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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2417 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 19, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I disagree, but I think I see your perspective. Curious what you think about figure skating and gymnastics. Eliminate figure skating and only keep speed skating? Replace gymnastics with some kind of parkour race? In both of those the bio-mechanically more difficult action is the whole point.

My interest in something as a sport correlates strongly negatively to the influence of officiating on the outcome, so I'm not very familiar with either figure skating or gymnastics. I've been told that judgement in both are actually quite rigorous and technical, and not entirely subjective as I assumed at first glance, but was not swayed enough to verify for myself.

I think most of the value in sport is a mixture of being entertained and being impressed. Even with questionable officiating, I get both out of figure skating and gymnastics. Running and swimming sports are generally impressive but rarely entertaining in and of themselves. For things like race-walking where winning seems built upon deceiving officials, I am neither entertained nor impressed.

Additionally, the role of officials there seems to be less about 'is this athlete actually cheating by means of a superior but arbitrarily disallowed technique' and more 'was the execution closer to perfection' in a way that is at least a bit more legible to a casual viewer. We all have some intuitive sense of what it looks like to stick a landing.

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