Footbaggers - arrogant?

[Jeremy]

Ok, don't read the topic the wrong way. I don't think we're are arrogant. Well I'm sure some of us are (me ) but lots aren't.

I was just thinking - when you play in public you get people coming up all the time asking you if you play soccer or telling you that it looks like highland dancing - but also telling you how amazing your skills are and giving you props. For me this happens maybe once every 15 minutes when I play in public - depending of course on where you play - there are also always people watching.

Do you think this has a negative effect on your character - being told how good you are all the time. Do you think it makes you arrogant or elietist?

I'm not sure. I just think it's bound to have an impact - being told how good you are all the time.

I don't know.

[hacksterbator]

it happens alot, but then i think, "yeah i'm not really that good" and can name about 100 players that have achieved more or play at a higher level, and that brings me back to earth.

i mean, getting told you are great by the random guy who passes by is nothing compared to the praise your major athlete gets. we don't have major sponsorship campaigns with our faces plastered on busses, bill boards and tv, with cheezy sloagans pumping us up. no screaming fans who pay $65 a ticket, $100 for the jerzey with our name on the back, waving signs like "Grant is #1" and asking for autographs. we recieve virtually nada in the way of praise from the odd passer-by as compared to other sports.

the most you get in the way of praise from footbag is your buddies going ape shit over a new trick or some folks giving you props for that sick video you made. we are a pretty level headed bunch, and know where we stand. it's your football players, cyclists, track stars, b-ballers, etc. i would assume are more affected by this. i think only a select few footbaggers feel high and mighty when the passers by give it up, because there are arrogant people in every thing, and that just can't be helped.

to sum it up short and sweet, i think praise from footbag doesn't spawn arrogance.

[professor]

I think it could make some people arrogant.

But almost all footbaggers are probably like me, in that it does feel good when people tell you what you are doing is amazing and that what you are doing 99% of the world can't do. But we all know that what we do doesn't just happen. You have to work at it...a lot.

So I believe that most of us feel accomplished when we get compliments, but we also know that any of the people giving us those compliments can also do what we are doing if they practiced enough.

So, we don't feel like we are better than them but feel proud that we can take our own game to a new level every time we play.

[bigdirtyfoot]

I know that the props from a fellow bagger will always be worth more than the spouts of excitement from a random passerbyer.

[peanutbuterboy]

I hate it when people tell me "thats so awsome you are the best" after I nail something really cool. Not only because I think of all the people that are better than me, but it really throws me off. Like I will play like shit for about 5 minutes after that until I gain back my composure.

[delakong]

I know that the props from a fellow bagger will always be worth more than the spouts of excitement from a random passerbyer.

Say word. I feel alot better hearing props from another footbagger than hearing praise from some random fellow. Don't get me wrong, it's still sweet to hear someone tell you that they think what you're doing is cool. It just feels better coming from another kicker.

[mc]

arrogance is in the eye of the beholder... when I go to RIT to play, our shred circles will often go from being 2-4 freestylers to being 9 people playing drop-every-other-kick-smoke-a-cigarette-between-classes hacky slack. After about 2 minutes of this, I'll break off with the other people who want to lay down some shred, and take my bag with me. I don't think anyone takes outright offense to this, but I wouldn't be surprised if some found it off-putting.

as for getting mad props from passersby about being the best in the world or most amazing thing they've ever seen etc etc etc, whenever someone says that, Peter Irish and Jorden and Clavens come to mind for a split second, and I just smile, and say, "thanks, I really love to play".

It is kind of enjoyable to know that, even if you're a guiltless player who can do 10 moves or so in a string, in the minds and worlds of the VAST majority of people, you are the best hacky player they've ever seen and that's the most amazing thing I've ever seen, and HOLY SHIT did he go around it twice?!?!?! he flipped it over his head, what was that!~!!!!

so, yeah, it's nice to know you're amazing, even if you don't think you're the best shit that ever happened.

[ebo]

Receiving props is good and is important, I think, but I have so many
things to work on to never be completely satisfied.
When you come to a point where you think that you are really good, you'll
most probably become arrogant.

Whenever I get props, I do enjoy them, but I also remind myself not
how good I am, but how good I want to be - and this envelope is being
pushed every day I improve. I hope I will never be completely satisfied
with my game, so I can still get better and better.

[james]

I get negative attention more than positive attention these days. Like I'll be at school in the grass tearing it up, and you know how we generally play with our shirts off because we get hot and it's hot out and it feels better and all that? Well I get people that walk by and say stuff like 'why does he have to be naked?' or 'put your shirt back on' and the like.
I respond with 'it's awfully hot out'
I mean since when can't a guy go around topless in the heat of the sun? Stupid bitches. It really irks me.
Oh but they're allowed to go attempt to play sports they'll never have any appreciable amount of talent in and a world class athlete is chastised for being shirtless.
What is the world coming to?
Jealous, they must be jealous, or insecure, or maybe I'm the insecure one, we'll never know will we?
Damn wankers.

How can I not be arrogant around these talentless hacks? No pun intended hahahahaha. The next one I see is gonna get this 'go be good at something and come back to me'

[mosher]

I don't think that any of the compliments I have recieved have gone to my head, I am still always thinking "yeah, I'm okay, but I have lots of work to do".

I am really aching for just the right group of people to come along and make some snotass remarks then it will be my chance to flip out and go off on some rant about how they are boring wastes of humans. People are so fucking stupid and boring! No one does anything cool! (The pop masses I mean of course)

Footbag hasn't made me arrogant, it has given me confidence. I love knowing that I have the power to blow basically anyones mind if I want to. So can you! Isn't that great? People are so easy to impress... and then they walk away and forget about footbag forever and go watch CSI or something lame.

