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Cup Stacking and Glasses Picking

2011-09-28 · Hank · watch on YouTube · Sports · reflection essay

Lower-confidence wave

2011 videos did not pass the QA gate (17 %); their analysis is shown but less reliable.

Hank argues that finding sport stacking weird shows that sports, like almost all value, are useless by objective standards and valuable only by a community's collective agreement; he also asks viewers to vote on his new glasses.

What is said

00:00:00 — At the mall: his glasses are bent and keep falling off; viewers will vote on five new frames as four years ago; turn to cup stacking

  • ★★ Hank is at the mall because his glasses are irreparably bent and keep falling off his face. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank will pick five frames and viewers will vote on which he should get, as he did with his current glasses some four years ago. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Sport stacking's official name; Alex Day's vinyl album in place of the wall poster; watching a private person: 'amazing' and 'why?'; it is weird that we find it weird, unlike ball sports

  • ★ Since Alex Day has no poster and said in his recent video people could put his vinyl album on the wall, Hank has done that. (playful) — 00:00:29 · Alex Day
  • ★ Hank corrects himself: 'sport stacking' is the official name of the sport in which you stack cups. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Watching world record holder a private person, 14, stack cups provokes two reactions: that it is a physically amazing feat, and 'why?'. — 00:00:29 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Hank says it is weird that we find cup stacking weird: a 14-year-old practising it tens of hours a week seems strange, but children training at ball sports does not. (hedged) — 00:01:00

00:01:29 — Sports are useless by definition; value comes from collective agreement (cup stackers, Super Bowl viewers), except perhaps love and family; we do things together because it is fun; sport stacking may be ending

  • ★★★ Hank argues sports are by definition useless activities with no objective reason to do them; their value is placed on them by mutual agreement of a group of people. (hedged) — 00:01:29
  • ★ Hank's examples of valuing groups range from several hundred cup stackers to 30 million people watching the Super Bowl. — 00:01:29
    • number check: 30 million — doubtful
  • ★★★ Hank says collective agreement is where almost all value comes from; perhaps some value, like love and family, is genetic, but everything else is valued because a group came together to value it. — 00:01:58
  • ★★★ Asking why we spend time doing anything, Hank answers: because we and the people in our communities get excited about ideas, do them together, and it is fun. — 00:01:58
  • ★★ Hank is kind of worried sport stacking is coming to an end, because there may be no way to get better than a private person already is. (hedged) — 00:01:58

00:02:41 — Community created sport stacking and vice versa; a P.E. teacher turned it into a four-million-dollar business; sport stacking is cool and nerdy

  • ★★ Hank says a community created sport stacking and drove people to amazing things, and sport stacking in turn created that community. — 00:02:41
  • ★★ The man who popularized sport stacking was a P.E. teacher who, Hank says, now runs a roughly four-million-dollar-a-year sport stacking business. (hedged) — 00:02:41
  • ★★ Hank finds sport stacking pretty cool and very nerdy. (hedged) — 00:02:41

00:03:08 — Five frames shown; vote by watching the video of the frames you like; Hank will buy the winner; glasses push-up counters; sign-off

  • ★★★ Hank shows five frames and asks viewers to vote by clicking through to a video per frame: its view count is the score, so viewers should watch only the one(s) they like best. — 00:03:08
  • ★★ Hank says he will buy the winning glasses and wear them for like ever, ending his constant glasses push-ups. — 00:03:08

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