Browns Training Camp: A new shade of camouflage?
August 2, 2015It’s early but: Terrelle Pryor is continuing to impress
August 3, 2015Happy Monday, you crazy cats. Here’s hoping the weekend treated you well. And if you’re reading this anywhere near Cleveland, you were not only given a fairly successful string of Tribe games (more on this later) and a barrage of whistles and drills in Berea (more on this too), but all of this took place while it was absolutely gorgeous in the way of weather. It’s Cleveland after all, so weather sustainability is up there with Lonnie Chisenhall’s Triple-A numbers, but just like with Sir Baseball—we take what we can get.
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I can’t help but feel as if I discuss Twitter and various other forms of social media ad nauseum within this column, but given the free-wheeling platform and the fact that the majority of us around these parts partake in various forms of web 3.0, I bring this up because I oftentimes find that the subsections of Twitter—effectively, those which are self-curated by my decision to follow certain individuals—are oftentimes a humorous cross-section of a larger sample that very rarely can be extrapolated into something that could be considered a population. Take Sharknado for example. One could call the made-for-TV film a cult smash thanks to things like midnight showings, but while the movie was absorbed frame by frame by those on Twitter (generating 5,000 tweets per minute at its peak), it’s safe to say that I know maybe half a dozen people—in real life—who watched the original showing.
So what the hell does this have to do with anything? Well, just as Sharknado (or The Dress, or The Llamas…) were taken to Next Level Status thanks to social media, the same can undoubtedly be said for the feud between Drake and Meek Mill. Now, before you attempt to get all passive aggressively dismissive with the “who is…” nonsense, all you need to know is this: Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill (friends with Dion Waiters, by the way) attempted to say that Drake (friends with LeBron James, by the way) does not write his own songs. This led to a back and forth with both artists releasing songs, but Drake unanimously getting the better end of the deal thanks to his freestyle track titled Back to Back.
If you’re wondering what the deal is with Joe Carter, this was the home run that won the World Series for Toronto—their second consecutive championship—off of Philadelphia’s Mitch Williams. Drake is from Toronto. Meek is from Philly. But what does this have to do with Twitter? Well, everything. Where mid-90s feuds were unfortunately decided by gun fights and lost lives, today’s more subdued entertainment-based style is decided when your feud goes viral and the rest of the world decides who wins. When Meek Mill attempted to come back, *this* is when everything went viral. For instance….
"You stood up for yourself that's all that matters" pic.twitter.com/RLdk76Smvm
— Mos Def (YasiinBae) (@JuanTon5oup) July 31, 2015
"wait you guys it's even worse through these headphones" pic.twitter.com/tsOYJ8eVYb
— @PiaGlenn (@PiaGlenn) July 31, 2015
https://twitter.com/akacharleswade/status/626954076060827649
Then came the brands…
Meek Mill take it from us- if you gonna serve beef serve it high quality
— Whataburger® (@Whataburger) July 31, 2015
It's ok, @MeekMill. Maybe beef isn't your thing. #ChickenRings @Drake pic.twitter.com/4W8oPuoqQK
— White Castle (@WhiteCastle) July 31, 2015
Then Drake himself responded…on Instagram.
Even the Tribe was getting in on the action.
Live look at Drake's crew after Meek's new track dropped … http://t.co/S8ESQImlaw pic.twitter.com/ArxXTfWDZh
— Cleveland Indians (@Indians) July 31, 2015
Seriously: It’s been monstrous on the web, with millions of retweets and articles leading to countless views and diss tracks with a boat load of listens. But while this whole situation has been beyond viral on social media, news outlets and such (outside of MTV) are barely picking it up. It’s the kind of event where someone from Howard Stern or Jimmy Fallon could go to Central Park and ask random people what side they’re on and all you would get would be blank stares. Yet, in this social-sharing world in which we live, it’s been all anyone can talk about, further proving that the millions of people on Twitter—where Viral reigns supreme—still, in the end, represent such a small portion of the world.
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Speaking of Drake…His OVO team was supposed to play a game of kickball against LeBron’s Klutch team while in Toronto, but they got rained out.
@Drake and I kick ball game was just postponed due to rain showers. Drizzy we'll reschedule asap my brother #InThe6 #KlutchvsOVO #Family
— LeBron James (@KingJames) August 1, 2015
Looks like they should’ve played in Cleveland.
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And speaking of music (specifically hip-hop), keep an eye out for the last Dr. Dre album, set to be released later this week.
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While you attempt to soak in all things Drake and Meek, ignore those hot takes and sit back with this week’s edition of #ActualSportswriting:
“Stars of Friday Night Lights reunite to relive their story 25 years later” by Buzz Bissinger (Sports Illustrated): “I took this route once before, at a different time in my life. I was much younger then, in my 30s, when you can still act impulsively and not suffer permanently for it. I didn’t know what to expect then, and I don’t know what to expect now. There is a familiar comfort in the landscape: the sprawl of the Dallas Metroplex, like oozing oil; the metallic spires of the refineries in Beaumont and Houston; the Hill Country, dressed in lace and wildflowers; the flatlands of West Texas, where you step off into eternity and wonder if you will ever make it back. A thousand miles through Texas with a thousand memories.”1
“Potsdam’s Nightmare: What Happened to Garrett Phillips?” by Jordan Ritter Conn (Grantland): “On the night of Garrett’s death, Lieutenant Mark Murray of the Potsdam Police Department visited Hillary at his home. Murray told him that Garrett was dead, and Hillary put his hands on his head. ‘Oh my god,’ he said. Two days later, Hillary was summoned to the police station. After nearly an hour, he prepared to leave. He had to go to work. But as court documents reveal, police Chief Ed Tischler told him he could not go. ‘You have the right to remain silent,’ Hillary was told.”2
“The Battle for the Ohio State Band” by Sharon Terlep (Wall Street Journal): “The band controversy has opened up a deep rift between the school administration and a group that has held immense power over the band for decades: its alumni. Led by the Tbdbitl Alumni Club (an acronym for “The Best Damn Band in the Land” as it was once called by Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes) former band members have long been closely involved with the band.”3
“Ronda Rousey is Unstoppable” by Jason Gay (Wall Street Journal): “Rousey is now 12-0, and considered the best female mixed-martial fighter on the planet. What’s staggering is not so much that she is competing in the UFC, but that she is the sport’s engine. Four years after saying women wouldn’t fight, believing his audience didn’t want it, White now routinely describes Rousey as the biggest superstar in the organization.”4
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And finally, your weekly dose of John Olver being The Man. Here’s to your day being better than Meek Mill’s. Cheers.
