I have a hard time squaring that with the reactions of the fans. If they KNOW it's fake, then there's some other tragic mental illness that makes them cheer for their favorites as though the competition is real. To my mind, it's like going to the symphony and cheering loudly for the bassoons because you love woodwinds but find the strings suspect.
I have a hard time squaring that with the reactions of the fans. If they KNOW it's fake, then there's some other tragic mental illness that makes them cheer for their favorites as though the competition is real. To my mind, it's like going to the symphony and cheering loudly for the bassoons because you love woodwinds but find the strings suspect.
Oh, come on. You watch a TV drama, that's "fake" too in some sense, but you don't accuse viewers who root for their favorite characters of being mentally ill.
Sure. I like, say, Bob Odenkirk in Better Call Saul. But I'm not actively cheering for him from the stands, nor am I paying for premium tickets to go watch him on tour, nor am I filling my home with merch and trinkets from the series. Children might do such things, but adults generally confine such fandom activities to actual competitive sports such as football, baseball, soccer, etc.
I think you'd be extremely hard pressed to find anyone buying Downton Abbey trinkets because they're rooting for Mrs. Crawley.
For crying out loud. Type "do pro-wrestling fans know it's scripted?" into google and see what you get. Or, if your vested interest in thinking wrestling fans are all mentally defective won't brook any challenges, don't, I suppose.
I watched WWE a little when my young nephews were into it and I thought at the time, this is not only bad, this is bad in a not good way, like not a "I don't understand young people" way but a "I don't need to understand young people to realize this is not just inane, which is fine, but also valorizes meaningless violence and self-aggrandizement in a way that might have damaging long-term effects." And, as Hamlet said, the time gives it proof.
I personally have zero interest in pro wrestling, and I'm sort of annoyed that I'm finding myself in the position of sort-of defending it. However, I know people who are into it who are neither malevolent nor dumb nor right-wing (but I repeat myself). The idea that these are people (other than some small children) who delusionally believe it's real and cheer it on in a totally unironic way is just flatly false. I know there are all kinds of problematic aspects to the sport (or whatever you call it), in the same way that there are with football, but I don't think liking either football or wrestling makes you a bad person.
A long time ago I read Baa Baa, Black Sheep, the memoirs of marine fighter pilot and professional drunk Gregory Boyington. After the war when he was really down and out he was a professional wrestling referee. This would have been in the late 1940s early 1950s.
Last week I went back to the book and reread the chapter about his refereeing and his thoughts about the crowds of that period. It was both nasty and funny, and if I may say so: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, without as much money or power of course.
He thought they believed and he was attacked by members of the crowd at at least one point who disagreed with this calls, even though it was made clear to them again and again that it wasn't a sporting event but rather an "exhibition".
One other thing: he says at one point a wrestler told him the thing that worried the wrestler the most was that "Each one of those people has one vote just like you and me."
Just a tangent: I was a teenager when the "Baa, Baa Black Sheep" TV series was on, which I started watching because I'd enjoyed lead Robert Conrad in "The Wild Wild West" (in endless afternoon TV reruns). I enjoyed the show - about a bunch of roguish hard-drinking hellions who had a good time while fighting the good fight - and that led me to read Boyington's autobiography. It was fascinating to me that the whole basically feel-good TV series was not only a small part of the book, but it was clear that it was a part that as arecovering alcholic Boyington looked back on with shame and regret.
I'm not so sure how "recovering" he ever was. I watched the series with a friend of mine Heidi. I once asked her why she watched it. I liked to watch the planes. She said that she like to watch the "young boys in tight jump suits." Well, to each their own I guess.
I have a hard time squaring that with the reactions of the fans. If they KNOW it's fake, then there's some other tragic mental illness that makes them cheer for their favorites as though the competition is real. To my mind, it's like going to the symphony and cheering loudly for the bassoons because you love woodwinds but find the strings suspect.
Oh, come on. You watch a TV drama, that's "fake" too in some sense, but you don't accuse viewers who root for their favorite characters of being mentally ill.
Sure. I like, say, Bob Odenkirk in Better Call Saul. But I'm not actively cheering for him from the stands, nor am I paying for premium tickets to go watch him on tour, nor am I filling my home with merch and trinkets from the series. Children might do such things, but adults generally confine such fandom activities to actual competitive sports such as football, baseball, soccer, etc.
I think you'd be extremely hard pressed to find anyone buying Downton Abbey trinkets because they're rooting for Mrs. Crawley.
For crying out loud. Type "do pro-wrestling fans know it's scripted?" into google and see what you get. Or, if your vested interest in thinking wrestling fans are all mentally defective won't brook any challenges, don't, I suppose.
I watched WWE a little when my young nephews were into it and I thought at the time, this is not only bad, this is bad in a not good way, like not a "I don't understand young people" way but a "I don't need to understand young people to realize this is not just inane, which is fine, but also valorizes meaningless violence and self-aggrandizement in a way that might have damaging long-term effects." And, as Hamlet said, the time gives it proof.
I personally have zero interest in pro wrestling, and I'm sort of annoyed that I'm finding myself in the position of sort-of defending it. However, I know people who are into it who are neither malevolent nor dumb nor right-wing (but I repeat myself). The idea that these are people (other than some small children) who delusionally believe it's real and cheer it on in a totally unironic way is just flatly false. I know there are all kinds of problematic aspects to the sport (or whatever you call it), in the same way that there are with football, but I don't think liking either football or wrestling makes you a bad person.
A long time ago I read Baa Baa, Black Sheep, the memoirs of marine fighter pilot and professional drunk Gregory Boyington. After the war when he was really down and out he was a professional wrestling referee. This would have been in the late 1940s early 1950s.
Last week I went back to the book and reread the chapter about his refereeing and his thoughts about the crowds of that period. It was both nasty and funny, and if I may say so: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, without as much money or power of course.
He thought they believed and he was attacked by members of the crowd at at least one point who disagreed with this calls, even though it was made clear to them again and again that it wasn't a sporting event but rather an "exhibition".
One other thing: he says at one point a wrestler told him the thing that worried the wrestler the most was that "Each one of those people has one vote just like you and me."
Just a tangent: I was a teenager when the "Baa, Baa Black Sheep" TV series was on, which I started watching because I'd enjoyed lead Robert Conrad in "The Wild Wild West" (in endless afternoon TV reruns). I enjoyed the show - about a bunch of roguish hard-drinking hellions who had a good time while fighting the good fight - and that led me to read Boyington's autobiography. It was fascinating to me that the whole basically feel-good TV series was not only a small part of the book, but it was clear that it was a part that as arecovering alcholic Boyington looked back on with shame and regret.
I'm not so sure how "recovering" he ever was. I watched the series with a friend of mine Heidi. I once asked her why she watched it. I liked to watch the planes. She said that she like to watch the "young boys in tight jump suits." Well, to each their own I guess.
YOU WOULD SAY THAT LIBTARD BECUZ YOU GO TO OPERAZ