sports fans on lemmy are into computers too since it takes some messing around to setup so that might be why those communities are always big.

      I am heavily into Atli Cirit and archery, martial arts look fun to watch too. But why would I search for those communities when I know there is a huge programming community that I can simply join.

      • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        6 days ago

        It’s just been my experience that a lot of athletes and a lot of sports fans tend to be more right wing and that a lot of leftists don’t like sports at all, even when there are no pro teams involved (pickup leagues etc).

        • Zagorath@aussie.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          6 days ago

          and that a lot of leftists don’t like sports at all

          Is that your experience per se, or have most of the leftists you’ve seen been nerds, and you’re just noticing the much more well-documented trend of nerds disliking sport?

          Personally I happen to be the kind of nerd who loves sport. My favourites are triathlon (and its constituent sports) and HEMA, but I also like professional spectator sports cricket and rugby league.

          HEMA’s a bit of an odd one since it tends to attract nerds more than people who are fans of more traditional sports. When I skip training to watch a big game of league, I definitely get light-hearted but at least somewhat sincere “sportsball” comments from regulars who like doing HEMA but aren’t interested in other “normal” sports. But my other sporting interests are far more conventional. This, while being a software engineer by trade, and also having more nerdy hobbies like D&D (actually, even nerdier: I play Pathfinder these days), real-time strategy games, and…well, being on Lemmy.

          • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            6 days ago

            I did qualify my entire comment with:

            It’s just been my experience that…

            So yes. And most of the nerds I’ve met lean right, not left. The leftists I’ve met tended to study the Arts (English, sociology, history, etc) whereas the right wing types all studied math, engineering, computer science.

            I do know a pair of right-leaning philosophy students though they claim to feel like outliers in a program that’s an outlier (the other way) at a school that’s mostly STEM programs.

            • Zagorath@aussie.zone
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              6 days ago

              The leftists I’ve met tended to study the Arts (English, sociology, history, etc) whereas the right wing types all studied math, engineering, computer science

              Sure, maybe. I’ll point out that there’s a known statistical trend of more highly-educated people being more left-leaning, but I’ll leave that discussion there, because it’s not actually the point.

              I didn’t actually say anything about nerds being leftists. I said that nerds are anti-sport. And that Lemmy is made up of nerds. Both of which, I hope, are not controversial statements. Not that Lemmy is made up of a representative cross-sample of nerds, but that of the users who are on Lemmy, most are nerds. My conjecture is that the reason you see a dislike for sport on Lemmy is not because Lemmings are left-wing, but because they’re nerds. And that if you were to control for political belief, Lemmy would still have a stronger anti-sport bias than the general public. While if you controlled for “nerdiness”, Lemmy’s anti-sport bias would be relatively weaker. Not an easy experiment to perform in practice, unfortunately.

              • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                6 days ago

                I think even if you exclude all nerds, you’ll find that sports fans lean right. Nerds, left or right, tend to be anti-sport, though that’s basically by definition (a nerd being a person whose hobbies skew intellectual rather than physical).

                That’s not the only way to define a nerd however. Another definition I’ve heard is based on the level of obsessiveness a person has with their hobby. In that world I would consider most of the biggest sports fans to be nerds. Think about how much time they spend looking at stats, talking about strategies, trades, drafts, listening to radio and podcasts, etc. All of that is very much in common with how video game nerds engage with their interest.

                I consider myself a nerd who loves both sports and video games (RPGs, Roguelikes, fighting games, RTS). However unlike many sports fans and athletes, I’m not religious or superstitious. I think that latter group correlates with being right-wing (perhaps even more so than education).

          • GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            6 days ago

            also having more nerdy hobbies like D&D (actually, even nerdier: I play Pathfinder these days

            pffffffffffffffft, those aren’t even nerdy. Those are like bringing kraft cheddar to a fancy cheese party and saying you’re a connoisseur. Let me know when you want to break out the real nerd braggadocio and start in on the fan-made white wolf spinoffs, or the burning wheel good times.

            ;)

            • Zagorath@aussie.zone
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              6 days ago

              fan-made white wolf spinoffs

              Damn. I did buy a copy of V5 back before the pandemic because someone was going to start up a game that I was pretty excited to be in. Unfortunately that went by the wayside and I’ve so far never gotten to play any World of Darkness games.

              The nichest RPG I’ve played was probably “End of the World”, where the premise is you play as yourself, arriving at your regular RPG night, and just as you get started, the apocalypse starts. Awesome premise. Fucking terrible mechanics. Do not recommend that system.

              Actually, that’s not quite true. I did once play a home-made system someone else at my table created. But it wasn’t particularly inspired in my opinion, and didn’t do anything very interesting you couldn’t do with a little tweaking of PbtA.

              d20 fantasy is my main thing that I keep returning to, but I’ve had plenty of other RPG experience ;)

              • GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                6 days ago

                Alright, I give you the nerd credit. I’m just depressed because I found out there was a group starting a game in my theater troupe, but they’d capped it at 5 and I was too late. I’d even take D&D right now.

                The end of the world sounds fun. I’d bet it would be a blast to throw that wrench in ‘session zero’ of a fate game (which is my personal favorite, even the prometheus and werewolf games don’t match up).

                • Zagorath@aussie.zone
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  6 days ago

                  The end of the world sounds fun

                  Yeah the premise of it really is. Our starting inventories were literally whatever we brought with us, plus whatever happens to be in the host’s house. The conceit we went with was that the person who’s gonna be GM is just “running late” when the apocalypse starts. It was just let down by some disappointing character stat generation methods and mechanics that weren’t very good.

        • the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          5 days ago

          Personally I have no love for sports but my partner does we are both quite far left so I don’t think that really has anything to do with it.

  • paraphrand@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    edit-2
    7 days ago

    Lemmy is full of a bunch of older neckbeards, based on my observations. (Inclusive of me)

    This is just one narrow view on things, tho.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    6 days ago

    I like to pretend that all the Lemmy communities have a unique participants but in really it is just the same people on the same few communities.

    I also feel like we need some Lemmy specific lingo. Reddit has subs I wonder what Lemmy has. Communities is just to long to type out.