Donovan Sharpe recently wrote a great article about why it’s time to stop hating professional athletes. I have felt the same way for quite a while now, and was thrilled to see the article show up on ROK. I smiled as I finished reading, proudly complimenting myself on never being one of the individuals who projected his envy onto pro athletes.
But then something hit me: as a man who used to dedicate a massive amount of time to fantasy sports (particularly fantasy football), I was no better than the people who spend their days vilifying athletes to combat their own shortcomings.
Fantasy can take over your life
I started playing fantasy football in college and was hooked right away. At first I only played in one league, but soon joined a second, then a third, etc. Before I knew it I was doing seven or eight leagues a year; the entire fall season was centered on my fantasy teams.
I would spend my entire week reading a million articles on who to start, complaining about performances from the previous week, and when Sunday finally came I’d be flipping between every single game and screaming every time a second-string running back got the ball instead of “my” starter. Can you think of anything more pathetic than a grown man screaming at a television because “his player” isn’t the one scoring a touchdown or catching a long pass?
Playing fantasy sports are a complete waste of your time. If you’re a typical fantasy football “player” than you’re probably spending 10-20 hours a week staring at your lineup, reading articles and watching videos, pregame shows and Fantasy Football Live (and none of this includes the entire day you spend watching football games you wouldn’t normally give a shit about).
Think of what you could accomplish with an extra 20 hours a week; you could learn a language, polish off one or two novels, or start working out more and improving your body.
Fantasy sports are a crutch; the same way some people cover their bodies with tattoos in order to have a sense of accomplishment without actually having to do anything, fantasy sports are an escape for men who want to feel like they’ve accomplished something with their lives.
I have seen men spend the entire year openly bragging about the fantasy sports title they won. The way these guys talk would make your head explode: “I managed my team very well this year. That trade I pulled off in week eight was the key to my title victory.” “As a Dez Bryant owner I’m concerned that Dallas fired their offensive coordinator.”
Sounds about right
Will you fucking listen to yourselves? If you put this much care and effort into your professional life you could very well be running your own business instead of sitting in an office fifty hours a week, being miserable and having to listen to the fat, ugly broads in the cubicle next to you squawk about how many “likes” their cat’s Facebook page received while they pound donuts and slurp frappuccino’s. Believe me, I know all this from experience.
The case for quitting
Another benefit to quitting fantasy sports is you’ll find yourself spending far less time on ESPN, Grantland, SI and all the other social justice blogs masquerading as sports websites. Visit any of these sites on any given day and you’re more likely to find articles on feminism, gun control, and domestic violence than actual sports.
If you want sports insight, talk with some like-minded friends; if you want podcasts with Lena Dunham and rants against masculinity, then these sites are for you.
The manosphere gets bashed as being sexist, hateful, etc. but we all know the truth: it is about self-improvement and being the best man you can be. Discovery is the first step, but theory without practice is useless. Well, here’s a great step towards bettering yourself: quit playing fantasy sports.
Don’t wean off of it, don’t “just do one league” this year and don’t give into any pressure you receive to play, just quit cold turkey. When you get that email to join your leagues hit the decline button. When your friends ask you why you’re not playing tell them you have better things to do with your time. Be specific: “I’m no longer wasting my time with fantasy sports.” They don’t like it? Fuck ‘em, get some new friends.
Stop trying to fit in with today’s herd of bitch-made men. When they give you a hard time you need to understand that they are lashing out at you because you’re bettering yourself, and that scares other people. It forces them to confront their own shortcomings and most people can’t handle that.
Don’t be this guy
There are 168 hours in a week. Most people spend 100 of them sleeping or working (including commute). Throw in the intangibles (traffic, housework, grocery shopping, etc) and you probably lose another 10 hours a week.
The point is we only have so much time in a week to actually do something that matters. Don’t waste your time living vicariously through professional athletes and stop pretending that winning a fantasy game is an accomplishment. Quit now and thank me later.
Read More: Stop Watching Sports
world of tanks is good fun though
Two things I just don’t understand – even why they exist:
1. Fantasy Football (of which I just learned finally what it is through this article)
2. Bronies
Pro tip: never make bets that involve swimwear.
Fantasy football exists because the United States places way too much emphasis on sports, especially football. Whether that is due to a culture of excess and violence or some other reason, many dudes grow up thinking the pinnacle of being a man is playing professional sports. When they realize they can’t, they play make-believe.
I know why I like D&D and nerd games – because I can’t actually be a 12th level paladin in real life.
LOL- OK. So now Red Pill means vaunting your own meaningless hobbies and downing other people’s because “insert idiotic rationale” here. Enjoy being a 12th level paladin all you want but don’t try to claim it’s any better use of your time than sports.
Yeah, with that much investment in time, resources, and energy, why not just be an actual paladin, whatever that is. Or reasonable approximation. Cheers.
Ummm, yeah it does mean that. Fantasy sports is nothing more than gambling. It doesn’t foster creativity or critical thinking. It does support the NFL, a truly terrible organization and encourages hero-worship of professional athletes. Fantasy football is doubling down on the opiate of watching sports.
