Pinegrove - Skylight (September 28, 2018) Album • Page 43

Ray Rice, a former NFL running back, was caught on video tape assaulting his then fiance in an Atlantic City casino elevator and dragging her unconscious out of said elevator. He was hit with a 4-game suspension but then subsequently cut from the Ravens (IIRC). He has not been re-signed by any team since then no matter how many interviews he gives about how he has rehabilitated, but he is eligible if a team wants to sign him.

 

tyreke hill beat his pregnant girlfriend and all that did was lower his draft stock when it came to his professional career

 

but yeah, sports things go on for so much longer. the culture and money allow it. players get longer suspensions for steroids than abuse

 

Sports fans are also, generally, more awful and more willing to say who cares. Not that music fans aren't awful either

 

i would say sports fan are just more representative of the average blue collar american, honestly

 

i am in no way saying that in a way to disparage blue collar americans, all i'm saying is sports fan represent that class more. has nothing to do with the "more awful" trait.

 

Yeah let's not go down that weird slope

 

yeah, i needed to clarify what i meant. was just stating the "sports fans are more awful" is a weird generalization unless you're generalizing it to just normal americans

 

Interesting. I'm sure there are cases of that in sports on this side of the pond, but Adam Johnson is the most famous case recently.

Promising footballer who played for England once (maybe a couple of times), was found to have groomed a 15 year old girl (AOC is 16 here). Apparently his team, Sunderland, knew about it and tried to cover it up. They have had their karma though, going from the top division to the third (it looks like they will be relegated again) in two seasons. He went to prison and no club wants to take him back when he gets out.

 

I mean, these players also don’t go to prison. The charges are almost always dropped. Too many people take the “court ruling is truth” logic

 

That Adam Johnson case was pretty interesting to watch from the outside - especially from my American culture perspective.

We see a lot of this stuff kind of disappear in the news and in the sport (unfortunately, obviously). People do a thing, charges, settlement/dismissal/slap on the wrist, next item in the news cycle.

Adam's case, it seemed from over here anyway, was just as quickly and quietly dealt with but with the exact opposite intention. Things were moved along quickly to expedite the legal process, get the rubbish thrown away, and shorten the public torture of the victim. A very interesting thing to observe. Of course, there's probably much more to that than I saw/was aware of. I just thought it was very interesting. I didn't realize the Sunderland organization knew about it. Fucks.

I guess I'll be cheering extra for Newcastle next time I get a chance to watch them play on TV!

 

Semyon Varlamov is another good example.. goalie for the Avs beat his russian model GF and it sort of was just swept under the rug.

 

I think, while true, a lot more sports fans are middle to upper class than music fans.

It's kind of like the misconception that trump completely dominated blue collar workers when the average income of a hillary voter was lower than a trump voter. Those people are represented but the middle to upper class of people are even more represented and those are the people of privilege who don't care about these things, that's the the people I was talking about wrt to sports fans. Maybe not a fair generalization but divorced from sports it's fair to say more priveleged people will care less about this shit than those who actually live it and those who are surrounded by those who live it. Wasn't trying to say anything more than that. I think the culture of sports is toxic and that's a contributing factor, there's a more "elite" if you will demographic represented whereas in music that demographic is more casual and mainstream centric. The working class music listeners are usually involved in DIY and underground scenes, which obviously has awful shit and awful fans within it, but if some of the shit athlete get away with happened in a local or even semi local/niche underground scene there'd likely, hopefully, be less apologetics though there would always be some (leviathan for example being a piece of shit and beating his girlfriend or something like that but still being embraced even by places that cover black metal who you'd expect to banish him). But you're right I shouldn't generalize just wanted to clarify

 

edited post to add more thoughts

 

music and sports are two of the most, and probably only remaining, multicultural aspects of life left. idk, assigning a classist tag to either of them kinda strikes me as odd.

 

yeah, i understand it completely. i mean, both of them are so huge that it has to encompass pretty much everyone across all demographics and groups to a degree. but music also leans more towards art, which inherently is a little more of a left leaning preference in the first place. not that of course there aren't bands like three doors down and five finger death punch out there.

