Seattle’s cost of living

I recently spent 5 days around Seattle. Signs, flags and other 12s in Seattle Seahawk football team colors were all over the place. I initially guessed that was the jersey number of the local hero.

Nope. Organized poor sportsmanship on a grand scale.

Turns out their stadium acoustics tend to focus fan yelling down towards the field of play. If they yell loud, the players on the field cannot communicate via voice. By yelling whenever it might be useful for the 11-member opposing team to hear each other, fans in the stadium become the Seahawk’s “12th player”.

If a football team had twelve players on the field at a given moment,
it would be cheating. But this is called ___________ ?

a bad example
poor sportsmanship
cheating
ugly
mob mentality
cultural conditioning

All around the Puget Sound the talk was of “We are going to do this” and “We are going to do that” in the upcoming GAME.

Suit up, couch potato, lemme see you back up your tough talk.

Goodness, three hundred million Walter Mittys living around Puget Sound.

Sports is supposed to be about learning, developing skills, athleticism, exercise, teamwork and …. SPORTSMANSHIP.

Ten kids could pool their resources, buy a ball, choose teams and play a game. Not here. Not now. A hundred million watchers can fantasize they are locked into some epic struggle for results that matter. (Meanwhile their military-industrial complex destroys cultures, slaughters people and takes over countries to funnel the world’s resources into a handful of pockets.)

Bread and Circuses. Mass distraction. Cultural destruction.

An audience used to watch a performance and cheer a good play, athleticism, skill and nice moves. Cheering the move the performers made… ya’know, like after it. Imagine going to a symphony where the audience yelled DURING the entire performance.

Heckuva thing to be taking pride in: yelling to handicap a visiting sports team from playing a game as well as they otherwise could. 67,000 thoughtless screamers proudly producing 137.6 decibels. Give me 76 trombones leading the big parade – I’ll show you some dBs. Of course Seahawk fans will likely augment the screaming and whistling with noise makers. Maybe nearby Boeing can install a few jet engine test fixtures around the field to help out.

It is not like I needed another reason to dislike the place. Driving anywhere has more jostling, cut and thrust than turn one of a Formula Vee race (trust me, that’s ugly). And you have to drive everywhere. Either not driving at all or driving while distracted are the only ways to retain your sanity.

Hmmm. That may explain something… perhaps everything.

What kind of people could put up with a place like that?
How?
At what cost?