Yeah, I think it’s more likely you might be threatened by what you perceive as “jock” culture than anything else. Your identity depends on your insisting that things like D&D are actually the “true path” for men.
Don’t pigeon hole me using my one example. Literally any other hobby is better than Fantasy Sports – gardening, puppetry, shooting, politics, etc. And it’s not “feeling threatened” by “jock culture”, it is critiquing jock culture. I was on teams growing up and coach even today. I know jocks.
He’s right; it is equally useless effort.
It’s popular in the US because sports, not religion, is now the opiate of the people
Bread and Circus
What’s a twelfth level paladin? And why can’t you be one? Cheers.
Not enough orcs to slay. (A paladin is a knight renowned for heroism and chivalry – its a typical character in fantasy role playing games. I was being a bit silly.)
OK Gun thanks. However, I see a LOT of orcs around. No they aren’t dressed up like the LOTR movie actors — but they ARE orcs, they exist by the millions, they HAVE taken over the U.S., and assuredly they are busy busy busy conquering the rest of the world for Feminism and the PC Politburo.
So, I see plenty of work available for a paladin (skipping the female-groveling as ‘chivalry’ of course). Why play a vid-game about paladins and orcs when the orcs are in power everywhere, and actual heroism amongst men is almost absent? Seems to me there is a whole bunch of work for a modern paladin in the western world today.
Cheers.
I don’t get it either to be honest. Football long lost my love as it doesn’t seem as fun to me if I’m not playing it on the field or even on screen as a video game against people. If I’m playing it I have to compete against someone. I do love basketball though. When my team is doing good I’ll watch them in the regular season. If they aren’t I’ll just watch the playoffs.
So, you own an NBA team?
A. In college, I used to field a fantasy basketball team comprised totally of white players. I put in at most 5 minutes a week. I’m proud to say that the Aryan Barbarians won a league championship.
B. Totally agree with this article. Just about any game/hobby is better than fantasy sports. At least Warhammer 40k requires learning useful strategy and makes you build and paint things.
I get your point but couldn’t you make that case for watching sports as a whole? Maybe you just think fantasy sports is particularly destructive and a waste of time but I don’t see how fantasy sports is different from watching sports. You waste time watching sports when you could be improving your life, you have to be exposed to SJW nonsense quite often when going to mainstream sports websites. At least fantasy articles are strictly about fantasy, I’ve yet to see a fantasy sports article segway into social justice.
Dumbest article on ROK in a while. Right, because messing around with your buddies on a fantasy league is to the exclusion of all else. I surf, i lift, I do alot of things. Fantasy sports is for sports fans who want to put their knowledge to use. It’s entertaining, especially the competitive sh*-talking of it. It’s a very male hobby and it’s a great way to have camaraderie between guys. Grantland is an SJW site? C’mon man- you have gone off the deep end.
I completely get spending time with the guys and having something simple for entertainment purposes…….but “knowledge?” In the same way knowing the number of tiles that dot your bathroom wall is knowledge, or knowing the plot of every episode of a popular sitcom or drama, is knowledge. It’s useless. It has no value beyond itself.
Life is short, time is limited. Is it really the best use of time, even for entertainment purposes, to memorize the achievement stats of other men? Watching a game is one thing, investing that kind of time is……well, not the kind of thing a site like this ought to be advocating for men to improve. The article is well-founded.
Improve what? I lift, I have a solid career, I have a social network and a professional network. I enjoy recreation every once in a while; and there’s little more masculine than men shooting the sh*t about sports. Are we supposed to be productive every minute of the day?
Things that are more masculine than talking about other men doing “manly” things:
Lumberjacking (chainsaws are fun)
Working on cars (fun and saves you money)
Hunting (primal manly urge)
Boxing/wrestling/Martial arts (competition and self improvement)
Competing in autosports/track days (putting your life on the line and a challenging skill with real world applications)
Rock climbing (danger and building a useful body)
Bullfighting (need i explain why)
Home improvement
I box twice a week; how about you? Enjoy your bullfighting.
I do BJJ, teach full contact karate, run track days, cut down trees, and I am restoring a classic BMW.
Watching and talking about other men doing manly things reminds me of this:
I’ve got no issue with playing competitive team sports though.
Cute keyboard jockeying; why do I doubt you’d last two rounds in the ring.
hmm
well you could search professorbooty and find my real name pretty easily. From there you will find my SCCA records, autox results, listings of track events I have attended, results from various martial arts tournaments, 1990 325is build thread, posts about being a student of Mike White, comments on various martial arts forums from people who have met me.
google is a pretty amazing thing. im profesorbooty (one s not 2) on youtube, you can find video of me on the nurnburgring there and on national tv for japanese fencing.
From your pic: you need to lift dude, its pretty obvious. Boxing is one of those sports where you realize where you realize the difference between a body blow that connects versus one that ends the fight is not just the rotation but the muscle you have behind it.
For strikes there is more too it than just muscle. You want to recruit as much weight as possible into it in addition to muscle, Jack Dempsey talks about one method for that with his falling steps. An epiphany I had years ago, with regards to punching, was that heavier strikes (using bodyweight) were more effective than harder strikes (using muscle). They penetrate more.
