Friday, January 17, 2014

A Brief And Obvious Point About Tatooing Yourself About Your Team's Future Super Bowl Victory

Shameless and Stupid Is No Way To Go Through Life, Son
Today in Blogfrica, the inevitable Guy Who Got The Seahawks Super Bowl brag tatted on his body months ago is getting his 15 million page views of fame.

And man alive, does nothing make a man of a rapidly sliding out of relevance age feel old faster than, well, stuff like this.

So let me break it down for a minute here, for the kids.(You kooky kids!)

I get that you think tats are OK, and that I don't, and that this is just one of those generation points that we aren't going to resolve. I also get that commitment to pain is its own freaky little reward; hell, I work out more days than not. And if you want to spend your meager bucks from your increasingly ill-paid job at making yourself unfit for burial in a Jewish cemetery, and unfit for hiring in tightass corporate America... well, you can make that choice. Free country and all.

But when you predict your team to win, in everlasting ink on your sad skin... all that you are doing is say Lookit Me. And, just like the spiky boys in the Black Hole in Oakland, or the Dog Men in Cleveland or the Hog Lovers in DC or the people with cheese on their head in Wisconsin or the guy with horns on his head in might as well also be Wisconsin, or any number of other borderline personalities...

You are, um, a stone cold, focus-free, perspective impaired rube, loser, no lifer and willing geek in the sideshow of life.

And you deserve no attention from anyone, and in a better society that eschews human train wrecks, you would get none. And we would all live in a better country and era, where people grow up wanted to contribute to their communities, rather than their own egos.

Real fans, you see, are actually OK with being part of a terrifyingly united collective. Real fans wave towels like everyone else around them, or save their howls for third down and the last five seconds of the 24-second clock. Real fans chant and sing in unison, and become one voice. Real fans know that individual attention whores are, well, just that, and way more interested in getting on camera than losing themselves in the simple joy that is utter immersion into Game. Or the mutual assured illusion and pleasure that is the sense of a crowd actually having an impact on the outcome.

So, Guy Who Tatted Himself Up In Preseason? We know why you did it; it was to get on camera this week. How special for you. And if your team loses, how terrible when you limp away to the laser removal place, while the rest of us, um, just limp away. Bigger and better fans, who saved our money for the game or the merch or our families, rather than for being some mutant form of peacock and pin cushion.

(Oh, and Media? We already feel bad enough about the hours and money that we spend on Game. Holding up the freaks in the audience as de facto spokespeople is, well, just one more reason why we hate you. And since that hate isn't making you any money at all, could you please just knock it the hell off already?)

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