re: #218 Slumbering Behemoth

The analogy still fails on this:

There are many thrills in life that one immediately acquires an appreciation for without having to be taught, culturally immersed, or otherwise trained to appreciate said thrills.

If that analogy held true, no one would have sex in certain cultures, much less even look directly at their own genitials.

Specific sports like soccer appeal to the people who like it. There is no more than that.

Maybe yes and maybe no. The USA actually acquired a taste for bicycle racing over a period of time and it was largely induced not only by the already increasing interest in cycling but by the success of Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France. Thus bicycle racing was largely an evolving interest in a sport that held little interest to Americans before that.

Snowboarding as a spectator sport also saw a great deal of evolution with American audiences if not the world.