I’m 6’2″ 175lbs, 8% body fat (should be obvious from my pictures), rather not gain much more weight since it will slow me down in certain martial arts I practice. I do need to lift to even out my upper body, due to various martial arts injuries my left side is weak and my traps are noticeably smaller on the left side. On the other hand I can still leg press around 650lbs, which is pretty decent for a guy who hasn’t regularly lifted in about 10 years.
From my understanding the ability to put weight behind a punch depends more on technique relaxation and breathcontrol etc. than actual muscle mass, if it was otherwise any bodybuilder could be a bigger heavy hitter than fat guys like butterbean for example.
For the same reasons nobody believes anything you say.
I have no desire to work on cars. Sure, it’s necessary, but never would I call it fun.
The way that they bite your knuckles is the fun part.
You completely ignored the point of his post and then both of decided to start a pissing contest for who’s manlier. THIS IS BETA. THIS IS WHAT WE NEED TO STOP.
What you’ve listed above isn’t relaxing for a lot of people. It is work. Some of it you could do for leisure, sure, but not relaxation. You’ve literally listed a few professions here as if that’s what people that do this shit for a living want to do it in their time off.
Sitting on the couch drinking a beer while you enjoy the game is not beta. Bitching about who can lift more or telling somebody to google you in order to validate yourself and thinking that makes you manly or red pill is about as bitch as it can get.
The enemy is feminists. Not men you happen to disagree with.
Ryan Clarke said ” I enjoy recreation every once in a while; and there’s little more masculine than men shooting the sh*t about sports. Are we supposed to be productive every minute of the day?”
I took issue with there being few things more masculine than men talking about sports.
I did not state the activities I referenced were relaxing, rather that they were more masculine activities. Activities that promote qualities, that are generally attractive to women because of the perceived danger.
Men are doers. Watching other men do things, or knowing every fact about them is not something a “doer” does. Living vicariously through others is pretty “beta” to me.
I hold the opinion that many men’s fascination with watching sports (instead of playing sports) is self-destructive, and aides those on the left for pretty self evident reasons. There’s certainly been more than one article on this website on that subject.
As for the work aspect, many of the things I listed are common hobbies, while some could also be occupations. Plus if someone can’t see listing bullfighting as either being facetious or the fact that I was referencing Ernest Hemmingway, I’m not sure what I can say.
And by taking issue with that one obvious hyperbolic statement you completely disregarded the point of his post.
While I agree to a certain degree that the activities you listed are good for self-improvement I find it completely absurd to name manly activities when the discussion is about manly forms of relaxation.
You have a valid opinion. But you’re assuming an extreme. If someone sits around doing one thing that isn’t about self-improvement then, yes, that is self-destructive. But the majority of men aren’t that obsessive about sports. They know stats and numbers from watching like men (in an analytical fashion.)
I disagree that men need to be “doing something” at all times. Even the man you referenced would agree with that.
And for the record, his name is Hemingway, with one ‘M’. Aside from the fact that nobody took umbrage with that point specifically, you would do well to remember how to spell the name of one of the greatest authors of all time. Especially when trying to take the intellectual high-ground.
Just as an aside, did you participate in any team sports as a child? The activities you listed require no teamwork and it seems you’re not a fan of conventional sports in general, let alone watching them.
Played soccer from 1st-6th grade, played basketball,lacrosse 5-6th grade, I ran cross country, played basketball and lacrosse in middle school. Ran cross country, swam, and ran track in high school (I have runner/swimmer’s build with long limbs). Played inter-mural basketball in college and in some adult leagues post college.
I’m in my late 30’s and don’t play in any more leagues, though I have considered taking up lacrosse again in an old guys league.
I don’t recall saying that one must be doing something productive at all times, but most of my hobbies tend to be productive/revenue generating.
You may recall that the OP was advocating more useful pursuits than memorizing sports stats which would be in line with my position. That also appears to be in line with the article itself.
That does clear up what I was reading as a bias against game-y sports, but I still don’t understand your reluctance to embrace a resting state.
You’re interested in active body/mind hobbies. Which are great. I completely agree each man absolutely should have at least one fiscally beneficial hobby. But this is a conversation about relaxative hobbies.
What is your relaxative alternative to watching sports? An alternative that takes little to no energy. Something you could preferably be sitting while doing.
For myself personally its investing, reading classical literature/economic texts (Harvard Classics is a great start and are available free online or about $5 per volume for a paper copy) and studying languages (I speak passable Japanese and used to live in Japan, poor spanish, and speak Chinese at home with my inlaws).
Those are great ways to relax. I’m not being sarcastic in any way. However, this could have come much earlier in the comment thread. Pointing out what you find to be a weakness in modern men as a whole is exactly what we should all be doing. But, in turn, we all need to propose a better way.
Just pointing out what we see as faults isn’t helpful. We need to shine a light on the better path, not just destroy the lights on the wrong ones and say job done. In that case everyone is left in the dark.
I’ve actually been trying to get back into real literature lately after being mentally beaten with books for years in school/college. What authors would you recommend for a good re-entry point?
