Sports Can Unite
By Sean William Toth
WagerWeb.com Contributing Writer
It seemed just like yesterday, didn’t it? Billions and billions of people got together on this planet, set aside their differences, found common ground and “harmoniously converged” for what unfortunately was all too short of a time.
No, I’m not talking about the latest Kitaro concert tour. I’m referring to the 2006 World Cup tournament in Germany. The same thing has happened on a regular basis over the years in the Olympics. Many, many diverse cultures have been gathering and participating in friendly competitions with very very few outbursts of hatred and intolerance.
I play quite a bit of backgammon online. I’m probably borderline an online backgammon addict … 15-20 games a day. But I rationalize it is by saying to myself, “I guess I could have much worse addictions.” I enjoy playing people from all over the world.
Backgammon is very popular in countries I never thought it would be … such as Bulgaria. Who would have guess that? But there are literally thousands and maybe even tens of thousands of Bulgarians playing backgammon online right now as you read this! It doesn’t seem to be very popular among the Asian populations. Every once in a while I’ll play somebody that has a Japanese flag next to their name or sometimes China, but other than that, I see very few people from Asian countries on any of the four sites I play on. Interesting, eh?
Whatever game or games you enjoy playing, chances are that there are web sites where you can play among thousands of people from anywhere in the world any time of day. I highly recommend it. You get to meet and chat with people from all over the world, sharpen your skills in that particular game, and you learn the world’s flags very quickly … which may not seem very interesting, but believe me it is once you get into it. People are usually very friendly and are usually open to talk about their culture, language, politics, etc. Many times, the backgammon game becomes secondary and we find ourselves chatting away (I can’t wait until we are able to actually talk by voice!).
The greatest thing about that I have learned from the hundreds of conservations I’ve had with people from all over the world is how much alike we all really are. You wouldn’t think that by the way each country’s “leaders” and media carry on about how different we are, how hostile many countries are towards each other … blah, blah, blah, you know the dialog.
I would say I have had 400-500 conversations with people since I’ve been playing online, and of those I have probably only have had 10 or so hostile conversations. Even from people in countries that are not particularly fond of Americans. I was surprised at first, but have learned that people know that most average Americans are not bad people. I was pleasantly surprised how many people realize that the United States is a good country with many truly good people, but a country that is going through a very difficult identity and political time right now. To the few hostile players I meet, I just try and be as friendly as possible with the hopes that they will calm down and maybe they’ll see that we aren’t all the snobs that are gung-ho militarily … in fact, quite the opposite. Maybe they will change their minds, maybe they won’t, but I try and put out that fire before it gets out of control because you never know whom you’re talking to.
Anyway, I was playing a person from Israel a few days ago on a web site that has a very large Middle Eastern population on it (backgammon originated in the Middle East and is still extremely popular there). I asked how things were going where he was. “Not good,” he replied. I don’t know what I was expecting him to say … I knew the answer to that. We chatted for a while about what is currently going on in his part of the world and the U.S. response.
I was surprised, though I don’t know why, that many Israelis including him thought that his government is really overreacting.
By the way, you can find out quite a bit of things by just observing things on such web sites. For example: Since the beginning of the increased hostility in the Israel/Lebanon border, I have noticed the number of players on this particular Internet backgammon site from Israel has not changed much while the number of players from Lebanon has gone from scarce to almost non-existent. In fact, the only person I’ve played a backgammon game with a Lebanese flag by his name was currently stuck in Germany while there on business!
“They’ve been waiting for an excuse to kill and displace Lebanon ever since they were forced to pull out of there in 2001,” he said. He also said that many people in Israel feel the same way, but no media in any country is reporting that. Now that right there says quite a bit, doesn’t it? Do you know how big of a difference that could make if they were reporting that even occasionally?
He was right, I spend quite a bit of my waking and sleeping hours listening and/or watching many different politically themed shows, and nowhere in the mainstream media did I hear anything even remotely reporting that. Once again, I had to go to the Internet to find anything reporting the news from that part of the world from that perspective. I found several Internet-based radio stations and blogs that gave me many perspectives I never would have gotten from the big “monster media scoundrels.” Once again, the media resources we have become so dependent on over the past 100 or so years failed again. But what is perhaps most frightening is that I had time and initiative to seek these “alternative” news sources. Many people in many countries either won’t or can’t do this and thus form an opinion based on many different unreliable news sources with many different opinions and agendas. And chances are millions of people are doing the same thing … and I’m a firm believer that a mass of misinformed people is more dangerous than any arsenal of nuclear weapons.
So many times over the past 50 years, the big media outlets have intentionally lied and misled the masses in many different countries and cultures. But we as humans still continue to get their vital information from the same sources.
However grim that might sound, there are many reasons to hope. People are really beginning to take notice and, most importantly, action! People are now noticing that the mainstream media is often owned by billionaires and the reporters are millionaires, both of which have many interests to protect and are quite intimidated by “‘state-sponsored information sources.” How can a very select few amount of people who are not interacting and have very limited exposure with the general populous (with very few exceptions, but there are exceptions) profess to know what the masses need to know?
While most Internet-based news resources are experiencing exponential growth and have since the “rebirth” of the Internet in the mid-1990s, more traditional media outlets are falling all over each other trying to keep their ships from sinking. Instead of actually becoming more reliable and accurate, they are trying everything but that. They are catering to people on the go by making podcasts available; they are putting blogs on their sites, but restrict them greatly (which defeats the purpose of the whole reason why blogs exist and have gotten as big as they are); they have even put out web sites and media players making them look as though they are independent, but with a little investigating many of those sites and players are backed by big billion-dollar multinational new corporations. (i.e., NBC is owned by General Electric, Winamp media player is owned by AOL, etc.).
Don’t get me wrong, the big media companies still have their place in our world. They have access to the masses unlike anybody, else and they do use that to do plenty of good things. But they are having to compete with truly independent media, even single person blogs, and that (along with other things) is forcing them to straighten up! The two things keeping them afloat is access and money. That’s what their “ships” consist of now. Will they stay alive in these “turbulent waters?” We the people will decide that! And as long as they realize that, they should be OK. But the days of their total dominance are gone.
If you want to learn a lot on the Internet, go to one of the many free web sites that allow anybody to type in a media name, and the web site will tell you who owns them and what alliances that media source has … I promise you will be amazed and you will feel very empowered!
But again there is reason to be optimistic! The will of the people all over the world are speaking out! And the big trend now is to get their information on any topic from other sources other than the big media companies, and that is truly revolutionary! That is why web sites like Inspin are experiencing incredible growth! When I have talked to other people from Inspin, you can hear the excitement in their voice. Those of you who have been with Inspin from the very beginning have seen the web site grow so much in a short amount of time.
The greatest thing about Inspin is that you’re not getting your sportsinformation from a highly paid talking head with a “Ken Doll persona.”. But you are getting it from somebody that could be your neighbor … somebody whom you can relate to. And advocating the things that sports advocates and creates is something that I deem very important if we are going to survive. I don’t feel as though I’m above anybody because I do that … I feel honored and privileged for the opportunity to do this for the better!
So next time somebody tells you that sports is just a distraction from the real issues that affect us in life, ask them how often every weekend millions and millions of people from all different walks of life get together, put all their political and philosophical differences aside and root … root … root for the same team! (or at least the same outcome to an event) And hold on … football season, where tens of millions of people get together all over this great country is right around the corner.