- I try to not lead with ledes, but this was too perfect to pass up. The author of FNL 25 years later is just as great as the stars. [↩]
- From the same guy who penned that terrific longread on the Lingerie Football League from last week’s #ASW comes a crime story about the loss of a young boy. [↩]
- I like posting the OSU marching band videos as much as the next guy, but here’s some actual reporting on TBDBITL. [↩]
- Another week, another #ASW capped off with some commentary. It can be done. [↩]
14 Comments
I’m not p.c., hypersensitve, or eager to take offense, but this latest OSU band “scandal” just looks very bad. What they did is so stupid. Are they becoming The Crassest Damn Band in the Land?
Please, I’m begging here: do not allow this “beef” between two talentless insults to the art of hip hop infect us here. It’s already made Twitter nearly unbearable. This is not a “stick to sports” thing, but a “don’t give time/space to those who do not deserve acknowledgment” thing.
Is it weird that I did notice the flag was wrong?
John Oliver is funny, but getting news and knowledge from a comedian is foolish. Sometimes, like this time, he can make your eyes and ears bleed with the cherry-picked inanity. The number of rebuttals to this video is limitless, but they’d only be true and very unfunny.
Silly rappers.
Who cares.
Is Drake supposed to be cool or something?
What annoys me (and this isn’t Oliver’s fault, really) is how he’ll feature an issue that many people have been working on for years, then get credit from a large swath of American consumer culture for blowing the lid off the issue (or something like that). With FIFA, a lot of good reporters did decades worth of actual journalism to shine a light on their activities. Yet when they get arrested, I have to hear every Millenial I know go on about how Oliver’s “reporting” (aka a Lexis-Nexis search and nightly news mash-up) made it happen. Really? Again, not Oliver’s fault and maybe he’s a good dude, but I foresee him earning Jon Stewart levels of sacredness and then ending up far up his own back side.
curmudgeonly old man rant off
People buy the things he sells. Cool is moving a whole lot of units.
Curmudgeonly old man rant on:
Definitely. I read a disturbing article somewhere a week or so ago (can’t find it now) positing that something like 70% of the millennial generation considers the Johns Stewart and Oliver (and formerly Stephen Colbert) to be their primary sources for news. Now, I’m not sure that this is possibly knowable, and it likely came from a slanted viewpoint, but there’s a bit of it that reeks of truth (particularly in comparison with the anecdotal evidence of the conversations I have with the younger lot). To the degree that it might be true, it is also equally (or even moreso) dangerous. What you get from these guys is a single, pointed opinion on very complex issues, cloaked in sarcasm and mocking those that don’t see the “obviousness” of their viewpoint. Of course, they’ll say that they aren’t serious journalists when they’re challenged or proven wrong (but they also won’t shy away from credit when someone gives it to them). Funny guys. I often laugh (and often don’t). It’s just a fine, dangerous line that they walk. Oliver’s takedown of FIFA was absolutely hilarious – but that’s all it was: a funny bit from a funny man.
Amen. And this – “Of course, they’ll say that they aren’t serious journalists when they’re challenged or proven wrong” – is a big one for me. Completely manipulative and disingenuous. I understand most of the onus falls on individuals to educate themselves, but still. And Stewart seems too comfortable with the cult of personality that has grown around him.
Personally, your description of what one gets from these guys sounds like an accurate description of what you get from the Bill O’Reillys of the world, the only difference being their positioning on the political spectrum. Professionally, as someone attempting to teach government to high school seniors, I applaud anyone out there who can at least get people–the younger generation especially–to at least be somewhat aware of what’s going on in the political realm. We spend a significant amount of effort stressing the importance of seeking a wide view of the issues of the day, and the potential dangers of relying on only one source or perspective. Being a critical consumer of news media is a vital skill that too many are either lacking or unwilling to use. But it all starts with a basic awareness of issues, and folks like the Johns and the O’Reillys can be effective at bringing that about. What people then do with that awareness is the real key.
I suppose. The same could certainly be said of anyone from either perspective, including the Maddows of the other side. Big difference though, in that O’Reilly and Maddow, whatever you think of them, will always wear the journalist’s hat. They don’t put it on only when they get the clown’s praise of laughter. They’ll wear it, and take it seriously while wearing it, and take the heat for doing so. I guess the comics can be given credit for “awareness,” but they shouldn’t get credit for getting people to be consumers of news media, if the consumption ends at them. Such consumption is not actually news media consumption, but consumption of comedy. Dangerous to confuse the two, in the same way that it’s dangerous to confine consumption to just one viewpoint.
Just an opinion, obviously.
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But an opinion I can get on board with
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