Why nerds shouldn't shy away from Sports Bars, nor Jocks the Internet Cafe

The jock-nerd relationship is one fraught with violence, resentment, and mockery. They are seen as the two opposite ends of the traditionally held, high school-mindset spectrum of cool, as socially distant as possible without a language barrier. However, it should come as no surprise to anyone that 80s high school dramas are not an accurate representation of reality. Cultural overlap frequently exists. On the one hand, you have an increasingly massive chunk of the videogame market, once exclusively held by nerds, dedicated to sating the Halo and Madden lusts of "jocks" or "bros." On the other, there are the Nerds who Like Sports. In the course of my transformation into one such person I began to realize just how many similarities these hobbies bear, how unsurprising it is that they should overlap, and how artificial the barriers which keep nerds and jocks apart really are. What follows may seem obvious to some, but was non-apparent to me when I was being shoved in a locker (Ed. note: I have never actually been shoved in a locker, but you get the idea). As an aside--I will be ignoring baseball, as its overabundance of statistics make it beloved by nerds in their own right and a wierd crossover example that muddies the waters of my argument.

"Sports," I might have been found proclaiming loudly but a few years ago, "are boring. Nothing ever happens. Futbawl (for those of you just tuning in, soccer = futbol, NFL = futbawl) is the worst; some guys crash into each other, then they wait around and do it again." In hindsight, I can't believe how I didn't empathize more with those watching the game that I pronounced "boring." How many times had I been engrossed in a video game, be it Starcraft or an RPG, only to have my mother walk in the room and wonder aloud how I could be so interested in and waste so much time on something so "boring." The way I see it, just about anything is boring if you don't know what's going on. The most riveting piece of public speaking is a snoozefest if you don't know the language that's being spoken, the most beautiful futbol play looks like a bunch of guys with bad hair running around with a ball to the uninitiated, and a perfectly executed 6-pool in Starcraft seems like just so many weird lookin' computer aliens and pulsating buildings to my mother, who doesn't understand why the garbage is not yet at the curb. This, of course, is not to say that things become interesting by virtue of expertise--no amount of study will make drying paint into good television. (This is the argument my friends would surely make if I tried to propose this to them: Starcraft is boring no matter what. Its status as a sport (which it is (in Korea anyway)) was a topic of frequent discussion in our apartment. For the sake of brevity, for this post I will take as a given that if not a sport, it is at least entertaining to some to watch competitive matches (for evidence, check the number of subscribers of esportscasters such as HDHusky)).

My point is simply that interesting things--things that a given person might very well enjoy--are often written off by that person out of prejudice, reinforced by the negative, boring experience of the few times they've tried watching it. Further, there's more similarity between futbawl and Starcraft, hockey and DoTA, or baseball and halo than most people realize (or most partisans of either camp will admit). The basic principles of competition run through all of them. "Two men enter, one man leaves" touches something deep within us. It's just that most modern sports-entertainment subsumes this primal desire beneath layers of rules, teams, and strategy that cloak it from view without the right decoding tools. Hell, even a race, a competition at its purest, is pretty boring unless you know the guys involved, what typical splits for that distance are, and that sort of thing. The thing is, though, that while the competitive drive is dressed up beyond casual recognition, many of the world's disparate games' clothing is fairly similar.



The similarities are obvious

Both starcraft and Futbawl involve extensive preparation. In the language of Starcraft, there are two general terms for a player's skill: Macro and Micro, similar to economics. Macro is a player's ability to control the flow of the game: establish bases and resource production, produce more troops, that kind of thing. Micro is the skill that comes into play in a battle: individually selecting units and having them attack this enemy or that, dodging moves by your opponent, and the like. Neither is necessarily more important; a player far superior at macro who can't micro for crap might simply overrun an opponent with the opposite skills, but might also see his massive army kited around and destroyed by the skillful use of a small number of units' movements and abilities. Before a match, pro starcraft players will watch replays of their opponent, hoping to find a weakness and exploit it. Which general tactics on the macro front a player will use are variable, but micro happens so quickly and within the muscle memory of the players' hands that they can get a feel for what macro approach will work best. Good choice of strategy can win, but only if it is supported with the technical micro skill to pull it off.

