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Penny Arcade - Comic - Real Shit
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Penny Arcade - Comic - Real Shit
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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She was not disqualified, she just left before they had the chance to do so. Perhaps the organization would have made an exception for her, but Osaka decided for them. I'm sure that with the backlash as it is now Roland Garros would not have disqualified her after all. But the fact they threatened her with it is telling of the kind of business model they demand of all players.
All in all I think the idea that she didn't want to talk with the press because of an introverted character type is a bit silly. This is more than that, she came out and explained she is struggling with depression. Gabe & Tycho come out in support of her, but seem to misunderstand exactly what's going on. I'm sure she's also introverted, but that's not why she didn't want to talk with the press.
Osaka explained that she was dealing with depression and did not want to speak with the press at that time. Both Venus and Serena Williams, Navratilova and Billie Jean King have come out in support of her decision to place her mental health before her obligation to chat with the press. All four of them underlined the importance of taking care of both body and mind. Even the Japanese tennis association is supporting Osaka.
But let's be clear, she is a PROFESSIONAL tennis player. She chose this sport. She chose to pursue it to this level. Dealing with the public and the media are part and parcel of this job.
In my job, if I feel I'm not up to going in that day there are allowances for that. Personal days, sick days, mental health days etc. If you are feeling down and can't deal with the whole job, stay home, for your own sake. For Osaka doing those interviews and dealing with those questions is part of her chosen profession, part of the job.
Depression is real. Mental health issues shouldn't have any kind of stigma attached to them (though they still do), but in this case I have to disagree with her stance.
When you're going through shit, but you can still do a part of your job very well, then your employer can also make allowances for that. That's something that exists.
I don't have to list the differences between a tennis player and Joe Shmoe working his nine-to-five, but perhaps you were unaware that tennis players are not employed by a club or an association. Professional tennis players usually have one shot at cashing in on their talent. Waste that shot and you're gone. Exceptions to these rules are notable, but absolutely not the norm (Andre Agassi, for example). Osaka is 23, if she were to stop playing professional tennis until her mental health improves she will probably miss out on her whole career. If she can still excel on the court then there should be no reason for her to completely quit.
Which is why she's expected to play tennis well. And it looks like she does.
So, no problem.
The only way I could support her more is if she had completely blasted the press in a fiery rant.
That is the current expectation, yes. People are saying it shouldn't be. I'd say they're right.
I have mixed feelings about this. I kind of side with @Tempest8008 about doing press being part of the job. Like if you had an actor and they refused to do any press for the movie. To view professional sports as anything other than a business is to be naïve about how those things make the money they do. Even amateur sports played at the higher level is like that. What those businesses that host those event wants more than anything is to make money, not to exemplify the maximum in athletic performance.
But then @Aldo makes a pretty valid point about the special circumstances for tennis players in their prime.
And really, just because businesses are set up that way doesn't mean we shouldn't push back against it. To quote my fellow fake Minnesotan, there's more to life than a little money, ya know. They're going to make plenty money anyway, so let's side with being a bit more humane. Especially because every time someone widely known is capable of saying, "I am depressed, and I'm standing up for myself", that inspires lots of people in the same situation to be able to prioritize their mental health more, if only a little bit. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that this one act by her probably saved at least one life somewhere in the world.
I really appreciate how you point out that you have a method of taking a day off provided by your employer, but state she should do her job or 'stay home'
Isn't that basically what she did? And then she was fined for it.
I looked it up, and she reportedly made "an estimated $50 million off the court" in endorsements in the last year. She also earned $16 million in endorsements in 2019 and they report her total prize money at almost $20 million. The $15,000 fine is chump change. It's more about the message being sent. Though being kicked out of the French Open could have a more substantial effect, including that full $50 million not paying out because it isn't up-front money.
As much as any athlete "deserves" to be paid the huge amounts of money they do (for bringing even huger amounts of money in to the organizations they play for), she shouldn't be locked out. I hope they reverse their stance against her, out of fear of bad public relations if they can't manage to do it from human decency.
They always say the same shit, too. Gotta execute better, need to look at the film, need to change how we're doing things, just wasn't our night, blah blah fucking blah. You could get a chat auto-responder bot to generate more stimulating answers.
While I agree with all that, they wouldn't do them if people didn't watch them, and if people didn't watch them they wouldn't get advertising money. It's the circle of cash.
They should all do Marshawn Lynch and say they are only there to avoid getting fined.
pleasepaypreacher.net
She or any other athlete aren't selling their athletic ability; they're selling sports as a dominant entertainment form. She could win the matches just as well if there were no cameras or audience at them. Yet those things are there. The sports industry isn't just sports.