My brother-in-law has so much knowledge about NBA players, but when I say let’s go play some ball he never wants to. How do people love watching sports but never want to play it?
Frustrated high school/college athletes stuck in the past, looking to vicariously relive the glory days of peaking before 23, maybe to think of what they “could have been” ha. Think uncle rico.
Bill Simmons has done two podcasts with Lena Dunham; Charles P. Pierce, noted leftwing hack, is a regular contributor; and at least a few times a month there is some sort of article about race and evil “old white men”. I think it’s a fair assessment of Grantland
Two podcasts? Simmons has written what thousands of articles on basketball? If we shun everything that has a left-wing tilt to it, one may as well retreat from the world of information and live life as an ignoramus.
Difference is, Simmons is a hack, and no real knowledge can be gained from Grantland. It’s leftoid without a purpose, except to pad Simmon’s pocket and ego. Avoid that site.
Normal people read Grantland? That’s news to me. Simmons is annoying in every way, right down to his voice. Can’t imagine people like him.
I agree. It’s fun, male dominated, and depending on what you play for, you can make extra cash. The author should spill the secrets on how I can start a business with the few hours a week I spend on fantasy football. Or learning Swahili
Well you could be pouring over 10k reports, and prospectuses of various companies in order to build financial security.
If you are into stats and models and stuff you will find the same things in the world of finance.
Yeah the author obviously has terrible self-control. It’s like these gamers who have to quit because they would play all day if they didn’t.
My friends suckered me into fantasy football.
Depending on where you live, I would think having a fantasy league or at least following the local team would help with making friends (something to talk about).
Great article. Fantasy Football is just the “masculine” version of Magic: The Gathering. In one, you’ve got full-grown man children collecting cards that have different characters on them that possess certain attributes like strength, defense, magic, etc. You then play/trade said characters against others who also possesses various characters, with the goal being to beat your opponent.
In FF, you’ve got full-grown men collecting players who all possess different attributes like defense, offense, etc. and then proceeding to trade them and pit them against each other with the goal being to beat your opponent. The principles of both of these time-wasting pursuits is the same, but the guys who play FF would never call themselves nerds because they think being obsessed with sports is masculine.
The author makes a great case for not indulging in this foolishness. This is just my two cents, but whenever you have to wonder about whether or not something is “red-pill”, simply ask yourself “Is this something my grandfather would’ve done?” If the answer is no, then there you go.
As a dungeons and dragons player and a bit of a jock I always laughed about this. I didn’t bother telling team mates about my D&D hobby because I knew they wouldn’t get that fantasy league isn’t all that different.
Wait until you realize that watching movies is even more pathetic than being in a play or playing D&D.
I completely disagree.
If you don’t find enjoyment in the medium that’s fine, each man can like what he wants. But to call something pathetic because you don’t like it is the least manly thing you can do. That’s what feminists do to MRAs.
Sitting on the couch and binging on Netflix is different than watching one movie or one episode of a show for entertainment. And acting has been one of the great arts of men since the time of the Greeks.
Fantasy Football, D&D (if you’re into that sort of thing), watching movies, shit even playing video games is fine in moderation. When you let anything take over a sizable chunk of your time, no matter what it is, it becomes bad for you.
Calling other peoples interests pathetic is the epitome of blue pill, and listening to something like that is possibly even worse. No man should be told what his own interests should be.
Magic: The Gathering (MTCG) addictive qualities
One of the problems with MTCG was that for a number of people, it was very addictive, and ruined many parts of their lives. One of the people I know, who use to run a game, science fiction and comic book store, blames it for ruining his customers and business in the mid to late 1990s. He said that people would get sucked into it, and ‘play their brains out’ for months on end, until they burned out, and then never do anything else related to comics or gaming again. Some people didn’t seem to be effected by it, but a number of people would start playing it and proceed to spend every waking moment, plus all of their money and time, on Magic cards. Some people have posted on the internet how that game took up all of their time outside of college classes as they tried to construct the ‘winning deck’.
I came across on report from one of the designers that related how they started a design play testing (the game before it was released) session where they started at 8pm one evening in the basement of a student center and played for several hours. The area they were in had no windows to the outside and temp was maintained by the AC, so they could not judge the passage of time by those things. When they stopped the game, they though it was ‘only’ 3am or 4am in the morning. They were shocked to find that when they went outside the sun had been up for a few hours and it was after 7am.
I think the addictive quality of the game comes from the following facts:
1: There is no best deck or final solution. All of the cards in the game have a counter to them and the number of cards in a deck are small enough that there is always some counter card to whatever you have in your deck because you can’t hold all of the cards you would need.
2: The number of cards in the game is large enough so that, on an intuitive level, a lot of people can not see that there is no best deck possible. It is why some of the people spend hours (days? weeks?) going over all of the combinations and never arriving at a solution. There isn’t one, but the choices are so large that they can not see or feel this and feel that if they just keep going they will get the solution.
Magic cards are not something I’m really into. Remember copping a couple packs with some comics back in the day but never really understood it.
