The Jester's Quart: The Future of ESPN

[Greg_Wyshynski]

It's been 28 years since an OBGYN had the good sense to slice my mother open and yank me out, nine months after I was conceived and moments before I burst from her torso like a Ridley Scott xenomorph.

Yet it was only yesterday when I began to feel, well, old. Not old in the sense that I can't...
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[Ishkur]

I've been on Mike's case for months to not only dump the "individual teams" forums on this site, but to not call the major sports forums after leagues and just divide them by sports. So all hockey talk goes in hockey. All baseball talk goes in baseball...etc...

Thing is....humans are not social animals, like ants. Nor are we individual animals, like birds. We are TRIBAL animals. Like dogs and primates. Pack animals. Tribes. We operate best in close-knitted communities built around like interests. The first tribe we're apart of are our families. Then our friends. Then our co-workers. You play poker on Friday night? That's a tribe. You have band practise on Wednesday? That's a tribe. On the internet, we also identify with certain tribes, where it be Battlestar Galactica fans on sci-fi.com, IT geek humour at pennyarcade.com, or trance music lovers at tranceaddict.com.

Tribes can only be a certain size and weight before they get large, unwieldy and uncomfortable. When this happens, they tend to fragment into sub-tribes. Also, creative differences. One look at the indie rock scene will show you all the evidence of how this happens. But on the large scale of things, most of this is due to population and communication. There are twice as many people in the western world as there were 30 years ago....all these people have to be employed doing something. Media sounds like a fine choice.

Fragmentation is going to happen whether you like it or not. Eventually the day will come when your news will be delivered right to you, written by a bot keyed to your special interests and particular political biases (ie: if you're a liberal, every article will have a pro-liberal stance). This doesn't cut us off from the rest of the world, it simply makes us more accessible to the things we're really interested in. The best thing about this is the bottleneck that the media held over the populace has been smashed to pieces. The Billboard 100 doesn't mean as much as it used to, because no one even cares what the music is on there, much less bothers to listen to it. The underground simply moves too fast, too specific, and is too keyed on the enjoyment of the interest for its own sake to be taken over by the mainstream. ESPN won't be the centre of anything. It is too large, too corporate, too slow and too stupid.

[Greg_Wyshynski]

Originally Posted by Ishkur

Fragmentation is going to happen whether you like it or not. Eventually the day will come when your news will be delivered right to you, written by a bot keyed to your special interests and particular political biases (ie: if you're a liberal, every article will have a pro-liberal stance). This doesn't cut us off from the rest of the world, it simply makes us more accessible to the things we're really interested in. The best thing about this is the bottleneck that the media held over the populace has been smashed to pieces. The Billboard 100 doesn't mean as much as it used to, because no one even cares what the music is on there, much less bothers to listen to it.

Good points, but let's be honest: There are always going to be bits and pieces of pop culture (American Idol, the Super Bowl, etc.) that will bring the fragments together. No one listens to Casey Kasam anymore, but we've probably heard the No. 1 song in the country at some point in the radio or TV.

I think what gets me about fragmentation is that, more than ever, there's a disconnect between people when it comes to what should be common interests: Music, movies, TV, sports. Some of that is OK -- like I said, I don't have to bore my non-hockey friends when I have several options for hockey talk. But some of that is frustrating, in the sense that life already moves so damn fast, this fragmentation makes me feel as if I have to know 10 more things than I knew 10 minutes ago just to have a conversation over dinner.

And as you've read for the last year, I'm sorta dumb, so learnin' is tough.

Thanks for reading, BTW...

-GDub

[Mike]

Originally Posted by Ishkur

I've been on Mike's case for months to not only dump the "individual teams" forums on this site, but to not call the major sports forums after leagues and just divide them by sports. So all hockey talk goes in hockey. All baseball talk goes in baseball...etc...

I am still thinking of doing this man, just dont have time to move all the posts

[Shane]

Mike, I think this idea may be a good move.

We should discuss what the forum titles will be, and what sub-forums there will be. I'll help with the moving of the posts. (Translation: I'll move all the posts while Mike is in class. Otherwise, he'll delete them all.)

[Ishkur]

Originally Posted by Greg_Wyshynski

Good points, but let's be honest: There are always going to be bits and pieces of pop culture (American Idol, the Super Bowl, etc.) that will bring the fragments together. No one listens to Casey Kasam anymore, but we've probably heard the No. 1 song in the country at some point in the radio or TV.

If you pull back and look at these things with a generalized mindset, yes. But remember: beneath it all there is a culture of fans who obsess over minutiae, who don't subscribe to your vague notions of what connects everyone together.

There are American Idol fans....and then there are Constantine Maroulis fans.

There are Superbowl fans....and then there are Chicago Bears' Superbowl Shuffle fans.

There are people who like Star Trek, like me......and then there are people who go to Star Trek conventions, who've memorized every episode, and can speak fluid klingon. Who aren't like me.

Within every industry is a specialized sub-industry that will blow your mind at the level of detail and accuracy that they espouse. And all of it is incredibly important to them. How do I know this? Because I'm apart of one...in fact, I'm one of the world's foremost pundits of one.....that being electronic music. You probably just call it all techno. Which is wrong. I have broken it down into 180 different, fully fleshed out independent music scenes.

And computers and the internet makes this specialization possible. I'm not saying you have to go as deep as possible into whatever your interest is. Hell, to most people it's just a casual interest, not something they'd devote their lives to. But it's comforting to know that, if you want to dig deeper and really get into something that captures your fancy......it's out there. There is a scene, a whole sub-culture that cultivates this interest for you, and you can join them if you want.

What's so wrong about that?