I think footbag has just put a little twinkle in my smile that says that I know Ive got something up my sleeve and I know that its fucking amazing.

[mc]

in response to tom waiting for the right moment to rant...

I ranted at someone once. I was playing with Bill Warner and Paul Wackerow one day at the finish line of a weekly 5 kilometer race in Rome, NY. We're shredding it up, and Joe Sixpack came up and said (you guessed it), "You guys must have too much free time on your hands!"

The bag had just come to me, so I said the following while shredding...

"Oooooh yeah, free time. I have nothing to do but this, I just like to hang around all day and do this. I'd spend my money on drugs or something else pointless, but I don't have any money, so I have all this crazy free time spent doing this. I don't really care about it, I just have toooooo much free time"

by the time I was finished, his grin (at the overwhelming wittiness of his last comment) had turned into a flat kind of look, and he just walked away as I finished my string.

So, point of the story, I guess, is that, in my experience,

a rant is a rant, and it never gets across your point. the only point it gets across is, "I am ranting at you".

I wish it had at least felt better to do it... I just felt like a jerk afterwards because it was so clear that my sarcasm / rant had only put him off, and communicated nothing about how I really felt. If he'd done something sincerely offensive, instead of just being ignorant to the fact that any basic, stupid observation like that has probably been made a million times before, and that I'd prefer his mouth shut, then maybe it would have felt good.

So, yeah. More and more, I have trouble holding people's stupidity and ignorance against them. Basically, it's the status quo, and in the greater interest of those in power to have people be stupid and ignorant...

whaddayagunnado?

[Jeremy]

yeah totally. The worst one are the girls who come up and start telling you how great it is or whatever and then say something like "Oh I could never do that" - that really pisses me off. I don't know if they come up to try and pick me up or if they are genuinly think it looks cool (probably the latter ) but anybody who says they could never play footbag is instantly somebody I have no respect for - and it will take them a long time to win it back - if that's possible. Guys don't seem to ever say that - maybe because they're more self confident or something.

I think it's definitly easy to feel superior to people who dis footbag, or think they couldn't do it - frankly I think these people are defeatests (a nice way of saying losers) and sometimes I don't really care what their opinion of me is at all. Of course often I don't feel this way - but I guess that's where the arrogance comes in. I know that my footbag skills are much better than theirs. I also know from playing footbag that I can probably achieve anything if I'm motivated enough - and I'm pretty sure they haven't realised this or else they wouldn't dis something that obviously takes skill.

These days I appreciate everything I see that I think a lot of time and effort has gone into. Even if it's something like scottish drumming - the work that has gone in is so impresive. I think it's easy to appreciate hard work no matter if you like what the person worked at or not - I hate the way some people can't do that.

[Bander87]

I personally don't like attention. I just like getting credit and aprechiation for me work. When people see skills that they normaly dont see, they think its wicked good, even if its on a sucky level. I was into speed cubing for a bit (rubiks cube) and can solve it in 90 seconds, and people tell me how good I am, and I tell them that good is considered under 1 min, pretty good at 30 sec and elite in seconds.

And I hate it when people tell me to put back on my shirt, as if it makes them sick to see me without it on.

And about freetime, its not that we have too much free time, its freetime used productivly. What do they have to show for their time?

[mc]

now, when people say, "wow, you must have too much time on your hands!", I just smile and say, "well, not TOO much... with all this excercise, I missed Survivor this week."

[Lise]

Yeah, when people tell me that I must have too much time on my hands, I usually tell them that I don't watch TV. The average person probably watches something like 3 hours of TV a day. I play footbag for about 3 hours a day.. Too much time??!! -call it what you want..



(I know this was a bit off topic, but... w/e!)

[crazydwarf]

When people see skills that they normaly dont see, they think its wicked good, even if its on a sucky level

Other then footbag the only other thing people have told me I'm super good at are yo-yo, and juggling. In actuality I'm not really good at either of these, but like footbag people seem to think they're amazing. The thing that worries me is what if a real juggler were to ever mistake me for a juggle. For instance what I would do if some random person who saw me told an actual juggler that I was really good but obviously the juggler would be able to see that I wasn't any good at all. Sorry if that's really confusing, but that's always what I think about when people tell me I'm good.

[habitat]

I get on people when they say the famous I can never do that/I dont have enough coordination/its to hard line. I gets to me because most of the time these people haven't ever tried to even kick a bag before.

anyways, I always avoid trying to come off as arrogant. It just puts people off and leads people to believe this is an all pro or go home sport. I try to make people laugh themselves into footbag. Sometime a little over the top, but it does the job.

But, it's the hardest to not flip on someone for saying I have too much free time. I seriously want to fuck someone up for saying that. Especially when I hear it from baseball and basketball players!!!! They spend their free time practicing as do I and they can't make the connection that maybe I might be doing the same. Damn! It pisses me off

[sampotter]

Word, Lise.

I find that the reason I usually don't find anything in people's comments is that they're so horribly mundane. The average comments don't mean anything. I don't know why this is really, maybe an attempt on their part to connect to you on the basis of your sport? It's self-defeating. Yesterday, for the first time in my footbag career, I was actually affected by someone's comments. An old guy came up to myself and the two others I was with and started talking about how beautiful our sport was an thanking us for being outside doing our thing so that people like him could see it in passing. That touched me. I could tell because usually I try and play with a smile on my face and perpetuate a good vibe. As of late this has been more difficult as I've been generally apathetic towards the performance side of the sport, but this comment had me beaming for a good while thereafter. Thanks random guy! See you at Folklife.

[BainbridgeShred]

I'm never really bothered by the "I could never do that" attitude. I think they mean it as something of a compliment really.

[slapdash21]

yeah, im arrogant, and yeah, this is partly why. the passerbys dont need to know about vasek and lon and jorden