 

totally not what i was trying to do but can see how it came across that way. i think sports fandom expands acorss way more people from all backgrounds than music, especially non mainstream music, so theres more representation of the middle class privileged group in sports fandom. whereas that group in music is less centralized and i think working class people in music scenes, smaller ones divorced from mainstream, have more a voice than those same people do in sports at large. part of that is the size of the sports industry compared to music i think. because the priveleged class in music isnt ONLY relegated to mainstream but thats where they tend to be most often in the greatest numbers i think. in sports its everyone focusing on the same thing. and those with more societal power, the well off, wealthy, white, have more of a say in sports fandom. im not trying to make any declarative statements but looking across different mediums of industry and the differences between how sports culture handles these things vs how music culture handles these things is interesting and im curious as to why that is. maybe my point is casual music fans would care less about allegations, and those could be the priveleged class within music. in mainstream music thats why people like chris brown get a pass. in underground scenes there's a new attempt to hold people accountable, with some successes and some non successes, but theres an effort, theres an effort in sports too but the back and forth between those who care and those who dont there seems to be more of a struggle than in some music scenes. not that theres no struggles in music, so many brand new fans are saying jesse did nothing, but again, i think brand new making suburban music for white kids with well off backgrounds could contribute to that. since i said earlier its a problem with entertainment in general im trying to see whats going on in other entertainment industries and the one i follow personally, music, and see where we can improve, what we're doing right, and what's going on in general comparatively to other industries with this problem. im mostly thinking out loud and just trying to work through my thoughts because i feel like theres key differences between sports, film, tv, music, stand up, and how these things are handled in all of them. i think who absorbs which mediums the most could be a factor because change starts with the fans. im just not entirely sure what that factor is and im wondering if the representation of demographics in sports fandom you dont see much in music other than casual msintream is a factor. i had the idea because in terms of major league sports theres hardly, if at all, a mainstream/underground divide besides in extreme cases like amateur wrestling, arena football, etc.

 

right im more thinking about the scene scene, the indie scene, the local diy scenes you're involved in, the stuff we cover here, and how it all differs from each other and is similar, and how it compares to other industries of entertainment facing the same problem. basically would like to know why sports is so much worse, why people are able to skate by more easily, and if we can pinpoint whats wrong there maybe we can help ourselves and figure out what makes certain, more than there should be, cases in music that get forgotten and forgiven before anyone's proven to better themselves and put in real work to right the wrongs they caused and truly be rehabilitated in every sense of the word, whether they get their platform back (which more often than not, they shouldn't unless the victim is okay with it, which even then isn't the best reason although if a victim comes out and says they dont care about whoever doing whatever, im not gonna waste more time on it personally). unfortunately victims are too often left out of the convo. thankfully many people who have been victims in the past are constantly contributing to give perspective to those of us who haven't been through the horrors of abuse or assault. maybe the thing with sports is victims have even less of a voice in the conversation, not even direct victims of athletes but people who have been through it in general dont get to tell their stories to the sports world as often i think. a lot of that is the culture of sports being uninviting to those people so they dont want to even go near that world

 

i mean there are wonderful, wonderful sports fans who do the right thing and bring awareness. i dont post in the sports forum here but the people i know that do are some of my best friends. but some the people in my life, many people ive ended friendships with since high school over apologetics of racism sexism homophobia and worse, in sports and outside, who are huge sports dont show a shred of the understanding i see in the music circles here. the anecdotal evidence is that these are the people i grew up with, the same upper middle white upbringing than leads to insane amounts of unchecked privelege. perhaps is anecdotal i see more if it in sports. the sports fans pushing back against the ignorance or doing the lords work and people like @primavera and others who i see do it constantly have nothing but my respect

 

i just thought it was interesting because the main example i can think of of a man who admitted to raping someone and got off and had a great career after is definitely kobe. and when the convo moved to how the shit in sports that happens gets swept away even more quickly than in music and hell probably movies made me start thinking about why that is

 

i mean, part of it is like, someone like ben roethlisberger. he got a six game suspension for the thing. so fans now think "well, he did his time". as i stated earlier, players get year long suspensions for marijuana but only six weeks for abuse? that's on the league

 

thats true i guess theres no disciplinary body in all of music that people can point to and say see they faced consequences. not like law enforcement and the justice system actually works

 

yeah i would say a lot more of the problems regarding how the media/fanbases handle issues of consent/rape/assault etc. are on the respective leagues and commissioners for making them issues that get a slap on the wrist compared to weed or adderall and less so on the background or beliefs removed from sports necessarily from the fans themselves, but i know y'all aren't saying the opposite.

 

Ray Rice is a bad example. He had a ypc of 3.3 his last year. He wasn't signed because he wasn't very good anymore.

 

there are many much worse running backs that continued to be employed afterwards. chalking it up to performance is foolish.