Well, they do them because they're hoping for a Dennis Green moment because that's what people want to see. They want to see a hot response from someone who's hurting that might make tomorrow's headline. But I take your point, it's about exposure and money.
I still find them to be tremendously stupid, and as more athletes are coming forward about their experiences, pretty fucking sick and wrong.
I don't think anyone tunes in to a sport for the press conferences. Again Marshawn Lynch highly entertaining on the field, shit interview, why would I care about the part he clearly he doesn't want to do. Or Greg Popovich, shit sports interview, but great coach. Ain't got nothing to do with promoting a sport, everything to do with feeding a group of whiny hasbeens and never was, feewings.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Listening to aftergame interviews with athletes is painful any time they come up on the radio station I listen to for news while driving. It's a whole lot of words that say nothing aside from sometimes making it clear that this person was hired for their ability at some aspect of a sport and not the ability to string a coherent sentence together.
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The entertainment form is from watching the match for most people. Sure there's some people outside the press and pr folk who care the interviews, but let's not pretend that's what the majority of people are there for. It is at best, icing on the cake.
I'm not "pretending" anything. I know there's a huge amount of people that follow sports obsessively. All those people are advertising dollars. They wouldn't spend the time and money on all these things outside the match if it didn't make money. It's just common sense.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Even if it's 1/4th, that may be much better than what they have to air right after the match. Especially since matches can end at times that aren't fully predictable. The one guaranteed thing they could put on immediately after a match would be the interviews with the people in the match. And people who are interested in that match don't have to remember to tune in because they were already tuning in. If it keeps enough eyeballs on the screen, it's worth it to them.
I'm not asking you to like it, or agree that it's valuable thing to you. It certainly isn't any of those things for me. I'm just saying that it is a logical business move, and I can at least understand the forces that make the world as it is.
I'd be willing to bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in your pockets that the folks who follow sports obsessively generally don't care about interviews until the next morning when there's a headline about something someone said in an interview.
That's the whole purpose of post-game interviews, is to get a hot take or read and to get something salacious out of it. 9 times out of 10 you get nothing, and then every now and then you get, "YOU WANNA CROWN 'EM?"
I bet the advertisers would prefer to just show the big board of sponsor logos that the athletes stand in front of without them getting in the way, but this way they can pretend it's an integral part of the sport to know that winning a game = good feels and losing a game = bad feels
Well, since we can't prove it, what's the point of that? I mean, beyond bluster?
What I'm saying is that you have to first understand what the financial incentives are for the companies - and they do not do this without financial incentives - if you ever expect anything to change. If you just rail away at the stupidity/unfairness in a vacuum, you're just going to be doing that forever. But if can hit them in the pocketbook, things will change.
And that's exactly what Osaka did. She hit them where it hurt: right in the dollars. A popular athlete sitting out the French Open rather than give into their demands will hurt them financially. Plus it's bad PR for the sport, which will again lower viewership and hurt them financially. And she damn well got their attention.
I would argue that means that they do care about the interviews because they still care about what was said even if it isn't until the next morning. That's something that I feel all the people shitting on the interviews are forgetting. The interviews also provide the headlines and articles that the enthusiasts read after the match. It's always a little amusing to me how we're such a media obsessed society today, but yet we still hate on the institutions that provide the media that we ravenously consume.
-Tycho Brahe
The simple reality is that the sports press is learning the hard way that athletes no longer need them as intermediaries to the public, which means that they no longer get to dictate the terms of the relationship anymore. It also doesn't help that the sports press hasn't exactly covered themselves in glory, resulting in the fans seeing many of them as vultures. Probably the best example of "not getting it" was a piece over at Vichy Deadspin, where one off their writers wrote a "you need us!" rant that was just utterly sad. (In comparison, the Defector crew, who actually know how to do their job, were much more reflective on the matter.)
She called the WTA's bluff, and showed they had nothing. It wasn't lost on anyone that the representative for the Open left without answering questions.
https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2021/may/31/were-not-the-good-guys-osaka-shows-up-problems-of-press-conferences
Seriously, read the questions being asked to female athletes and dare to tell me those pressers aren't ridiculous.
Like any other entertainer, professional athletes rely on publicity to promote their business and earn money. Do athletes have other ways of getting their message out? Sure. That might reduce their role, but it doesn't make the press irrelevant. And I for one don't want to see a world where the press does nothing but report on what athletes say on Twitter. (We tried that with politics; it sucked.)
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I would argue that if she had given them considerable notice that they would have spent that time finding a way to force her to do the interviews rather than learn anything from it, and it probably would have hit the news cycle much softer with the Open further away.
