i dont know
Why is chess getting so popular all of the sudden in 2023?
I think Andrew Tate made the chess community flourish again, in my class only me and 1 other person knew chess, but after all Andrew Tate's speeches and the massification of the world in becoming famous they brought chess back into the limelight .
Chess has less of a stigma over the years, parents probably started playing during the pandemic and are encouraging their kids, this might be one reason
Chess has less of a stigma over the years, parents probably started playing during the pandemic and are encouraging their kids, this might be one reason
Has there been any stigma among the parents about chess? Pretty sure it is the kids who find those activities not cool after a certain age, when they want to fit in and do stuff that are popular. Just like with wrestling here in Sweden, where we don't have high school/college sports, where a lot of kids grow out of it just to regret all the lost gains as young adults. Also, wouldn't parents put their kids in chess clubs instead of "some random website"? Haven't heard any chess club boom yet or during pandemics.
Most likely is that parents already had expectation that playing chess online is better for little Bobby Bob Jr. instead of playing those awful computer games and now that chess became popular on social media (tiktok, youtube, streamers etc, I ain't picky with the term) and kids are rushing to the site, their parents and teachers are more ok with it. At least it's not those death simulators like tetris and pong.
For those that are saying "observer bias" that isn't the case. Google Trends is showing a 2x increase in searches related to chess since November 2022.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=chess
There seems to be an uptick in chess every November... maybe people play at Thanksgiving with their family?
Anecdotally - I hadn't played in 13 years. I saw my in-laws playing a game in December, then YouTube served me some content out of the blue and I picked it up again.
Just like repetitive adds, repetitive youtube recommendations of chess will lead many people to eventually click on chess related youtube videos. Since a lot more people are clicking on chess youtube videos because those videos are getting recommended a lot more, more people also start playing chess. And I completely understand why chess would be promoted on youtube. Chess is a pretty safe thing to promote, it won't get the owners of youtube into trouble, as opposed to channels that discuss politics, channels that aren't family friendly etc. Chess is a safe bet. I don't think that chess was promoted by design, maybe chess content simply happened to align with youtube algorithm and as chess is getting bigger, it only gets promoted more, creating a positive feedback loop. You can also believe that chess was consciously promoted by the CEOs of youtube, or that the US government or some other government asked youtube to push chess content, but as of now, I don't see a reason why that would be the case. The Occam's razor doesn't favor that theory.