Why I Don't Care About The Olympics

It's not just the Olympics; it's all sports. I'm growing tired of every major sporting event and am even becoming contemptuous of many. The problem, in the main, is commercialism. The avarice, greed, and outright money-blinded stupidity of major sporting events is becoming impossible to ignore.

Haters of big sports have been attacking this element of them for some time. With a simple Google search, I was able to find multiple articles about the overt commercialization of NASCAR going back to the late 1980's. Every football season brings out another article decrying the loss of value in sports, with tickets costing hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars; the major regulatory agencies push copyright to the breaking point in a desperate attempt to control each and every possible manifestation of a game in the public; and to be associated with the game at all requires paying out in a huge way. It. Is. Disgusting.

The Olympic Committee is a grand example of the corruption brought about by financial motivations. The committee is supposed to be non-profit, but how does that jibe with this quote from the Wikipedia page of the IOC:

Until 1992, both Summer and Winter Olympics were held in the same year. After that year, however, the IOC shifted the Winter Olympics to the even years between Summer Games, to help space the planning of the two events two years apart from one another, and improve the financial balance of the IOC, which receives greater income on Olympic years.

Short answer: it doesn't.

Or take this sampling of headlines showing that the stupidity doesn't just end at the IOC, but extends to the dumb-as-rugs media companies and countries that are willing to spend buckets of money in this farce.

• UK Trying To Censor Parody Video About The 2012 Olympics
• No Free Speech In Advertising When It Comes To The Olympics
• London 2012 Olympics Win Gold Medal For Cluelessness By Banning Video And Photo Uploads To Social Media During Games
• Olympics Can't Handle An Official Parody Twitter Account, So Twitter Takes It Down
• Don't You Dare Show Olympic Spirit In The UK
• Olympic Level Ridiculousness: You Can't Link To The Olympics Website If You Say Something Mean About Them
• Olympics Crack Down On Anyone Mentioning Them Without Paying... As White House Tells Everyone To Set Up Olympics Parties
• It's An Olympics Tradition: How Difficult Can NBC Universal Make It To Enjoy The Olympics?

Add to this the suffering that the athletes must go through, dealing with absurd rules that no sane person would accept or put up with. Do this, penalty! Do that, disqualified!

The functional problem is the sheer amount of money at stake. Whenever there is a lot of money to be made, the number of cooks in the kitchen increases by an order of magnitude, and it ruins things. Sports, and the Olympics specifically, are no different.

The aspect of this mechanism that is driving me away is that, in the fight for all of the money, they are fucking everyone else, and seemingly doing it with glee. The viewers, the cities, the athletes, the fans, everyone is getting fucked. And when the IOC, London, the NFL, and any other organization does something that is a bald-faced money grab, they are literally saying to everyone "we are going to fuck you, and you are going to take it because... you are going to take it."

No. I'm not going to take it. Not anymore. When you are visibly and undeniably disdainful of your audience, and your willingness to bully, blast, and otherwise be belligerent knows no bounds, I have no interest in even recognizing that your events are taking place.