Why so angry this year
- Thread starter jsb
- Start date
Agreed. You can question some things about Prohm’s in-game coaching, but I feel like his ability to get the team to respond to adversity has been showcased plenty over the last 4 years. This is actual a strength for CSP.
I don’t disagree at all. I think Jared hit it on the head during the end of the year podcast. What are the expectations for Iowa State basketball? I think some believe this is a Top 25 program while others believe it is a Top 40 program. If you are a Top 25 program then simply getting to the tournament every year is the base line requirement.
So the program is currently meeting the requirements then.
Why so much anger...? Because anger is fun. It establishes us versus them. Our monkey brains eat that stuff up. Watch five minutes of cable news programs.
In the 20th Century, we figured out that sex sold.
In the 21st Century, we figured out that anger sold.
We are victims of our own success. Our lives have become so safe, prosperous, plentiful, easy, and anodyne (on any historical scale, compared to what it was like to be a factory worker in the early portions of the industrial revolution, a peasant, serf, or slave anywhere between 1700 AD and 10,000 BC, or a hunter-gather between then and roughly 200,000 years) ago on a day-to-day basis that the tribal plains ape inside all of us is bored to death.
It wants blood, violence, action, sex, aggression, vendetta -- the things that put our species and specifically our particular ancestors (as opposed to others long forgotten) on top.
To placate this instinct lately, however, we have mostly taken to performative flame wars on mostly symbolic questions or topics that do not really mean much regarding the fate of the world. ISU's record in basketball definitely falls into these categories. Roughly 95%+ (and heading northwards by the day) of our politics is the same, but that is another (if related) topic.
This season was not really much different than any of our other successful ones from the Hoiberg era, the 1990s, or the Johnny Orr era. We are just more bored as a society nowadays, have normalized rage monkeys, and have larger megaphones for it now.
I am sure there were the proverbial "drunk at the end of the bar" types wanting Orr and Floyd's heads back in the day, too. You might have even listened to them for a laugh a few times, too. Yet, that was all they were and all they could reach. You could always just walk away when you were bored of it. Now they have a smartphone, Twitter, and an LTE connection.
In the 20th Century, we figured out that sex sold.
In the 21st Century, we figured out that anger sold.
We are victims of our own success. Our lives have become so safe, prosperous, plentiful, easy, and anodyne (on any historical scale, compared to what it was like to be a factory worker in the early portions of the industrial revolution, a peasant, serf, or slave anywhere between 1700 AD and 10,000 BC, or a hunter-gather between then and roughly 200,000 years) ago on a day-to-day basis that the tribal plains ape inside all of us is bored to death.
It wants blood, violence, action, sex, aggression, vendetta -- the things that put our species and specifically our particular ancestors (as opposed to others long forgotten) on top.
To placate this instinct lately, however, we have mostly taken to performative flame wars on mostly symbolic questions or topics that do not really mean much regarding the fate of the world. ISU's record in basketball definitely falls into these categories. Roughly 95%+ (and heading northwards by the day) of our politics is the same, but that is another (if related) topic.
This season was not really much different than any of our other successful ones from the Hoiberg era, the 1990s, or the Johnny Orr era. We are just more bored as a society nowadays, have normalized rage monkeys, and have larger megaphones for it now.
I am sure there were the proverbial "drunk at the end of the bar" types wanting Orr and Floyd's heads back in the day, too. You might have even listened to them for a laugh a few times, too. Yet, that was all they were and all they could reach. You could always just walk away when you were bored of it. Now they have a smartphone, Twitter, and an LTE connection.
The Kansas City romance goes way back to the 1st time that Johnny Orr got us to the championship game against the Okies and Wayman Tisdale....and that KC fever started then and has never broken and probably never will....I know I enjoy the KC tourney a whole lot more than the ncaa's....I hate to admit it, but that is where I stand.....
KC is a fun town and they've adopted ISU fans and we've embraced the city. Fun stuff to do, good food and pretty easy to get around. It's fun to go to KC when the opportunity arises.
Good for you JSB, you've got balls (and I know not physiologically speaking)! I congratulate you for telling it like it is, or how you feel. I often feel the same way. Life as a fan maybe was better in some ways w/o the internet.
What we see on this site and others might be a microcosm of our society today. I don't mind criticism, and differences of opinion, but too often it seems like the imaginary line is crossed. It's like there is no line anymore. People are sometimes flat out mean, overly critical, pompous, etc. We often speak without thinking first, I don't know. As I get older I think it is better to think a little before speaking.
Good post, needed.
