Are you ready for some ’murrikan Gridiron Throwball? Yeah, neither are we. It’s like looking at a Rube Goldberg contraption staffed by hippopotamuses, grenade-launchers and chorus girls. Hoo-boy.
Have we come to this level of fetishization in Thoroughbred horse racing? No, but it’s getting closer. Levels of emotional sobriety are decreasing, and the social-media lever is always engaged to remind you exactly what you’re supposed to be looking at, and at what intensity and for how long, and if you fail to follow this prescribed course of (re)action, you are automagically deemed subhuman or, worse still, nonexistent. If you think of the apex of emotional sobriety as being in a Zen garden meditating or finding solitude in nature, 99 44⁄100% of everything that is encouraged by SOcial MEdia is the opposite of emotional sobriety; it’s that Race to the Bottom, and it could be that this sort of infantilization makes you more susceptible to succumbing to handing over your time, money, attention, autonomy…stay safe, ’murrika!