This is comparable to the strategy and skills found in a football game. Coaches and quarterbacks will decide what plays to run and when, the "macro" of the game; the actual skill of the players in doing a particular play or series of plays, the "micro," determine whether or not the overall strategy is successful. A starcraft player might note that his opponent is very adept at manipulating a unit with a wide-area attack, such as a templar's psionic storm, which can destroy large numbers of weaker units very quickly. Responding to this, he will plan to use a smaller number of more dispersed, more powerful units to negate this strength--this, of course, will only work if he himself is capable of the micro to handle an army of that kind. Similarly, a coach might note that the defense of his opponent has a powerful line, capable of blocking running plays with regularity, and thus instruct his quarterback to rely more heavily on throwing the ball. Again, though, this relies on the players' skills to carry out such a plan. It is this duality of plan and action, the moment when it all comes together, that I think is the most exciting moment in either kind of game (second only to the suprise moment of brilliance--the 80 yard kickoff return for a touchdown, or the clutch drop of a nuke on someone's army in starcraft).

To return to my original assertion, though, both of those moments are only exciting if you have the context to recognize the perfect confluence of plan and action shown in a 6-play touchdown drive or the sudden breakout performance of Slayers_Boxer using 3 marines to kill a lurker by dodging its spines. Watching either is a moment of engaged, stand-up-and-knock-over-your-chips excitement--if you enjoy it. If not, it's just another bunch of burly, armored guys hittin each other or.. well, in the case of the marines, just another bunch of burly, armored, pixellated guys shooting an underground killer space bug.

Obviously this isn't some kind of a shame-on-you to anyone who doesn't watch, much less enjoy, every single sport or e-sport. I would, though, like it to be a call for understanding. It may seem like the most exciting thing happening in that golf tournament your uncle is watching is the growth of the green's grass--but he's just as pumped about that putt just as you were about the Blackhawk's shorthanded goal last night (speaking of, YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS). Moreover, he's pumped for pretty much the same reasons--you've just learned different games. Besides, you never know. Ask him what's going on; it might turn out that you find as much enjoyment watching golf as I have found watching the sport of those guys that once threatened me with swirlies (Ed. note: I haven't even been threatened with a swirlie, either).

Super-Duper Bowl

I watched the Super Bowl.

I even had some kind of idea what was going on! Finally, I was able to succumb to peer pressure/the desire for an excuse to eat excessive amounts of junk food and watch the game, without needing to protest lamely that I "only watch it for the commercials." In a somewhat vain effort to relate to other human beings, I had been following the Bears this season, catching most the games. They had a pretty good run, and at least there's the consolation that they got knocked out by the team that would be the WORLD CHAMPIONS.

World champions. Seems kind of silly, considering that all the teams are from America. Then again, no-one else in the world really cares about football. Football of the American variety, anyway. For clarity, I will use "futbol" for the world-cup variety and "futbawl" for the Super Bowl kind. Anyway, no-one else in the world really cares about futbawl. It's like a small town in Canada came up with some silly sport, like "ice-ball" or "curling," then declared the winner of the town's competition the "World Champion." Change "small town in Canada" to "world's last remaining superpower" and suddenly it makes sense, right? It's certainly not as egregious as the "World Series," of course, because in that case there are other baseball-playing nations about. Hell, they even beat us regularly when ACTUAL world championships are held (I am told, however, that this is because we don't have nothin' to prove to nobody (and even if any of our star players join in, they're ordered by the people that actually pay them not to try too hard to avoid injury)).

That's one thing, but the announcers also called it "the sports world's largest stage" a few times. This year's super bowl was indeed the most watched program in American television history, drawing 111 million viewers (source). Meanwhile, the futbol world cup final last year drew more than 700 million viewers (source). That counts all those gigantic squares of fans outside stadiums watching a giant screen as one, by the way. It's almost like the Super Bowl is 1/7th the size of the "sports world's largest stage." Hell, most premier league games probably have a higher global viewership than 111 million. Turns out there are over 6 billion people that aren't American, and couldn't give half a crap about futbawl. Just some perspective that we as a country refuse to acknowledge, I guess.

The most important thing to realize, of course, is that the world cup's viewership is split up across the entire world, shown on hundreds of networks in as many languages. The Super Bowl, on the other hand, is kept right here and on one, single network that has done unspeakable things to gain the privilege. Why is this the most important thing? Why don't you ask some overpaid and underperforming ad agencies? They fit both of those monikers even better than most New York sports teams this time around. I was especially happy I didn't have to watch this particular Super Bowl "for the ads," because it would have been a total waste. I refuse to name any names, though. I'm pretty sure that most of them were intended to be as tasteless and/or mind-bendingly stupid as possible so as to make people talk about the ad and inadvertently mention the brand repeatedly in doing so. This solidifies it in our subconscious minds so that when we go to the marketplace and see it next to 4 competitors which are empirically equivalent in every way, we choose theirs. I refuse to let them win. I will, however, admit that they certainly reached new lows.

