tl;dr everybody likes sports, and if you don't like sports than you're weird and might not really be human. Been hearing that since high school. Am sick of it.
I literally can't be arsed to give a shit about sports. I know about football and baseball and can understand most sports-related metaphors, but I really don't have the energy to invest in knowing what the Patriots are doing. (Although I followed the Deflategate scandal with some amusement; where I live the Patriots are gods among men and I confess it's a bit nice to see their reputation, er, deflated.)
So when I need to talk to "ordinary people", I fall back on other pop-culture referents, usually music and movies. Even trashy, mass market music and movies I can get into. Discussing Pokémon was once even a useful ice breaker -- in Japan.
>tl;dr everybody likes sports, and if you don't like sports than you're weird and might not really be human
That is absolutely NOT what the article states. The articles argument is basically "If you don't like sports, you might be condescending and exclusionary about it. Sports are a near universal conversation topic. If you try getting into them just for the social benefit, you might find you actually like them."
I literally can't be arsed to give a shit about sports. I know about football and baseball and can understand most sports-related metaphors, but I really don't have the energy to invest in knowing what the Patriots are doing. (Although I followed the Deflategate scandal with some amusement; where I live the Patriots are gods among men and I confess it's a bit nice to see their reputation, er, deflated.)
So when I need to talk to "ordinary people", I fall back on other pop-culture referents, usually music and movies. Even trashy, mass market music and movies I can get into. Discussing Pokémon was once even a useful ice breaker -- in Japan.