| KNOW YOUR PLAYERS. BUT NOT TOO WELL. |
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| Written by Gentry |
| Thursday, 09 July 2009 19:37 |
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We’ve all had Bromances and Man Crushes on ‘our’ players. Guys who have performed magic for our team with clutch TDs and multiple rebounds. On the flipside there is also the player who we feel is trying to undermine our team with their pathetic play. They could have a great career but we wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole if they burned us for one season. Basically the emotions run the gamut on how we react to the players that we ‘own’. This is nothing new as people have formed attachments, sometimes unhealthy ones, with public figures that they have never met. But how does this all play out in the appropriately-named Fantasy Sports world? I had no idea, so I asked an expert. Ellis Cashmore is a professor of Sociology, Sport and Culture. He has authored books on topics ranging from TV to Rastafarians to Sports Science. Perhaps most apropos to this topic is his book Celebrity Culture, which explored our connection with celebrities. In Fantasy Sports, our celebrities are the players. Whether come through for us or let us down, they always force us to put a value on our relationship with them. - Gentry - Parasocial interaction describes a one-sided relationship in which one party knows a great deal about the other, but the other does not. How might this relationship manifest itself in the Fantasy Sports world? - Cashmore - A parasocial interaction describes the relationship fans have with figures they have never met, nor probably never will meet. Although it’s one-way interaction, this doesn’t lessen its impact on the fan who might experience the relationship as genuine and just as valid as the kind of reciprocal action he or she has with close friends. Every type of fan, whether they know it or not, has this kind of interaction with the people they like, admire, respect or even hate. The effect has been described as “intimacy at a distance” – we do get the feeling that we “know” the players, even though we may never get to within several hundred miles of them. - Gentry - How does the relationship grow or evolve when it is inherently one-sided? - Cashmore - There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Some fantasy players are content to assume a kind of passive role, allowing the players to be their proxy – that is, the people representing them in the competition. At the other extreme, there are fans who want to become more active and change the nature of the relationship. Some readers may remember the 1996 movie The Fan (directed by Tony Scott) in which an obsessive baseball fan, played by Robert De Niro, becomes incensed when he learns that a player he has idolized is in the game only for money. The experience is like that of a religious zealot who is confronted by incontrovertible evidence that God doesn’t exist. It makes him flip. The De Niro character then stalks the player, kidnaps his child and threatens to kill him. I don’t know of any fantasy players that have gone to this extreme, though it wouldn’t surprise me. - Gentry - People can get pretty emotional about their fantasy teams and their players. Why is that? - Cashmore - One of the marvelous features of fantasy play is that it’s empowering: it may be incomprehensible to outsiders, but players are actively involved in games; they’re not simply observing the action – they feel part of it. In other words, you don’t just pick a player as if you’re taking a jigsaw piece and fitting it into a puzzle. You’re actually designing your own jigsaw. This is a creative process that needs deliberation, skill and creativity. It’s the difference from playing a board game and being in that board game. Fantasy players elect players to play for them: the players will perform for them. So playing isn’t simply a matter of choosing your team then sitting back and observing: you’re in the action. No wonder fantasy players get emotional: the entire process is emotional. It’s impossible to detach yourself from the action when you’re already part of it. - Gentry - For a long time, sports fans only had to root for their real-life teams. Fantasy Sports has created conflicting rooting interests. What impact do you think this will have on how sports are consumed? - Cashmore - The whole pattern of consumption has changed dramatically over the past ten or so years. We still consume by going to games, or shops or entertainment events, but we augment these with digital technologies. Social networking has opened up new vistas of possibilities, of course, and we learn of world events, often long before they appear on internet sites or television’s news channels. Watching touchdowns, baskets or goals etc. on our portable devices seems almost old school now. Fantasy sports is the equivalent of a mash-up in music or video: taking several separate, self-contained and integrated pieces, breaking them apart, then putting something new and original together from the fragments. This takes us back to my earlier points about creativity and empowerment. Everyone is responsible for creating his or her own masterwork. And that can be a rewarding experience. - Gentry - Fantasy sports give many sports fans a chance to be a general manager. Is this a form of role playing? If so, what does it represent? - Cashmore - Role-playing is acting out a role, either consciously or unconsciously, in accordance with the perceived expectations of society. I’m not sure fantasy players are imagining what it’s like to be a head coach or a manager. I don’t actually believe they try to identify with any particular coach or manager. The vital pulse of fantasy sport is that we don’t have to be anybody in particular, not even ourselves. Fantasy sports release us to be anybody we want and perhaps several people at once. It frees us from the restrictions of everyday life. That’s why they’re literally fantastic: they’re imaginative, fanciful and remote. Second Life comes quite close: on this site anybody can assume not just another identity, but several others; they can also live out a completely different life. I don’t want to force a comparison here, though there are common features. I appreciate that some players may visualize themselves as a particular manager when they make their selections, but I’d suggest most players find the freedom offered by fantasy sports more appealing. |
| Last Updated on Thursday, 09 July 2009 20:12 |
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