I consider it a sign of me getting old that I don't give a shit about a certain subset of fans of a thing that in my younger years would have turned me off to a thing. Case in point:
tptb wants the drivers clean, politically correct and socially engaged.
I started following F1 because it was about as easy to follow as the Savannah Bananas, which, no hate if you don't like them, but it's fine for someone like me that there aren't a lot of games to keep track of. But when I did start following it, my feed unintentionally got shitted up with a lot of "fan" content that I didn't get from any other sport. You can tell almost all of them have been backed into the corner of "media training" (a point of order that gives me a small and begrudging respect for Lance Stroll) which feeds into the social media nightmare that is having to create content for the fans, which then feeds the fan content creation machine, which leads to the McLaren video I posted upthread where some random girl just-so-happens to find a hot mic into which she can randomly tell you how she was totally afraid to come to a fan event, but everyone is
just so nice y'all. And when the discussion is about how the fandom is a "safe community", you get exactly the fans you deserve.
It's one thing if someone makes a nice tribute video, or comedy commentary. Even the occasional thirst video can be fun if done right, but some of the shit I've seen where it's like Lando and Oscar just
looking at each other means they're totally hooking up is not an organic reflection of the sport. It's
encouraged by Liberty Media. It's the kind of engagement they absolutely
want. Soft-looking, unintimidating boy-band types. At least you'll get the occasional allusion to Max being the final boss of the sport, but those are few and far between.
It kind of makes me wonder that if my predictions about retirements this year are correct, which just so happens to purge out almost everyone who either doesn't give a shit about this sort of thing, or has been grandfathered out, how much people who have been following the sport for years will scream "oh, for fuck's sake" and follow Max's lead into other motorsports. Thus my point about Kimi, and my small hope that Carlos gets his head on straight and retires to join his dad in Rally. They're trying to lock the drivers into this weird ecosystem where they're media mutants and not drivers.
I'm surprised McLaren hasn't dropped a dime on
Pato O'Ward yet. But maybe I should start following whatever that kid is doing.