The Dark Side of Football

To many of you, football is just a passion, a parallel route upon which you walk during the weekends and sometimes midweek to decompress and escape, briefly, from the humdrum lifestyle before which you have to kneel.

To others, especially the Tunisian people, it's a junk food equivalent, a powerful tool that politicians and people upstairs use to control their people and dumb them down to oblivion.

That's how, former president Ben Ali, reigned over Tunisia for 23 years without significant resistance. People weren't interested in politics, science or literature. No. Football was their god, and as long as they had it along with food, the earth could stop spinning and split in half for all they care. Nothing else mattered. He had a nation of 10 million walking dead who would lift their fingers only to stuff their bottomless mouths with food, lust after each other and get jobs they're not qualified for.

It's no coincidence that most third-world countries happen to be very passionate about football. Even here in GL, for the brief time I have been a proud member, I have noticed that, in most cases, the members who get very passionate about football and insult whoever disagrees with them, happen to be from third-world countries. Goal.com the same thing and pretty much anywhere else.

I thought after, our so-called revolution in Tunisia, that the people were going to change. To start questioning everything. To start perceiving the world that lies beyond religion, sex and football. To understand that politicians usually talk about religion and same sex marriage when they have something to hide and don't want you to find out about. They distract you with all those things with crap like how your identity is being stolen, how foreigners are taking your jobs, how gay people are multiplying by the hundreds for the sole purpose of keeping you half asleep and not realizing that you're wearing the same jeans from last year and haven't eaten for three days.

I get sad when I see two guys fighting over who's better, Real Madrid or Barça, in Cafés in Tunis. They usually look tired, broke and clueless. Nothing wrong with being broke or tired, but you shouldn't be clueless.

Granted, I get sad when I also see two attention-craved guys talking very loud about Python or Java on the street, with little to none knowledge about it, but at least those amuse me.

Football, among other things, has dumbed down the Tunisian people. And the so-called revolution did only one positive thing: expose what Ben Ali's culture has left behind. A nation who thinks they know everything, whereas in fact, they know nothing.

I feel a bit confused by your post. First, let me admit that I know very little about Tunisia, so blame any stupid comments on ignorance. That said, I will try to be considerate.

Now, the reason for my confusion: you seem to blame football for the ignorance towards individual and societal development, going on to say it is a tool of politicians/opressors to deflect the capability of the masses to engage in any critical analysis of their state of living - like religion or homophobia. But is that really the fault of football, or 'the dark side' of football?

If anything, religion/same sex marriages/football are all examples of institutions which are the victims of the inscrupulous nature of such politicians/dictators.

It is not the cause, but the medium - at least, thats is my perception.

Corruption in football - now that is a dark underbelly of football.

Anyway, feel free to engage in a deeper discussion

#InB4Trolls
#InB4ThreadDerailed

Agreed, don't blame the tool, blame the toolbearer. Football is just the greatest sport and a great pastime. In it's pure form, it can't be blamed for anything except for the stupid unhuman offside rule.

I give my best wishes to Tunisia's democracy and hope you can become a lighthouse in the arab's world darkness.

Agreed that many tyrants and corrupt politicians use football (or other sports) to dress-up their wrong-doings. But they also use socialism, democracy, religion, culture, whatever.

free_cat wrote:Agreed, don't blame the tool, blame the toolbearer.

That's a very simplistic look though. Pretty hard to shoot down a helicopter without some kind of anti-aircraft rocket, no matter how much you want to do it.
Therefore, the main reason helicopters are shot down is the existance of anti-aircraft rockets, not the existance of someone with the will to do it.

srigooner wrote:I feel a bit confused by your post. First, let me admit that I know very little about Tunisia, so blame any stupid comments on ignorance. That said, I will try to be considerate.

Now, the reason for my confusion: you seem to blame football for the ignorance towards individual and societal development, going on to say it is a tool of politicians/opressors to deflect the capability of the masses to engage in any critical analysis of their state of living - like religion or homophobia. But is that really the fault of football, or 'the dark side' of football?

If anything, religion/same sex marriages/football are all examples of institutions which are the victims of the inscrupulous nature of such politicians/dictators.

It is not the cause, but the medium - at least, thats is my perception.

Corruption in football - now that is a dark underbelly of football.

Anyway, feel free to engage in a deeper discussion

#InB4Trolls
#InB4ThreadDerailed

The thing is, football has become more than just a passion here; it has become a distraction, a mini-religion, a hypnotic one. I think it's to blame because it plays people's minds by continuously demanding their undivided attention. I can promise you that 90% of the Tunisian population has no bleeding clue when it comes to politics. They all chose their presidential candidate based on his ideologies not ideas. Most of them can't even tell you the difference between right-wing and left, not to mention that most of them don't even know what communism means. However, Most of them know by heart the Ballon d'Or shortlist.

This is why I believe that Football is a hypnotic distraction, to consume with moderation. If you're living in a third-world country, it's better to read a book than to fight over who's better in Cafés, Ronaldo or Messi.

The Demon of Carthage wrote:
The thing is, football has become more than just a passion here; it has become a distraction, a mini-religion, a hypnotic one. I think it's to blame because it plays people's minds by continuously demanding their undivided attention. I can promise you that 90% of the Tunisian population has no bleeding clue when it comes to politics. They all chose their presidential candidate based on his ideologies not ideas. Most of them can't even tell you the difference between right-wing and left, not to mention that most of them don't even know what communism means. However, Most of them know by heart the Ballon d'Or shortlist.

This is why I believe that Football is a hypnotic distraction, to consume with moderation. If you're living in a third-world country, it's better to read a book than to fight over who's better in Cafés, Ronaldo or Messi.

Sounds like India and Cricket when I was growing up

Things get better though. There is a high impact of social media in everyday lives - it leads to a lot of transparency, even too much of it sometimes (see debates on privacy, data security, etc and prevalence of click-bait news/yellow journalism). Despite those grave drawbacks, it has a huge role to play in educating the masses.

And with that education, some sense of critical analysis and retrospection is bound to creep its way in. At least, for your sake, I would hope that is the case with Tunisia, and a host of other countries facing similar situations with football/religion/...

Hapless_Hans wrote:

free_cat wrote:Agreed, don't blame the tool, blame the toolbearer.

That's a very simplistic look though. Pretty hard to shoot down a helicopter without some kind of anti-aircraft rocket, no matter how much you want to do it.
Therefore, the main reason helicopters are shot down is the existance of anti-aircraft rockets, not the existance of someone with the will to do it.

If a society has helicopters, it will have anti-aircraft rockets. You can't have developed the technology for helicopters and not explosives.

So pretty pointless blaming something inert like techonology, when it's the person behind the rocket shooting it.