232
If the Olympics were permanently canceled, nothing of value would be lost.
(moist.catsweat.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
232 points (78.9% liked)
Unpopular Opinion
6216 readers
34 users here now
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
The Olympics is a time to celebrate athletes in sports we don't follow every day.
I don't watch baseball, soccer, basketball, etc at the Olympics because they all get plenty of air time.
In the last week I watched water polo, gymnastics, breakdancing, volleyball, skateboarding, and more.
There's an event (modern pentathlon) that consists of pistol shooting, fencing, Horsemanship, running, and swimming. That's a fascinating mix of disciplines and there are people who train for decades to be good at it, and I think it's wonderful that they get their time in the spotlight every few years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Modern_Pentathlon_Championships
Again, just considering the environmental and socioeconomic impact of the Olympics should be enough to convince everyone that we need to stop hosting them or that we should host them in a fixed location with only the athletes going.
Homeless people get kicked out of cities and no one cares what happens to them. Billions in public funds are spent without a return on investment, very often to buy infrastructure that is then left to rot. The impact on the environment is incredibly high (this year's Olympics are evaluated to have released 1.5m tons of CO2 pretty much evenly split between traveling, construction and game operations).
If you think about all of that you then realize that the Olympics literally kill people and it's just another thing we're spending public funds on to enrich private corporations at the expense of the public's well-being.
We're not responsible enough to host that kind of events responsibly.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19406940.2023.2271487#abstract
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/economics-hosting-olympic-games
https://apnews.com/article/olympics-2024-explainer-086d71dfa93128a2c5a302cb47ec3524