Avoiding Derivative Stories

Our Eyes are Fixed on the Sideshow; We Need to Keep Them on What's Important

You’d be forgiven if you forgot there was a great football game going on in Buffalo this last weekend. Buffalo and Kansas City, two of the best teams in this decade faced off again in the playoffs, with Kansas City prevailing 27-24 because of a missed Buffalo field goal that went (the dreaded words Buffaloans never want to hear ever), wide right.¹

I’ll admit, I missed the game for various reasons. But the next morning when I logged onto social media, of the first 40 or so posts I saw, none of the posts I saw were about the game itself. They were all about items DERIVATIVE of the game:

• The big one was Taylor Swift again. I don’t mind cameras showing her occassionally as a fan of the game, but when it becomes gratuitous by the network to put her on screen (and more than once or twice is gratuitous), it becomes a distraction to coverage of the game itself. You know how you can tell? How many catches did her boyfriend Travis Kelce have and was it more or less times than they showed Taylor? Answer in the footnotes.²

• On top of that, on social media you have the Swift defenders, people who will defend Taylor Swift to the ends of time, and follow everything she does. They want to see Swift at the football games and only watch the games for Swift. To them, the football game is in the background, and it’s much more important for Swift to make an appearance to satisfy them than it is to understand or watch a football game. These people love to complain about people complaining about Taylor Swift being the focus of attention of an event of which she has no participating part.

• The next biggest thing I saw was Travis Kelce’s brother Jason, former Philadelphia Eagle, with his shirt off in the Buffalo cold whooping it up. It’s a fun picture— I laughed and it was fun to see him like a typical sports fan. But like Swift, it didn’t deserve the amount of attention it got.

So instead of seeing anything about the game itself on social media, I had to go to ESPN³ to get the score, find out who won and the recap I put at the top of the page, which is no big deal but it got me thinking that Americans particularly spend way too much time focusing on stories and gossip completely derivative of the main stories they should be focusing on.

It’s a serious problem. If you got all your news strictly from social media (like a lot of people, particularly younger people do), you can see how easily distorted your worldview would become. Too much attention given to fame and celebrity and not enough on what they are famous for or the actual things that are occuring. In the above context, it would give you the impression there was a Taylor Swift gathering and somewhere in the background was a football game. I’m pretty sure Taylor wouldn’t even want that description of the game.

This isn’t even the most glaring example of it. This morning, the Academy Award (Oscar) Nominations are announced. Now, I’ve always been a big fan of movies, think many of these artists (not just actors) deserve credit and attention for their trades and it’s good to bring attention to serious pieces of art that would otherwise go unnoticed. “Who wins” has always been a little subjective, but it is entertaining and exciting to see what and who gets recognized in this way. However, the day after, that’s not what gets attention— it’s what people wore on the Red Carpet that does. Who looked good! And they make a point to say who the designer was— their clothes have NAMES! Nevermind, that this is a completely fabricated made-up event derivative to the whole reason people are there— the awards themselves. Every awards show is like this, focusing on the extravangance of the outfits. Why? It drives page clicks, advertisers and eyeballs. The story of who won or lost lasts a day, but a picture of Scarlett Johannsen in Valentino looking radiant can get clicks for years. It’s NOT news, but it’s what people pay attention to.

Why The Lack of Focus Matters

I wouldn’t be surprised if right now you thought I was just being a cranky old white male barking at kids to stay off their lawn. I get it. It sounds that way. But the underlying issue Im pointing out plays out in important ways in our media system and none of it is good.

Let’s look at the biggest news this coming year, that the United States has an election.

Elections are job interviews. They are appeals to the American public to choose who they think would be better at running the country. No small job, one that has profound consequences not just for everyone in America but for the entire world. It’s an extremely important and necessary job, that requires a lot of intelligence, skill, competence and integrity. Whoever has the job has to understand at the most basic level how government works, from the top down to menial positions at the local level. These are things that most Americans really don’t understand on their own and they have to defer some to knowledgeable figures who do in order to make informed decisions.

If you look at social media, what does it tell us about the election? What does it currently focus specifically on?

• “DeSanctimonious”⁴ dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump who essentially trashed him to submission. The mere fact that I could put that name in quotes and you read it in your head like Trump would say it shows too much attention was given to that.

