Jon Gruden has been cancelled, which I find humorous. But I’m not here to rant about the reasons why Gruden should or shouldn’t be cancelled. I’m here to rant about something I’ve noticed in sports particularly, but also in society in general. This phenomenon is the dissolving of the distinction between public and private life, combined with a growing market for narratives.
I was reminded of this idea reading through the comments about Gruden. Again, I’m not going to talk about the takes these commenters had, that would kind of defeat the purpose of my actual thesis here. I just noticed how excited everybody was about this news. Excited to make jokes, to defame, to ridicule, to judge, to participate in this story. This story overshadowed the MNF game and will probably overshadow the Raiders’ entire season, along with the Jags’ season (Urban Meyer was the last “thing” everybody wanted to talk about).
And this type of thing has really annoyed me for a while now, but I’ve never had this blog to bitch about it on. It’s exactly the same phenomenon that causes reality TV and social media to be so popular. It’s people caring more about personalities than games, players than teams, stories than achievement, stats than greatness. It’s reducing these art forms (sports, television, politics) to entertainment. And I know how it happened and I know why it happened: free-market enterprise. The media has done an amazing job creating a product and a market for that product. I would say that sports currently are more popular than ever, but that’s not because more people like sports than ever. People have just been sold on the idea that the sport isn’t as important as the gossip.
Personally, I think sports are more than just entertainment. I love the game and what teams, players and coaches can do within the framework of the game to advance it. Innovation is what I like. Game designs so great that the same ruleset can create a lasting battlefield for us to enjoy. I love the concept of a team. Loyalty and comradery. I don’t give a fuck what some NBA 6th man thinks about the vaccine, or what some conditioning coach said in a private email. This is a goddamn sideshow! Go watch Real Housewives of who gives a fuck. Also, fuck super teams.
This phenomenon is related to a general dismissal of discipline. The concept of trying not to do things that are shallow, distasteful, petty, easy, sinful. There’s a reason that the term “gossip” has a negative connotation. We all know, deep down, that talking shit about people is easy to do and serves no purpose but to make ourselves feel good temporarily. It’s not different than watching porn or posting some self-glamourizing swimsuit pic on Instagram. There seems to be a movement to normalize these things in order to justify our addiction to gratification. And anybody who opposed this is attacked.
A nifty maneuver that people that subscribe to this lifestyle use is to point out hypocrisy. If I am criticized for participating in these shallow activities without any attempt for discretion, I can simply find examples of my criticizer participating in said activities and call them a hypocrite. I win! The problem I have with this logic is: everybody does these things. Everybody partakes in vices, even monks. The difference is the monks are at least trying to identify and remediate these worldly misconducts and minimize them. And the reason why is because these things are meaningless and bad for your mental health and soul. Complete abstinence from misdeeds is not what I want. I just want our culture to make a true attempt to not accept misdeeds as normal or convince themselves they are good.
But I feel it’s too late. I am the minority and I have no philosophical foothold moving forward. These industries have identified people’s vanity and their wicked desires and selling to them is all too easy.