However I can say this: any sort of hobby can become incredibly addictive because it provides and escape from reality, whether it be Fantasy Football, Netflix, masturbation, video games, boozing, drugs. It’s all an escape.
The problem is if most of your time is spent escaping reality you’re not fulfilling any duty. Essentially you become trapped within your method of escaping, your very own Hotel California.
While I don’t dabble in trading cards, who am I to say it’s inherently bad? If ones time is managed properly I don’t see any problem in liking Magic Cards.
The addictiveness of it seems very similar to the WoW addictiveness. People are chasing perfection in something that doesn’t really have a perfect solution. And in the end, even if they were to find perfection, it’s in a field which really isn’t helping to improve ones self.
But, if someone takes an interest in these things and can manage their time well enough, I see no problem with it.
Wow was the same for some people
I have heard of accounts and also personal stories of people that had the same problem with World of Warcraft. One story was a computer consultant that would even pretend to not be at home when people came calling on him, so as to not cut into his online time, even though he was spending around 80 hours per week on it. A number of people seemed to ‘burn out’ on Wow faster and recover to do other things later.
There was a story from Korea where a married couple spent so much time online that their child starved to death from neglect.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/05/korean-girl-starved-online-game
Some people have referred to MTCG as ‘cardboard crack’.
At first I did not understand fully what people were talking about when they called it addictive or a time sink until I started to find first hand accounts of people’s experiences:
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/darwinkastle-030512more-than-a-game-magic-the-gathering-side-effects-may-vary/
http://www.olganon.org/?q=node/31587
I think the worst part of the ‘time sink’ is that time that these people need to develop areas that they are lacking in, are instead to going to something that leads to nothing else.
As an example, people here have mentioned about studying investments and the market , all of which has applications in other areas of one’s life (how to start a business, what industry to be in or work in, etc), while MTCG leads to nothing else and takes away from other things when it is done excess.
I think the thing I was shocked at was the level of time and money spent on it by some people and the effects it was having in other areas of their lives.
Another aspect that seems to be a modern day problem, is that except for something like a gambling, drinking or drug problem / addiction ; I can not recall or find anything comparable to these problems prior to the 1990s. I think it is possible that cultural changes within the last 20 years have allowed or created the conditions these addictions.
But see you’re only taking into account traditionally “lazy” hobbies. Even something like playing a sport or going to the gym, when you do it as obsessively, as these people play magic cards, can be bad.
There is not one single activity that if done to an extreme level is good for your life as a whole. No matter how jacked someone can get, that person will generally suffer in other areas. And no matter how good someones critical thinking skills are they can probably improve their bodies. (if anyone thinks they’re proficient in both they’re either wrong or such an outlier that they can be set aside from the discussion. Congrats to them.)
We all know lazy activities that are also time leechers (magic, wow, video games) are bad if over used. But we fail to admit that spending too much time on anything is bad. Like you said everybody has weaknesses they need to strengthen. For the kid that’s in the gym its a loss of intellectualism. And that’s not to say they are dumb. I know many very brilliant people that also work out a lot. But we can all be better, and to only focus on one aspect is detrimental.
That dude spending too much time in the gym could be spending a bit more time learning a trade, or a bit more time reading about new concepts or even classical lit. He could be learning to cook better food or looking over stock trends and considering investment.
The dude sitting at a computer screen or at a card table could be running more, lifting more. Also learning a trade. Preferably not just reading because he already has the time spent sitting, but to some extent working on that part of the brain as well.
And both could be attempting to better themselves in an art. Whether it be writing, drawing or composing music of some kind or even a martial art. This is an essential piece of the pie we all tend to over look.
The problem is we don’t see these inherently ‘lazy’ activities as helpful in any way. They provide a time to relax but they can also provide one with situational and critical thinking practice . They’re not all bad. Generally I find the guys that think video games are just time leeches are over the age of 30 and only remember when games like Super Mario were being made.
And by saying aside from “gambling, drinking or drug problem” you’ve effectively cut out every vice man has had. Those are exactly the same as Magic or Fantasy Football or gaming. They’re time/money consuming activities if taken to an extreme level. So I can’t really agree that we haven’t seen the same type of problem before the 90s. Just that the vice has changed (or more diversified it’s portfolio).
Really, I think we all agree that spending too much time doing these activities is bad. But the problem I have is that we don’t see enough of a fuller approach. We don’t criticize those who only focus on physical betterment because we think mascular is automatically better for some reason (not to say being a lard is better, that’s not the point at all and if anyone reads it that way they clearly need to read more often).
We need to strive for balance on all fronts not just those we traditionally saw as self-improvement. This means physical, as well as mental, as well as spiritual (not necessarily religious). Over-doing any one of these can lead to an imbalanced life (for the non-outliers).
I played fantasy sports for one year back in highschool then grew out of it, it think it’s sad seeing blokes I know on their late 20s an older still spending time on it an having long conversations about it. Lifting, playing sport, reading something that will gain you knowledge, doing something creative, or approaching girls are better uses of your time. If people like it it’s their life but it’s just something I can’t get.
Anything with the word Fantasy in it is………..Fantasy. Get out there and do some real world stuff. 20 hours a week? Shit.