Also most athletes who have come forward about their experiences aren't saying, "No interviews." They're saying, "No post-game/match hot read interviews."
Like, I just lost a game in front of 10,000 people while 10 million watched from home, give me 24 hours to fucking process that before throwing me into the den of vipers.
Sorry, but no. The WTA shouldn't be in the business of playing enforcer for a press that is routinely abusive to the athletes in order to gin up controversy and sell stories. That's what Osaka caught them out on, and it was a long time coming.
And nobody is saying that the sports press is irrelevant - what is being pointed out is that the days where the press dictated the terms of the relationship between them and the athletes is coming to an end. If the press wants to get athletes to respond to questions, then they can cultivate actual relationships with them.
We Lost: Yeah, we lost, that uh, that sucks. Yep, they got more points than us, definitely. But I am still so proud of this team, and these fans, what a year we had/are having. Well goodbye.
We Won: Yepo, pretty happy about this, the winning part. It was close or maybe it wasn't close but we either pulled it out or we didn't lose focus, so proud of this team, and these fans, what a year. Well goodbye.
Just excise them completely.
Correction: I'm saying that the sports press are irrelevant.
The Sports Press are irrelevant.
There: I said it.
The whole industry could disappear from the face of the planet and in a month no one would even remember it was there or be sad if they did.
I think what this analysis is missing is that the sporting events and the media that cover them have a mutualistic arrangement. The media pay a huge chunk of money to air the events and spend a lot of time covering them with pre and post game shows. That's part of the business deal, and each side of that puts money in the pocket of the deal's participants.
So if the sports media industry disappeared, whether or not people remembered the sports event industry would sure notice. They'd be getting less money and advertising for their events. Players would probably be getting less prize money/salary because the whole budget shrank down (you know they're not going to just shrink down the non-player budget).
Now, maybe players would be okay with that, especially ones that manage to get big endorsements that dwarf their actual direct pay. Of course, those superstars are by definition a small percentage of the people actually playing the games. A lot of those in team sports really aren't getting paid all that much to begin with.
Again, please don't attack me because you (the poster I am replying to or anyone else) don't like the system. You'll probably get a lot of likes if you do, because everyone likes to say "this sucks!" I'm not saying it doesn't suck. I'm just talking about how it works right now. To say that the sports press are irrelevant is missing how the entire sports industry is structured.
Edit: And I say that because if you just say "burn the system down!" nothing will change. But if you do like Osaka did and use the power of players (because we all agree that they are the one thing that's required for the actual sport), you can actually change the parts that are the problem. It's all about negotiation. Because it is a business and the parties involved will look after the business interest before anything else. They're not interested in doing this for the love of the game.
The sports press, like all press, serves an important function when it reports on genuine matters of import. This is why Defector is respected to the point that they can survive on a subscription model - the writers and journalists there actually do discuss those issues. But the thing is that the dog and pony show of press conferences ain't that.
I totally feel the sentiment, but I can't go that far. I'm not saying they're a net positive, but some sports writers have used sports as a platform for talking about ideas, and some athletes have forced certain topics into the mainstream, and without sports press they wouldn't have that platform.
Malcom X, Colin Kaepernick, Naomi Osaka, for examples of athletes (by no means an exhaustive list, I'd be here all day). Bob Costas for a really good example of a sports press guy. He's been banging all sorts of drums and getting in trouble for it for years. It wasn't that long ago that he started an open discussion, on a sports show, about how patriotism is only associated with the military, why not doctors, teachers? He's also been pretty open about some gun-related murder-suicides by athletes and talking openly about gun control on sportsball programs.
I think the primary focus right now is to get these hot read post-game interviews a kick in the ass out the door, and that the press is gonna have to earn access to athletes. They need those interviews just as much as org owners need them to happen.
NFL on the other hand has it contractually mandated that athletes be available at least twice a week for 45 minutes to do press events. That being said all press is pre-screened by the NFL, and any reporters acting in a way the NFL doesn't like don't come back, and they are super serial about that. Which is why reporters are on their very best behavior, because the NFL pretty much can say they don't like the tone of your question to Tom Brady, you are no longer welcome, and they don't get to be a sports reporter any more. It doesn't happen often, and usually they only pull your media credentials for doing really annoying things, like doing a sit-in protest in league offices. But the threat of them being able to pull your credentials at any time and ending your career is real and always there.
College football is different because the NCAA is incredibly careful about making sure to not give ammo to the argument that athletes are employees - this the league doesn't force players to talk to the press.
And that description illustrates why nobody respects the press conference dog and pony show - the players are forced to be there, and the press are forced to not ask actual questions of substance. It's a meaningless performative act.