How'd you like it if I kept trying to talk to you about my favorite bands?
However, trying to get everyone to talk about sports is annoying as hell. I'd rather have ugly political arguments than talk about some stupid sports game; that's my point. You're trying to paint sports as some kind of thing to unite over, but I'm pointing out that it isn't, all it does is create another division, between the sports fans and everyone else.
Now, of course, I don't care if a few sports fans have a conversation among themselves at work. However, with some of them it seems to be a religion of sorts and they have to push it on everyone.
It irritated me to be asked about sports or asked what I was a fan of...
I grew a respect for sports after trying a few of them. From martial arts like Kendo or Jiujitsu, to high level chess, with enough practice you learn the rules and get an intuitive understanding, and then you see.
You see the physicality of a sport and you know how amazing that physical feat is, because you've tried something like it. You can understand on a deeper level the drama of the moment between two opponents as they are deciding what strategy, tactic and move to employ.
I may not always enjoy talking about some niche that someone else cares about, but I am now at least somewhat aware that they are trying to connect with me and they care about it because they probably know something that I don't.
>I grew a respect for sports after trying a few of them. From martial arts like Kendo or Jiujitsu, to high level chess, with enough practice you learn the rules and get an intuitive understanding, and then you see.
Try talking to a football fan about jiujitsu or chess and see how far that conversation goes.
I can respect the physical skill needed to play a sport, but that doesn't mean I care to talk to someone about it, and it still irritates me to be asked what sports I follow and get a weird look when I say I don't. I don't think people are freaks if they don't listen to the same music I do, but sports fans absolutely treat people like freaks if they don't follow any sports.
I'm sorry if some music lovers treated you this way. But did this happen at work? Musical tastes tend to be diverse these days, so I never hear people talking about music at work unless they already know the other person shares their particular taste. I talk about music with one of my coworkers, but that's because we found out with our shared music libraries (we have music libraries we bring to work and are then able to share with others on the network) that we like a lot of the same stuff. We even ended up going to a couple of concerts together. But again, this wasn't because anyone was badgering anyone about talking about prog-metal bands, it was because we found out through our music shares that we liked the same bands. Our coworkers mostly listen to other music (a few don't seem to listen to any), so we never talk music with them. In short, I just have a hard time imagining people these days talking much about music at work.
So are your hobbies.
> At least politics is something that actually affects everyone whether they want it to or not.
Everyone need an outlet for team loyalty and deep emotional investments in outcomes. Spend that drive worrying about what color someone's jersey is, so you don't do it worrying what color their tie is. Then you can spend your calm, cold, and rational cycles towards politics.