No he doesn't inspire me.

+ 1

Carslen to me proves that being perfect, being the best, being the number 1, winning all the time just isn't the Holy Grail. 

Answer to question:  Yes.

It helps that I purchased books on him, with his games and have tracked his progress.  

Yes, I do find him inspiring. Away from the discussion about the aesthetics of his playing style, for me he is a great role model for pursuing excellence - not just in chess, but in any field. Just because we are talking about inspiring people, I really have to say that Josh Waitzkin was the first chess player that really inspired me to learn and play chess, through his work on the chessmaster series. I really found him to be a great teacher, full of enthusiasm and love for the game (and life for that matter!).

The only way Magnus Carlsen's play affects me is making me understand why so many people despise chess.

The entire problem with chess is that you have to be at a level of 2200+ to have meaningful opinions on what's going on in the chess world or to find meaning and inspiration in the games of champions. Most people will never attain such a level no matter how much they try. That's a main reason why chess isn't popular in society. And I really mean 2200+, anyone can have a contrived opinion by going along with what the experts say even if they don't realize it's contrived.   

If you take away all context I bet almost noone here could recognize a Carlsen move from an Anand move apart from in the opening. 

Yes, Magnus' play inspires me. Nothing fashionable about his openings as he does not rely on them. It's all in his deep understanding of chess and the dynamics of the pieces, hence his penchant for steering into endgames. It's all technique.

He's talking about Game 8 in 2013, which was a short draw in the 5 Re1 Berlin

When I read the topic, I was taken back to being a kid again, playing through some of Morphy's games. Talk about inspiring! Some of those were crazy beautiful. At the time, I didn't realize that many of those games were against much weaker players. If he were, say, 2600, and his opponent was 1700, then naturally, he could come up with beautiful combinations, sacs, and the like. I think as time has progressed, opponents' skills have closed in and there is a much tighter group of players now than ever before, disallowing such " inspiring" play. The way to go now seems to be to eke out a tiny advantage and mine it for all it's worth. Just my 2 cents.

he plays like a weenie, shuffles his pieces around until his opponent makes a mistake.  sad way to play chess. 

Of course he's inspiring!  He is the highest rated player in history and has a deep understanding of the game.  He would make Capablanca, Botvinnik, Smyslov, and other greats proud! 

The inspiration is lost amid the rampant desire of armchair champions and carlsen fanboys to cut his most recent opponent down based solely on age. Its almost like "how dare that old buzzard challenge the young, proud rooster?!"

They made the same kinds of blunders more frequently against Fischer too. Look at his Candidates matches against Taimanov and Larsen. He was absolutely the strongest player of all time at that point, but his strength relative to his peers is not accurately reflected in scores of 6-0 and 6-0. If you go through the games, you'll see some with equal positions followed by blunders. If you want an example, see game 5 of his match against Taimanov, where coming back to an ajdourned game that Komodo evaluates as 0.00, within a few moves Taimanov left a rook en prise from a position that was still dead equal. Fischer captures the rook with a tactic that most 1500 players would see immediately, and Taimanov resigns.

It's really not much of a mystery why it happens from time to time. The stronger the opponent is, and the more intimidated one is by the opponent, the more often there will be uncharacteristically poor moves, and the more the opponent will seize on every small inaccuracy and give you nothing to work with yourself.

Every game of chess with a decisive result is due to one person losing the game, as there is no such thing a win without mistakes. Games without mistakes are called "draws".

Maybe they're over thinking it because they know their opponent is so good... and choose a move they usually wouldn't... but it's worse than their original choice.

Does Magnus Carlsen's Play Inspire You?

Yes.

But he didn't sacrifice a knight :'(

Go be inspired by a 1600 player then.

To not be inspired by greatness suggests how far from greatness the uninspired one is.   The uninspired suffer from not being able to see beyond a horizon into the realm beyond their reach.  

It's cool that he can compete without playing all the theory that the other GMs do. 

"The inspiration is lost amid the rampant desire of armchair champions and carlsen fanboys to cut his most recent opponent down based solely on age"

So Carlsen's play is not inspiring because you think "Carlsen fanboys" desire to cut down Anand solely because of his age? Any examples of these "fanboys"?

I wonder if there are any "Anand fanboys" that make his chess uninspiring?

Very cool.