The Didactic Sub-growth Of Pop Culture

Promotion for the Mayweather vs. Paul Exhibition fight - image credit: The New Yorker, 2021

To start, unrelated to the image or the related stigma to the event itself, the defining question of the whole concept of entertainment itself is: it is worth the money, fame, and tawdry relevant behavior?

   There is a point in time where there were borders between real sports and certified, and glorified entertainment - whether its a combat sport that contains physical fighting and abuse (that takes professional training for years), and events that are faces that turn businesses into circuses. This related topic is just one of many examples - you have the Kardashian family that had an episode where they performed in "boxing" matches against essentially strangers, that just wanted to be on television and beat them up to gain attention from people they knew, presumably. In more recent events, Aaron Carter - a former musician that has had his myriad of issues with drugs and legal problems that have almost left him destitute, box in a fight against Lamar Odom. Ironically, Lamar Odom can be related back to the show "Keeping up with the Kardashians" but was unrelated with that particular episode. Odom himself has had his fair share of legal and drug problems, almost taking his life. The match was on the brink of sheer baffling worthy embarrassment. For the sake of Carter, who based on physical appearance and stature, never stood a chance. Odom ended up knocking him out pretty casually, ending a fight that just begs numerous syllogistic questions. Do these type of events solely want the revenue, the numbers, people to watch them like fighting cage chickens, and laugh at them while eating popcorn - or are these people really "fighting" for a second chance in pop-culture? Staying topical in a society our world has to offer will bring one to the brim of the insane and preposterous. A related topic that I will get into later synonymous to Logan Paul is the YouTube culture; there are members of that culture like David Dobrik, who is looked up upon from adolescents and teenagers as a God, who in YouTube videos will seemingly do whatever it takes to makes someone watch his videos, thus saying and doing pompous, ignorant things to get attention - and now coming to the surface that one of his videos facilitated a sexual assault containing one of his video "vlog" members. In that realm of online clickbait horrible behavior, will this hopefully draw a line in a world where platforms are getting muddied and blown out of proportion? (To say the least). In reference back to the stratosphere of staying topical in a society that people want to see more and more absurd behavior, events, and concepts, do these people really want to improve themselves and be a figure for youth to look up to, or they just begging for relevancy among a mass of people that will never let it be enough?

   This new wave of dirty-aired and want-to-be bad boy culture in celebrity boxing, which for the most part, has just started. For the minority of people that have read and watched these events, it his arguable to say they are doing this for the respect and dignity for the sport and the people related to it that dedicate their existence to make it better and securely understood. A sport where families, neighborhoods, countries, and coalitions are brought together to train, build, and strengthen themselves for something that they have dedicated their lives to. Not for notoriety, fame, money, or ruthlessness. A combat sport can channel mind, body, and soul, and for the ones that actual find this inner peace in something like this, most find this new demand in celebrity boxing a metaphorical jab to the stomach. Watching interviews with figures related to the sport will almost try to 100% dismiss the idea of stooping down to the didactic spirit of someone trying to do what they do, for their livelihood, but appropriating it by using a piggy-back off of a streaming app, like Vine (which no longer exists, ironically) or YouTube, or reality television. Most of the time these people, that refer to themselves as "heroes," "figures," and "influencers" like Logan Paul, Jake Paul, Bryce Hall, and Austin McBroom will do or say anything arrogant to on the spectrum of crass, narrow-minded, and imbecile. These people range subscriptions from anywhere to 5 million to 25 million subscribers - while with the sociological perspective relation to these men, and unfortunately how much "influence" they actually have, is turning a young generation into fraudulent punks, while bringing in income to do it, just more positive reinforcement for something that does not deserve nowhere near such thing. 

   To finally discuss the highest yet lowest behemoths of the entertainment world to bring in the most substantial attention, is the exhibition boxing match between Floyd "Money" Mayweather and Logan "Maverick" Paul. With the nicknames alone, one would think this was a character-based WWE charity wrestling event that they would do and then go back to their respective lives. But no, this was a very serious, planned, and juvenile marketed event that people thought was not real at first. For starters, Floyd Mayweather is one of those athletes and boxers that did come from nothing, did work hard to come up through the ranks, and did respect the sport. To put on the standard of morals and ethics for Floyd as a person; the man a lot of young boxers have looked up to and still do has had a egregious past with domestic violence. In numerous different instances he has been in legal trouble with either hitting his wife or girlfriend at the time. In the timespan from 2001 to 2010, Mayweather has been arrested for hitting women, fighting with multiple women at the same time, and stalking women. For which majority of these cases were settled with "negotiation."  

Mayweather sitting inside a Las Vegas Courtroom in 2011.

Source: Business Insider, 2015.

   When it comes to the lens of a young man and looking up to an athlete just based on sport, it begs the question how important that sport really is?

It is not, and when you have a man that keeps getting paid more and more money to fight other grown men, that just adds more dirty air to the fire. With being notoriously poor and immorally behaved, and business figures mix actually business and marketing to it, the end result is usually not benefitting the teaching of a young generation of people to take the moral high ground. This type of event was mixed with a man by the name of Logan Paul, who had has his own type of negative press and notoriety with fame coming from the app Vine, and YouTube. Let a lone the blatant disregard for respect of elders and other people and personal space (as a result from being famous on an online platform) all society and business ventures see, as a result of all the crude attention, is money. 

Source: ABC News, 2017.

With the suicide forest incident of Logan Paul in 2017, where he filmed the dead body of a man who had killed himself in Aokigahara Forest. Where a so called "beloved" online star time after time messes up and is given chances, makes money off of it and then deliberately does something that is maniacally disrespectful and unforgiveable, is sat down for a while.

Well, pop-culture and entertainment didn't sit him down and leave him in time-out for too long. With the self-proclaimed "Maverick" who needed to rebrand himself and a series of publicized disasters - went to, you guessed it, boxing. Paul went to YouTube once again and released boxing footage with his brother, Jake, who is nothing short of a delinquent himself, (and an aspiring "professional" boxer himself) to show that they were on the "right path" after lawsuits and a loss of income. With himself boasting numbers of online presence, one could say it was almost inevitable that something like this would happen. A rejuvenated yet still villainized online star to box the best boxer of the last 20 years? It couldn't be. It shouldn't be. While with all of the bad influence in the world for people to grab onto, countless sponsors hopped on, and Showtime Sports inked the dumbfounding deal. With a novice boxer versus one of the best to ever do it, people were scratching their heads and pondering how bad it could be. That is where the capitalistic society runs over the pragmatic and logical one, because two men, who have a track record, and a wrap sheet of mistakes and foul behavior, will outsell heart, hard work, and determination within the same sport. Business and entertainment money does not care what the children, young women, young men, and aspiring athletes see or hear in the development. It is all about numbers, and for the ones to boast about it later.