Right on. That time could be used to learn a new craft, hobby or even a foreign language. Not to mention there is a whole world out there to see.
The guy in the photo looks like that homo singer from Maroon 5. Coincidence?
I played FF for 2 seasons. Back in college. Fun times shit talking to buddies but gets old.
If you would put the same amount of time researching data for FF into something different say stocks you’d be better off.
I’ve always thought these were just the best ads ever. The world’s most interesting man rules. The guy that plays him is really interesting as well.
Wait so some corporate shill for a beer company (not a person of actual merit) said it was not a good idea? I’m convinced.
Jesus Christ man you sound butthurt as a motherfucker. If you like Fantasy Football, great. Shit-talk with your buddies about it and all that. Sounds to me like you’re insecure as hell about it since you’ve gone out of your way to attack virtually everyone on this thread who doesn’t like it.
Wow. All that just because I insulted TV’s most ‘interesting’ man? I’m sorry for diminishing your hero.
Apology accepted.
Did one year of baseball and one year of football.
The baseball fantasy league was done on a yahoo! server. The ones winning got really pissed at the ones losing because they wanted a trade for better players and insisted on getting the top prize.
The football fantasy league was a private league. People used to fight back and forth, whine about trades that didn’t come in on time, etc.
The author is absolutely fucking correct. fantasy leagues are too time consuming with too much drama.
Sounds like you’re projecting how much of a loser you used to be on to everyone else.
We get it, there’s faggots out there who spend 20 hours a week playing fantasy sports. If they weren’t, they’d spend it playing video games or jerking off or doing something else. That’s not everyone who plays.
“Don’t ‘just do one league this year’”
Why the fuck not? It’s one league. I play a football and a hockey pool most years with my friends, it’s something to talk about, have fun with, and sometimes wager money or beer on.
You’re being pretty condescending for a newbie writer. Especially considering that your other article is about how Sex and the City is red pill…
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Oh no dudes. Someone is being condescending on the internet. I think we should all explain to posterity what special snowflakes we are, in order to rectify the situation.
” If you’re a typical fantasy football “player” than you’re probably spending 10-20 hours a week staring at your lineup, reading articles and watching videos, pregame shows and Fantasy Football Live (and none of this includes the entire day you spend watching football games you wouldn’t normally give a shit about).”
The scary part being that if you were devoting 10-20 hours per week to playing “fantasy stock market”, i.e. pretending to invest money into stocks and gauging how you went on a weekly basis, you would (a) likely be spending more time on it than the average corporate fund manager does and (b) be seriously training yourself for the moment when you start investing real money into your decisions rather than fake money. By contrast, nobody’s going to offer you the manager’s job for the Seahawks after four seasons of fantasy football.
You mean buy and hold? Anything else you think you can learn is a mirage
10-20 hours research a week into companies whose stocks you want to hold would likely be met with a smile by the Buffet school of thought…
Efficient market theory – no way to beat the long term average without luck OR insider info. I’ll give you two guesses with Buffet (hint: both). There is a reason 70%+ of mutual funds lose to the market each year and Index funds continue to rise in popularity.
You’d be much better off making your tax strategy with retirement funds (are you in a marginal 25-28+ tax bracket? probably want to do a traditional IRA or boost that 401k rather than a Roth and use the tax savings to invest even more).
The Buffet way of doing business is him buying up some stock on the downlow, proclaiming publicly that he thinks this stock is valueable and watching all the sheep run to the market and buy that stock because the Almightly Prophet Buffet has spoken his Holy Word and created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Meanwhile, that stock has reached a high price, Buffet cashes out and reports to the press “I just got lucky I guess, heh”
Well spoken, took the words right out of my mouth.
That, and he gets the gov’t to run interference for the companies he wants to hang on to for a while. Call it the Rockefeller, Sr. business model.
Buffett was making hundreds of millions of dollars and crushing the market long before anyone heard of him.
Efficient market theory is garbage.
It’s clung to by people who have no idea how to analyze a business, and no spine to stick by their convictions when the market hiccups.
Right, that’s why 70-80% of mutual funds and PE firms lose to the market every year.
John Paulson is a great example, by the way, of EMT.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102500216
87% have underperformed over the last year and 77% over the last 10 years
Mutual fund managers are a horrible way to judge if efficient market theory works.
1. They have to invest the money they are given. Look at the number of stocks a typical mutual fund owns. Hundreds. This means they are frequently buying their 355th or 572nd best stock idea. Good ideas and good discoveries are rare. How good is your 500th stock idea this year going to be?
2. Mutual fund expenses hamper their performance in a large way.
3. Most mutual funds are hidden index funds that nearly mimic the market as a whole. Their performance is guaranteed to be nearly the same as the market and once you reduce their performance by their expenses it almost certainly guarantees failure to beat the market.
4. Mutual funds are forced to sell stocks in bad markets as people sell their funds, and are forced to buy in up markets as they receive an influx of funds. In other words, they are forced to buy high and sell low.
Efficient market theory is generally a way for brokers and other financial people to charge you an arm and a leg for advice, then tell you it’s okay they blew it because no one can beat the market.
