I have similar feelings about "competitive" fly fishing. It makes no sense to me at all.

And the media has really been inundated with it for the past year or two.

The fly fishing manufacturers are really pushing it and the fly fishing media is eating it up because they are hostage to the manufacturers' advertising money. Together, they're shoving it down the collective throats of the fly fishing population who, in my experience, are about 80% or more opposed to or indifferent to it.

And trotting the kids out and telling us what great humanitarian "internationalism" this builds in our youth is just way too schmaltzy for my taste.