I mean, youth soccer and little league and a year of Pop Warner, but I think you’re onto something there, that I never really mixed serious competition with long-term socialization, such that my “in-game” activities were tied to any social matrix

And that, instead, my experience of group competition comes from computer simulations in a coach/general/chessmaster role, from which I get a sense that the role of a unit is to frictionlessly be expended by a higher will

Or from online matchmaking, where teams are assembled fresh for each event and the emphasis is on interchangeably performing your modular role and syncing with teammates as an emergent property of understanding the dynamics at play without any exposure before or after

That’s obviously a background becoming more common these days and I wonder how it affects actual military culture