If you can’t invest the time or simply don’t have the knowledge or desire to research companies of individual stocks invest in an index fund. It’s low cost and will give you the best chance in a universe full of mutual funds, and it requires zero effort.
If you can invest the time and have the desire and knowledge to really research companies properly before purchasing stocks, do that.
But efficient market theory is an excuse for people to hide behind. While the market is efficient at times, it is horribly inefficient and incorrect at others.
There is no financial literature that supports your claim. Most people that claim to outperform the market never adjust for the appropriate risk category (eg: comparing small high tech companies to the S&P 500 index). PE firms have the same problem with under performance. In fact, anything measurable has shown under performance.
No offense to anyone, but the whole concept is just strange to me. Why not just play real sports? There are many ways for amateurs and beginners to play pretty much any sport, for example there’s Sunday league football.
My younger brothers are into fantasy sports. From what I can observe from them, I could give a few reasons:
1) They are mediocre or below average skilled at the sport and want to live in a fantasy instead of actually putting in effort to become better at the sport which would require a lot of time and effort. In today’s fast food society, nearly everyone wants to become overnight successes instead of improving themselves over several months or even years.
2) They expected playing the sport to be glamorous. They expected to skillfully work their way across the game and make people watch them in awe. They would probably expect things like doing an overhead bicycle kick like Wayne Rooney. Unfortunately, not everyone can get to the top.
In that vein, and the fact that the World’s Most Interesting Man is on this thread, here is a quote from Jonathan Goldsmith, the actor who plays him, and who is rather interesting himself. He is 71:
“Yes, I do believe times are much different now. Back in those days the personality qualities of a person came from actual experience. It came from the application of learned skills from reading, being engaged in struggles and overcoming obstacles. Compare this to today, where anyone—regardless of ability, talent and comportment—can take a crash course in just about anything in just moments on the internet. This has in many ways shortened and changed the seat of the pants of people to educate oneself. An example would be reading classic comic books instead of the classic novels themselves. I believe that there are too many shortcuts; one can pick up the appearance of success through material things and the so-called visual accouterments of success. Reading has stopped. It is now entirely a shortcut world. Unfortunately, looking cool is far more important than being truly cool—I could write a book on the changing world and its values.”
Right, but there’s a lot average skilled guys in their 30/40s that play Sunday league football. You don’t have to be world class to play sports.
My experience is fans play fantasy when their real team sucks. “Hey, I’m a better GM than the doofus we have currently running the show!” Gives them hope that they might actually win something this year. And yet, millions of sad sacks see both their real and fantasy teams finish last. Guys would have been better off setting a squat goal and narrowly missing it than narrowly missing their FF playoffs.
Agreed, its very strange.
Maybe its because fantasy sports are much easier than real physical activity.
Obsession with sports is for men as obsession with fashion is for women. Its just attention-seeking, a desire for validation without accomplishing anything. Nothing more.
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Idiot, those of us who have played the game enjoy watching it. Why is this so hard for you to grasp or understand? Sports, games and spectating go back as far as the ancient greeks you tool
With Bryant Gumbel?
The only worse thing are the people who master Guitar Hero rather learning to play the actual fucking instrument.
Laziness or lack of options.
Thats like saying its stupid to play a video game when you can just rather do the physical activity yourself. Do you suffer from aspergers by any chance?
No, I just grew up when kids played outside and did something real. And video games are a waste of time.
Everything is being reduced to their ‘virtual’ counterparts. The whole idea of playing football is getting in shape. Wtf is up with doing something as a ‘fantasy’?
No offense to anyone, but the whole concept is just strange to me. Why not just play real sports?
I do not approve of wasting time on fantasy football, but your assumption is nevertheless incorrect. It is not that those who play it want to play ersatz sports. The game is a thing in itself, with its own challenges.
But, doesn’t it come from sports interest? Actually, it comes from interest in the social aspect of being as sports fan. Seriously – how many do actually think it matters if a little ball hits a net or hits the grass? Ball games are meaningless other than as a replacement for battle, for challenging The Other Side, and for having a group to belong to. Fantasy football fills the same role. So they don’t imitate real sports – they imitate the battle and group belonging, same as real sports. They don’t imitate sports, they fill the same niche.
Great article, I was wondering when someone was going to point this out. While I still love football, I only catch maybe one or two games during the week. The idea of spending that much time managing your fantasy team and getting all worked up about every player never appealed to me in the slightest.
But I guess a lot of guys are stuck in un-productive hobbies. Roosh’s article on neomasculinity is a good sounding board; if your hobbies don’t further one or more of those tenants, it’s probably best to find something else that does. The one thing that I could see fantasy football falling into is ‘male only spaces’, maybe (as long as there are exactly zero chicks in your league). However, since that’s dubious at best and FF furthers no other productive use of your time, I’m in agreement with the author.
Played a couple years in college. Dominated one league, sucked in another because there were too many players. Too time consuming and everyone gets butthurt if their team sucks. Kinda like fans do. Quit following sports almost completely, it’s amazing how much time you gain.
Unless you’re trying to learn a sport and play it .