Well, there is one ad that I will allow to claim victory over me. It is VW, and they had the only good commercial. This makes them deserve additional advertising. It is not because of their cars, but because that ad was adorable.

Speaking of overpaid and underperforming, the Black Eyed Peas' performance was honestly worse than some of my middle school orchestra concerts. For more of that perspective I mentioned earlier, compare it to the opening ceremonies three years ago in Beijing. It's totally absurd. Even beyond the fact that all of them really, really need Autotune (not to mention that you couldn't have really heard their singing even if you wanted to for some reason), they couldn't even get the weird blinking assholes to walk around the stage in a real circle (I believe this fine fellow on The Internet illustrates the point rather well). Fergie's blinking futbawl armor couldn't protect her from her inability to sing "Sweet Child of Mine," making a totally gratuitous cameo by Slash even worse (and bringing fears of "wardrobe malfunctions" to an all-time high). Part of the giant word-stage that was supposed to be the finale didn't even light up.

We, as Americans, are complacent. We think that whatever fantastic sum was spent to let some terrible singers gambol about in flashing costumes was well-spent, and good enough. We think the final of our home-grown brand of violence is the biggest sporting event in the world. We're entitled, lazy, and sloppy. We can't even get someone to sing the national anthem who knows all the words, but we preface it with a reading of our Declaration of Independence (with the boring parts expurgated, of course).

The President said we were living in a Sputnik Moment. Most of those who have gone through the public school system recently were probably unsure of what he was talking about--what is a sputnik?

Yes, I appreciate the irony that a post beginning with the revelation that I actually cared about the game this time proceeded to expend not a single letter on the game the rest of the way through. Go Packers?

What

Welcome back, internet.

What's that you say? You are surprised I am beginning another blog post by apologizing for the time that has elapsed since the last? You shouldn't be, that's pretty much how things roll here at quiche of the week. Taking more than a year off at a time is fairly par for the course as well.

I suppose it would be best to bring you up to speed, my treasured (yet woefully uninformed) reader. Here I am in the good old US of A, having taken leave of my Oriental ambitions. I even managed to graduate college at some point and find (kind of) gainful employment (though, talking about my job specifically could lead to federal charges (it's true, but it also makes my job sound so much cooler than it actually is (oh yeah baby nested parenthesis are back, you know it (in a big way)))). While my mystery-employment is indeed somewhat gainful, I'm not compelled to write much—or think much, especially compared to the academic boot camp that is the University of Chicago.

I've been reading on the train (you will hear about the train, my fair reader, oh how you will hear about the train), but I can still feel my brain-muscles atrophying each and every day. My poor brain is like a pallid nerd sequestered in his familial basement, his fragile frame losing substance by the day as he contemplates the merits of Kirk, Picard, et al (That's really the best analogy I can come up with. (Why yes, by having failed to prove my point, I have proven my point. That just happened)).

Aaaaaaanyway, the immediately obvious solution to this is to think about things. If only it were so simple! I am easily distracted, and the world of today is overrun with distractions. Unless compelled to organize and record them in a lasting form, my thoughts are as ephemeral and inconsequential as a third-party in the American electoral system.

“Well,” says the hypothetical person giving me obvious solutions, “Why don't you write some of these so-called 'thoughts' (sheesh, there is no need to be so sarcastic and hurtful, hypothetical person) in a journal?” This is still wholly insufficient, however, as I am nothing if not a member of 'Generation Me.' The thought of a journal which only I would read—barring biographers digging about my things after I become incredibly wealthy and famous (at which point I would destroy it and fabricate a new one wholesale anyway (in order to manufacture an elaborate and awesome past (think Teddy Roosevelt meets Han Solo)))—makes me somewhat queasy. So I will shout it into the void of the internet, and one hopes that this will give me the will to continue this endeavor.

What, however, shall I write about? I am no longer even doing uninteresting things somewhere interesting. I'm still cooking, but everyone knows the first incarnation of this blog was pretty bad and showcased nothing but my general failure to produce remotely appetizing food.

Anyway, I guess I'll write about stuff, things, and junk. I'll even do my best to get a laugh or two out of whatever unfortunate souls happen to stumble across this small gas-station-and-wendy's exit on the vast and erotica-laden information superhighway. I will also do my best to revive totally obsolescent terms, such as “information superhighway.” Wish me luck, please! I'll see you next week (or in two, at which point I will open by apologizing)!