• Trump intentionally misspelling Nikki Haley’s name in a vain attempt at making her seem foreign and phoney and making all caps rants on Truth social. Nikki Haley’s name really is Nikki—she’s gone by it since she was a kid.

• The whole “Dark Brandon” meme. This in itself was derivative of a completely derivative MAGA meme, derivative of a misheard thing a reporter heard at a NASCAR race. When people talk about going down rabbit holes, this is the kind of shit they are talking about.

• Hundreds (thousands) of peripheral news websites offering stories on small items (how things are worded, what so and so said, assorted clickbait) meant to give voters a false sense of actual events and tangential stories, particularly if they just read the headline.

You know what all of these stories have in common? Absolutely none of them have anything to do with running the country or how one would perform as President of the United States. They all are personality driven articles, memes and afterthoughts. Social media and news cycles are driven by this nonsense and the day to days of the race, instead of the bigger picture of what is actually going on at a macro level, in the country and the world.

Worse yet, if you point this out to a supporter of one or the other, you are more likely to be attacked as being a detractor than be respected as an objective observer wanting something more substantive. It’s no wonder why we are no longer governed by facts or can even discern what the facts are. We’re so spun and twisted, trying to get the facts or truth is like mining for gold— you’re lucky if you can find it and separate it out from everything else. It’s all just noise, no signal.

And it matters.

Who do you want to give the Oval Office to?

• Someone who wants to maintain United States’ standing in the world or someone who tells our allies they are on their own?

• Someone who literally said he hopes the economy crashes so it would make the current President look bad, or someone who has actually turned our economy around from financial collapse?

• Someone who has been to Kiev, Ukraine during a war showing support to an ally or someone who couldn’t find Ukraine on a map?

• Someone who understands how government is supposed to work for the benefit of all or someone who wants to bend it to his will to go after his political enemies?

• Someone who loves America and what it stands for or someone who literally inspired and directed an attempted coup to overthrow the will of the American voters because he didn’t like their outcome and thought he had the power to do it?

• Someone who knows the Constitution, the foundation of our government, inside and out and has spent a lifetime working with Government, or someone who could only cite to you what the Fifth Amendment means because all he does is plead it over and over again in every criminal deposition and trial he is a defendant in?

These are important issues to consider. They are issues the next President is going to face head on. Instead we’re relegated to endless loops about Trump giving people stupid nicknames, Biden being old and senile and Haley delaying the inevitable with a Pyrrhic victory in NH. We get nothing but the sideshow. Why? Because government and the job are actually boring and difficult. The sideshow gets attention because it’s engaging, demonstrates action, and gets people talking. It gives the aura of a circus, watching the acrobats and the lion tamers, the magicians, the freak show and the carnival barkers. We’re awed and easily distracted. But ultimately, it’s unimportant to our lives and what we actually want to focus on— its just a distraction that we watch until the next circus comes by.

It’s also why we previously elected a clown who is on pace to seriously be considered again.

And why? Because most social media stories don’t focus on Trump. They focus on what either supporters or detractors of Trump are saying. That’s derivative and unimportant. We shouldn’t care what Laura Loomer or PoliticsGirl says about Trump and how they say it; we should care about what HE says and does and how he says it. To the extent we can’t get it directly, we should rely on reporters and institutions with authority and credibility in these regards. The further away we get from the actual horse’s mouth and the original authority, the more derivative and filtered it gets, until all we’re watching is the side show and not what we actually came to watch and look for. Fox has made an entire network filtering legitimate news and focusing on derivative news stories. Some of the larger corporate newspapers and media sources aren’t much better. That doesn’t speak well for the future.

And this shit is affirmatively PUSHED to you now thanks to social media algorithms and news aggregators. They’re not often right, but they think it’s what you want to read about. This is how people get siloed and fail to get objective, credible news stories. Engagements are about what you reacted to, not necessarily whether you liked it or agreed with the content or topic. There’s a “like” button— there’s not often a “hate” or “disagree” button to push. When there is, they don’t count it as something they were wrong about, they count it as just another “engagement” and think of it as something else you’ll read about even though it just pushes your buttons.

