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My first impression

When I joined Steemit I had absolutely no idea what I would encounter. I had no prior experience with any cryptocurrencies or the communities that support them. I was lured in by the potential to get in on the ground floor of a new social media experience that also offered the chance to make a buck or two.

So far during my time here I can say that I have definitely been surprised by a number of things I have discovered. First off, I had no idea that anarchism was alive and well here in the US and had such a passionate following. I was introduced to the term Voluntaryism and some of the tenets of belief that go along with it. The amount of conspiracy theorists I have seen is a bit disconcerting... I would have thought the flat earth debate was settled centuries ago but I digress. Oddly enough one of the things that struck me as the most odd is the lack of sports here on Steemit.

Sports in my life

I suppose a little personal background here is warranted to explain why the lack of sports here seems so strange to me. I have always been a huge sports fan for as long as I can remember. I grew up playing baseball, basketball, and football from a young age all the way through high school. I still like to get out and play a little pickup basketball or beer league softball on the weekends. 

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Sports have always been one of the biggest influences on my life. When I moved to a new city for high school and I didn't know a single person, sports helped me make my first friends. I suppose because of this most of the people that have ended up my closest friends over the years share the same passion for sports. I've never had anything else in my life that can so seamlessly bring complete strangers together. I can be sitting in a bar next to someone I've never met and instantly start up a conversation about why the Detroit Tigers should make the playoffs just because I noticed the guy is wearing a tigers jersey. Because of the way sports are ingrained into the fabric of my life and social media the complete lack of them here is jarring for me. So why isn't there a more lively sports community here?

Sports on Steemit

Lately the sports tab has been taken over by bots constantly spamming links to watch football streaming online. Despite the best efforts of @steemcleaners these bots are still posting dozens of links each day rendering the tag almost unusable, but even before these bots showed up there wasn't really a lively community. Maybe this is a very American perspective, but where is the football/baseball/basketball talk? I mean I looked at the sports tab yesterday and saw Korfball...

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What in the hell is Korfball asks everyone besides this guy

So what gives? The few posts I do see talking about college football or whats going on as playoff chase heats up in baseball never earn more than a few cents. Outside of a post by @daut44 about fantasy football or a post about cricket I haven't seen a sports related post even crack 100 dollars in weeks. I know I can't be the only person here who would love for Steemit to be a place where sports fans can interact and engage with each other. 

Do whales and sports mix?

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Which leads me to speculate that maybe sports and whales just don't mix (despite the pictorial evidence to the contrary). Maybe Ned and Dan just aren't sports fans or perhaps anarchism and sports fundamentally just don't mix. I will leave it up to those of you out there way more familiar with anarchism to educate on me if that really is the case. Ideally as time goes on I would love to see sub communities develop for specific teams/sports so that I could go to a page and see trending news/stories/original commentary for my Michigan Wolverines or whatever team you are interested in. That seems like trying to run before we walk though, first we need to find a way to get good sports content trending in general.

I feel like all of this is dependent on support from the community. All sports fans, both minnows and whales alike, need to step up to make this happen. We need passionate sports fans creating new content and we also need the ever elusive whale/sports fan combo to support it. I know there are other sports fans out there, I've talked to a few of you about Big Ten football or the UFC, and it just seems like a shame and waste of potential to have this great platform to interact with fellow fans go woefully underused. 

I would love to hear thoughts on ways to make this a more sports friendly community. I know I will be making an effort to write a bit more about my particular sports passions but it's going to take more than one person. Hopefully this post encourages a few more people to share how sports are impacting their daily lives, though if it does fall flat I'll have to conclude that the cryptocurrency world and sports world just don't overlap as much as I would like.