04-02-2024, 02:54 PM
"Millions of people instinctively think you're a bit weird if you say "I don't like football"
^^
I'm glad you went there with your last post. For many years I've found these alleged "national obsessions" and other self reinforcing stereotypes that countries and continents have with certain things (sports, food, the arts, and more....) to be both intriguing (in terms of anthropology) and endlessly annoying.
In sports, for example, regardless of how big any event is... we should always remember that more people DON'T watch than DO watch.
Also, data collection on popularity is really weird right now. Once upon a time they by and large gave us estimates based on polling data. Now we have more ability than ever to generate accurate statistics, however simply knowing how many people watched official broadcasts no longer tells us the whole story. Meanwhile, we have streaming services ect... being deliberately secretive about viewership data.
^^
I'm glad you went there with your last post. For many years I've found these alleged "national obsessions" and other self reinforcing stereotypes that countries and continents have with certain things (sports, food, the arts, and more....) to be both intriguing (in terms of anthropology) and endlessly annoying.
In sports, for example, regardless of how big any event is... we should always remember that more people DON'T watch than DO watch.
Also, data collection on popularity is really weird right now. Once upon a time they by and large gave us estimates based on polling data. Now we have more ability than ever to generate accurate statistics, however simply knowing how many people watched official broadcasts no longer tells us the whole story. Meanwhile, we have streaming services ect... being deliberately secretive about viewership data.