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PSA: We need to boycott the FIFA World Cup (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by busesftw@lemmygrad.ml to c/comradeship@lemmygrad.ml

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I don't particularly enjoy watching sports - except for tuning in with friends. This time around, even that little affirmation of solidarity has had the joy stripped out of it - mostly because the USA is making the sport a uniquely horrid "spectacle". Capitalism is taking the opportunity to normalise all the oversized tickets, environmental damage, racist policing, and God knows what else. So, what is our community's view on watching this horrorshow play out? Is it something we should be boycotting this time? I can only see this tournament being a way for the US elite to yet again brag about their privilege, to put it mildly. And I can't imagine that would be good for football as a sport.

Quick edit: I think the question now is not whether we are boycotting it but how we will resist this sportswashing as spectators

Edit: I changed the post title due to the need to convey the message.

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[–] bluestem@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

To go somewhat deeper, the term football historically just meant a sport played on foot - typically played primarily by commoners. Historically, different locations had pretty wildly different versions of football, and to this day there are some hyper local, very obscure versions of it played in some places. "Soccer" was simply a slangy shortening of "association football" and was actually the common term for that specific version in Britain until some point (can't remember when). At some point, the British switched to "football" while the US stayed with "soccer" - probably to differentiate it with American football, which is very significantly more popular in the US. I'm not entirely sure why the British made the switch; one thing I've read in the past is that much of the rest of the world was already using the term "football" (or their language's respective word/pronunciation for it) for association football, so the British switched to be in line with them.

Then of course you have other relatively common versions of football, like American football (mentioned already), rugby football (now commonly just "rugby" - started as a form of football played at Rugby College), Australian football, and some others.