Slight Detour: Friday Mutterings

A brisk north wind has been blowing since early this morning.

In fact, it was so strong just a few minutes ago, I had to hold on to my hat and trudge forward with intensity while walking north on the road.

As I type, I can hear occasional soft roars from the gusts.

I hope it stops soon and that it hasn't had any impact on fires.

Lots of good reading about athletes and teams and some fantastic photos: that's sports editor Max Oswald's Fall Sports addition to today's Daily Bee.

Once again, Max's talent, hard work and desire to do the best have blended for an attractive sports feature.

Once again, with all those sports to cover, Max is going to have a busy schedule.

We are lucky to have him chronicling our local high school sports history.

Great job, Max.

My sister Laurie came again yesterday to ride CB, and she'll come again today.

CB was feeling his oats yesterday and did not start out with quite the same work ethic that I had bragged about last week. He showed us on the lunge line that he could make a really good bronc if he wanted.

Laurie was having none of that, so CB soon realized it was a lot easier to behave and get back to the work ethic.

Once he settled in to his drills, Laurie was quite pleased with how much he had improved from last week's well-behaved session.

Hoping for no bronc action today.

💙💛💙💛💙

This Struck Me . . .

from the New York Times Morning Newsletter

In an austere warehouse, a very online political pundit sits at a small desk. Sometimes it’s a conservative — Candace Owens, say — and sometimes it’s a progressive, like Mehdi Hasan.
No matter who it is, the format is the same: The star is surrounded by a mob of 20 people who rush the desk, vying for the chance to argue against the professional rhetoricians over inflammatory proposals like “the sexual revolution has devalued women and made them infinitely less happy” or “Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza is ethnic cleansing.”

Over the course of about 90 minutes, everyone in the circle gets a go.
Officially, there are no winners in “Surrounded,” the YouTube debate series. But millions of viewers delight in watching people just like them confront famous ideological foes.
The videos aren’t really about changing anyone’s mind. They’re about the electrical charge that emerges between one star of the digital commentariat and a crowd of normies.
The staged intermingling of stars and their audiences is a staple of modern celebrity culture. But a new type of interaction is rising — the one-versus-all stunt. It promises fans more than just autographs or selfies.
The fan who wonders if the masculinist influencer Andrew Tate would consider him a “Top G” now has the chance to fight Tate, literally.
The subscriber to Bonnie Blue’s OnlyFans videos can now pay her to, well, live out what he has seen: One day this year, she had sex with more than 1,000 fans in a London apartment.
The one-against-many stunts physically embody interactions once confined to bytes and screens. They dramatize interplay between creators and the nameless masses to whom they owe their success. Today’s newsletter is about those interactions and what they mean.

A new connection

For decades, the star-fan relationship went in one direction. The average person developed a parasocial connection with stars, imagining one-sided friendships.

Fan clubs organized around exclusive knowledge. Gossip magazines purported to show celebrities who dined and shopped “just like us.”

Reality TV churned out an inexhaustible supply of everyday personas for audiences to obsess over, laugh about, compare themselves with.

The internet — and in particular the advent of social media — blazed new pathways, giving audiences a way to kick over the rope cordoning off celebrities from everyone else. You could talk to anyone who had a Twitter account. Celebrities responded to Instagram comments.

Today, content creators are in a relationship with their fans, and their work is designed to feel that way. That’s why talk shows that mimic the intimacy of close friendship dominate podcast charts.

Joining the show

In an era in which public health authorities have declared loneliness in an epidemic, it stands to reason that many Americans have invested these one-way relationships with meaning.

In turn, these creators promise more of themselves the deeper the audience is willing to go.

Substackers and podcasters offer bonus content and chat rooms for paying fans. Tate drew the participants for his rumble from the War Room, an online network with an $8,000 annual membership.

Many find that audience interaction strengthens the parasocial bond. Twitch streamers like Hasan Piker spend hours responding live to fans; Kai Cenat, another popular streamer, once let fans watch him sleeping.

The new formats are a way for passive fans to take active roles in a world they have only imagined. But because the one-on-many stunts are themselves intended for wider consumption, they produce an amplifying effect: The participation of “normal” people only intensifies the sense of intimacy.

What all of these stunts provide, too, is the chance for a member of the crowd to best an internet celebrity, to prove that he is just as good as the object of his obsession — and to complicate that bothersome one-way relationship, at least temporarily.

Because the fans are part of the content, but only for a moment. As soon as his turn ends, each participant recedes back into the crowd.

😐😐😐😐😐😐😐

To think that the all of the above reflects our world these days is a bit mind-boggling. One wonders who has the most needs: the "normies" or the celebrity.

Could be a toss-up.