Enjoyment from watching others get hurt, and sociopathy

[KevinM1]

Hence my change of opinion on Arron Hernandez.  I'd really like to see his criminal conviction(s) over turned.

They were but not because of CTE.

There’s always going to be risk in sports. One way or another, they can get hurt. They know what they’re signing up for. For me it’s all about choice. If they want it, why can’t they?

I'm not making myself clear, dear.  First of all, I agree with you.  An adult who understands the risks and elects to play anyway knows what he is signing up for.  However, that was the whole point of the NFLPA's lawsuit.  The NFL was suppressing the information on head injuries and pretending that everything was hunky dory.  It wasn't.  But forget all that.  That case was settled and the NFL has set aside a pile of money for players suffering injuries.

But what about high school and college players?  Many are minors who need parental permission to play.  The rest are treated as serfs by the colleges which claim they are "students" in spite of college football being a multi-billion/year industry?  Few make the pros.  They and/or their parents are simply risking their heads for nothing.

What will happen is that eventually a school district will be sued by some kid who has suffered injury.  They will lose because there is simply too much scientific evidence out there.
When that happens the insurance companies will either stop providing liability insurance for scholastic sports or they will jack the premiums up to the point where the schools cannot afford it.  In either case, pro football's unpaid minor league system will begin to dry up.

It's not just CTE, of course. Kids are getting their knees torn up, their shoulders torn up, etc. Steroid use is still running rampant in schools (gee, I wonder why that 15 year old looks like an in-his-prime Mike Tyson?). What happens in the pros is just a symptom. The disease starts at around middle school, with little league and pop warner kids.

[ignoramus]

Jack, CL. Wasn't joking guys... Just my opinion naturally, but I think I'm an absolute pacifist. No violence of any kind. Having a crowd there doesn't change the fact that one person will try to knock the other unconscious. (and potentially cause brain injury). That's not sport. That's feeding the inner killer ape in us. Just me ...carry on.

barracuda



(if I'm hard to read, I'll sign off with "barracuda" when I'm serious...)

[Minimalist]

It's not just CTE, of course.

True, but no one was trying to cover that up.  My knee was wrecked when I was 13 from middle school football.  Shitty equipment, shitty coaches, no medical oversight at all.  But I did know the risk and every morning it takes me a few minutes to straighten my leg out.

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

😂😂😂
I swear to God if you watch that and don't laugh you're not human

[Catholic_Lady]

Jack, CL. Wasn't joking guys... Just my opinion naturally, but I think I'm an absolute pacifist. No violence of any kind. Having a crowd there doesn't change the fact that one person will try to knock the other unconscious. (and potentially cause brain injury). That's not sport. That's feeding the inner killer ape in us. Just me ...carry on.

barracuda



(if I'm hard to read, I'll sign off with "barracuda" when I'm serious...)

I agree it's not cool, but I'm too libertarian to say it should be illegal. If someone wants to do it, they should be allowed, imho.

[Minimalist]

But go back to your original point, C/L.  That people watching events want to see the big hit.  I don't watch car racing because the only exciting part are the accidents and I figure that if there is a good one I'll see it on the news.  I don't have to essentially watch traffic for 3-4 hours.

Even allowing for the fact that Hollywood overstates the bloodiness of gladiatorial combat ( gladiators were highly trained slaves and therefore too expensive to have half of them killed at every event) and the executions of criminals would get mundane after a while the fact remains that if no one ever got killed the games would not have been so well attended.  Chariot racing was an even bigger attraction in Rome than the gladiatorial games - if only because the Circus Maximus held many more fans than the arenas.  Accidents were commonplace and casualties were heavy.

So I suspect that the majority of people who enjoy this infliction of pain on others are not psychos but rather simply living vicariously through the experiences of others.  They'll watch it but they'd never do it themselves.

[Rev. Rye]

[quote="ignoramus" pid='1665580' dateline='1511936830']

I agree it's not cool, but I'm too libertarian to say it should be illegal. If someone wants to do it, they should be allowed, imho.

Certainly explains quite a bit about some of your views (particularly on that old vaccines thread last month or so.)

[Shell B]

I think the majority of "people getting hurt" porn is BDSM rather than "abuse," which has an entirely different sentiment than actual violence. There's consent and an understanding that the recipient is actually enjoying it, which is completely true in BDSM culture. There's a big difference between jerking off to consensual BDSM and jerking off to actual abuse.

I think people who enjoy sports and violent television differ from sociopaths in many ways. Sociopaths aren't necessarily psychopaths, firstly. Secondly, you're sort of letting off the steam of being human through these safe venues, rather than inflicting pain on others. Finally, you aren't utterly antisocial. You know the difference between right and wrong. You understand action and consequence.

I'm sure all of this as been covered in this thread.

[Rev. Rye]

But what about high school and college players?  Many are minors who need parental permission to play.  The rest are treated as serfs by the colleges which claim they are "students" in spite of college football being a multi-billion/year industry?  Few make the pros.  They and/or their parents are simply risking their heads for nothing.

What will happen is that eventually a school district will be sued by some kid who has suffered injury.  They will lose because there is simply too much scientific evidence out there.
When that happens the insurance companies will either stop providing liability insurance for scholastic sports or they will jack the premiums up to the point where the schools cannot afford it.  In either case, pro football's unpaid minor league system will begin to dry up.

I’m not sure about whether they’d have that much of a case. Not because there isn’t a preponderance of evidence that football causes brain injury, but because they don’t seem to have been in much of a position to do anything about it (the coverups seemed to be largely at the NFL level and thus the school districts were likely to be in the dark, and by the time they found out, it was public knowledge). That and they probably don’t have that much money.

[Minimalist]

Somewhere out there, swimming around in a circle waiting, is some shark of a lawyer who is just waiting for the right case to come along.  Some stupid coach who tells his star player to "shake it off and get back in there" only to have the kid collapse.  Dying would be good but a living victim would could testify would be even better.  Think of the jury appeal, Rev.  'Poor little tyke sacrificed to his coach's ambition to win football games!'  They would never let it go to trial.  But it would set a precedent and the dominoes would start to fall.