Americans, we need to stop paying attention to the sideshows, red carpets and derivative stories, and focus on the items that are important. If you want to watch a football game or an awards show, when you talk about it the next day talk about the football game or awards show.⁵ If you want to talk about who would be a good President, focus on what the President actually does, and not so much on the campaign, the nicknames, the memes, the semantics and the negligible aspects of the job.

And if I can be honest, quit covering Taylor Swift at the football games. Give her a break. I think after the amount of work and success she had the past year she should be given the opportunity to relax and watch a football game with friends and enjoy it like we all can and do, without the attention of millions hanging on every reaction shot. If the only reason you watch Chiefs-Ravens this weekend is to get a casual view of Taylor Swift in a luxury box in Baltimore, seriously, get a life. I get networks like her because it attracts viewers, but in the end, its about as important as what designer brand Florence Pugh wears to the Oscars or what silly nickname Trump is going to give the next person who comes along.

It’s just derivative.

PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner

Getting back to the game, the Buffalo Bills lost because of a missed FG. Actually, that’s not true since they had ample opportunities at other points in the game and were derailed with miscues. But it was the FG that was the focus point, since it could have tied the game up at the end.

It should be noted that FG kickers often get blamed for losses in this situation. Earlier this weekend, Anders Carlson of the Packers missed a FG that would have put the Packers up by 7. When SF scored a TD to go up by 3, that FG became a crucial factor. But to show how these become moments that are too focused on, nobody mentions the Turnover on Downs the Packers had early in the game when they could have opted to take a FG and instead went for it and failed.

It was my intention to post videos of these, but the NFL takes down YouTube videos of the actual sporting events. In a bit of irony, the only videos I could find of the items below are….*sigh* clips from derivative shows by NFL Network talking about the events.

But those from this weekend don’t even come in the top 10 of memorable FG misses changing team’s destinies. For instance, here is a story on Gary Anderson’s famous miss in the 1998 season for the Minnesota Vikings (keep an eye out for a cameo from Senator Amy Klobuchar’s father who used to write for the Minneapolis Star Tribune).

Bar none though, is the famous Scott Norwood “wide right” moment. One that still stings Buffalo fans to this day. Down 17-19 to the Giants in the Super Bowl, Norwood came on to kick what would have been the game winning kick in the Super Bowl. And, well…

That kind of pressure can leave a mark on a person. That pivotal, clutch moment in a game, only for it to go south on you. Norwood was out of Buffalo and out of the league the next season. The same thing happened to Gary Anderson.

But it has nothing on what occurred to the infamous Ray Finkle, who carried a lifelong hatred for Dan Marino after he held the laces in on a kick, ruining his career. ⁶

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

Kickers get too much blame and not enough credit when things go REALLY well. Usually, this entails kicking from a really long distance.

Probably the greatest game winning play by a kicker is probably the famous “Chester Marcol Blocked Kick” against the Bears, where he had what would have been the game winning kicked blocked, catches it, and takes it around the end for a winning Touchdown.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives, Each wife had seven sacks, Each sack had seven cats, Each cat had seven kits: Kittens, cats, sacks, and wives, How many were there going to St. Ives?

The answer is just one. The man. Sometimes when we talk about everything else, its so easy to get distracted as to what the answer is.

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. The reason is that Buffalo is actually a storied franchise, the only team to go to four STRAIGHT Super Bowls, having lost them all. Buffalo has NEVER won a Super Bowl, but the closest they came was against the Giants when what would have been the winning FG in the final moments went wide right. Since then, “Wide Right” in Buffalo is akin to a curse word.

2. Kelce had five receptions for 75 yards and 2 TDs. Outstanding game. According to a website that may or may not be correct, Swift was shown 8 times during the course of the game, mostly following a Kansas City score or when the network went to or came back from a commercial.

3. A site and a network that has completely plummeted in quality over the last 10 years. I’ll have another story about them later this week.

4. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

5. I am fully aware of the irony here, in that I wanted to talk about football and ended up talking about Swift. For practical purposes, I needed to in order to make the point.

6. Yes, I know, Finkle is a fictional character from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. But its become a part of sports culture to refer to anytime the laces are kept in as a “Ray Finkle” and this is just one of the funniest sports scenes ever.