I learned to play a lot of different sports over the years. Not very good at most of them, but I still play several. Never really got cricket, though.
This writer needs to turn off his computer, stop watching Sex in the
City and go out and fuck some girls and get in a fistfight. So do the rest of you. Also, everyone needs to quit boasting about how they “lift” and have a great career. Who gives a fuck?
Getting into a fistfight is a really bad idea, and this is from who’s trained to fight. It’s typically from guys trying a little too hard to be “masculine”.
Good advice. Fantasy sports is a time-sinkhole. It sounds good, and of course Corporate Athletics Inc. promotes it, but they are the ones profiting from it… not the fantasy players.
Unfortunately, you’re right about ESPN, Grantland, the TV networks, etc. We aren’t allowed sports in America unless we also accept constant NWO/feminist programming. Masculinity (via athletics) is only permitted as subset of the globalist SJW narrative.
ESPN, for example, is owned jointly by Disney and Hearst Corp. Both very much longstanding feminist/SJW sellers and profiteers. Making money and careers off broken families and fatherless American boys. Nice going folks.
Every other day now it’s a new ‘accusation’ at one of these outlets against another Evil Male athlete who sexually harassed somebody, or committed domestic violence, said something offensive someplace, or whatever Modern Crime the mob conjures next. Whether internet-print or broadcast media, the onslaught of accusations against guys never ends now. Everything personal is political, and illegal if possible.
Cheers.
I personally don’t participate in fantasy sports but this reminder is duly noted.
>Quit Playing Fantasy Sports
>Quit Playing Fantasy Sports
>Quit Playing Fantasy Sports
>Quit Fucking Playing Fantasy Sports
>Particularly FANTASY FOOTBALL
>Talk with some like-minded friends
>Quit Playing fantasy football RIGHT NOW
>Fantasy can take over your life
http://i.imgbox.com/AbZtW0PR.jpg
Fantasy sports must be some exclusively American thing. People in Europe just bet on (real) football games or play Football Manager on their PC.
I did fantasy football once about 10 years ago. I couldn’t grasp the concept and was really bored trying to see what my players did that week. Quite frankly, it was a real waste of time and I got nothing out of it. Nothing. No entertainment. Not even a hard on. The stuff is just pure nonsense.
What a nonsensical article. Professional athletes themselves like to play sport games from time to time.
Sad that this needs its own article but it does. I couldn’t imagine wasting that amount of time as an adult now per week.
I tried it once in a free league when I was in HS. By week 3, I never looked at my “lineup” again and stopped caring. The whole thing was just stupid to me.
I still don’t understand what this fantasy football really is. I don’tget it. Nor do I care to know.
It’s dungeon and dragons for jocks.
Talking about fantasy (NFL, rigged games). Lets just go in completely on this topic. The fact that a bunch of grown men continue to rally behind teams i.e. huge corporations which rob Americans into becoming poorer, losing more jobs and continuous mangina (faggot) behavior i.e. pink day(feminazi/effeminate breast cancer awareness month). It’s called television PROGRAMMING (government pysop, communist countries used it to control the masses as well) for a reason. It’s to keep men distracted from fighting the real issues at hand. Fantasy is believing that you are only entertaining yourself but in all honesty, it’s a crutch from real life. Cowards never face reality.
“losing more jobs and continuous mangina (faggot) behavior”
I wouldn’t say that all manginas are necessarily homos, some are just feminized and don’t realize it.
Other than that i completely agree with you.
Sports casters are some big time SJ pussies.
I belong to a FFB league made up of a bunch of old friends who are now scattered across the country. We get together for one day in a NYC bar to drink beer, catch up, and draft a team. Managing your weekly lineup takes all of 10 minutes or so. I’d watch football whether or not I belong to one of these things.
I have my own business and my favorite team just won the superbowl so there’s no “filling the void” issues.
I get what you’re saying about the silliness of sports obsession and if you devote 10-20 hours a week on this, you’re insane.
For the rest of us, it’s just a harmless diversion from the general shittiness of the daily grind.
Peace
Oh FFS, its fun! The guys who dont like it probably sucked at sports in school. Its a fun distraction/hobby that I enjoy with friends. Shaming men for enjoying fantasy sports is fucking ridiculous. Statistics and sports go hand in hand, and strategy appeals to men. Its harmless. Christ, the amount of geeks on this fucking site.
It will be a great day when society realizes throwing balls around is not a real profession
fantasy football is for faggots. if you are a sports fan and you want to make it fun and interactive, start betting on football. there is bookmaker, betonline, bovada, and plenty of other reputable online betting websites. start small. all of these websites will let you start with as little as $50-100, and you can bet as little as you want on each game. it is challenging and potentially lucrative. win a few big bets and you could win tens of thousans of dollars. and most importantly, your results depend on WHO ACTUALLY WINS THE GAME, as opposed to fantasy football where the results depend on individual stats and it doesn’t matter who wins.
if you play fantasy football, faggots like you are the reason Ray Rice is out of the league, and teams dress up in pink every october.
Fuck sports in general.Get high,get pussy, write, be gonzo.Make fucking money.