I find it funny how people build their personalities and what they feel represents them.
Take me and my friend. I play soccer and my friend plays waterpolo. Both are just sports so there is nothing really to distinguish them but yet I feel as if waterpolo comes with more status. It’s like clearly better to be the best football player than the best waterpolo player but for normal people, one hobby is niche and interesting and the other is generic.
I’m also probably comparatively better at soccer than my friend is at waterpolo but because it is a niche sport he can use waterpolo as a conversation starter and maybe even for status whereas I am just some random bozo who plays football/soccer
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But can’t you say that puts you with more of an advantage in chatting to new people and finding things in common. You are more likely to meet a someone with an interest in football rather than water polo. And you can ask about teams they support, players they like and tactics etc etc. whereas, I wouldn’t know a thing about water polo other than the fact it looks cool and sounds cool! 😆
“Clearly better” how? Because professional footballers make more money and are more famous than water polo players? Because football is popular? ??
I think it’s possible there might be a class thing in play here. Poor and rich people can enjoy or be good at soccer. All you need is a flat area and a ball. But people with more money have access to swimming pools – pool-less people can’t play it.
Is either sport better than the other? No. All sports have pros and cons. It’s more important to enjoy an activity than to get some kind of ego or status boost out of it. I suggest you forget about which is better and why your friend gets more status.
As a funny coda, polo (with horses) has even more status because owning a horse is an expensive barrier to entry. In which case running might be the lowest-status sport… but Usain Bolt has status and game ¯_(ツ)_/ I do believe popularity is fairly random and the inherent value of something does not factor in.