Major props to the Gaffer for unearthing this gem via social media.
USMNT player Alejandro Bedoya plays soccer in Europe. In addition to playing soccer, he (gasp) watches soccer!!!! How is that possible, you ask? How does he possibly do it? No, not at the same time, silly reader. When he is not playing soccer, he watches soccer. But on what? Nope, not on a major plasma screen TV. Nope, not in a dope dungeon-esque viewing layer with empty rows of old movie theater seats. Rather, on his computer.
The treachery.
No, Bedoya did not have a bunch of miniature men running around literally inside his computer.
Better said, he watched the game on his computer. He used streams. He watched three games at once. To the Gaffer’s chagrin, one of those streams was illegal. No calls were made to the F.B.I. or Interpol, but presumably the Thought Police will soon issue an arrest warrant for “aiding and abetting” the illegal transmission of copyrighted content. Bedoya, if you are reading this blog post, run. Run fast. Run far. Don’t take anything with you.
For everyone else, I’ve already expressed my opinion on the stream/Cable TV subscriber debate. Another round on that topic is for another day. However, something about Bedoya’s twittpics did bother me. Namely, he was 1) Using a PC and 2) Using a Mac. Really? Really?
As naive American soccer fans, we harbor some unreasonable expectations of wealth and prosperity when a player moves abroad. Otherwise, why would folks relocate to Scandinavian winters and Bundesliga 2? Bedoya’s failure to own a proper iPad raises some serious questions. After all, refurbished iPads are available for around $350 at the Apple store. Surely that’s the paycheck equivalent of only 20 minutes of training at his Swedish club Helsingborgs IF. If you’re going to put up with no Flash, no Word, and no Excel, do so with style, young man.
The bigger point is that social media should only ever be used like reality TV – to let American “fans” see what we want to see in an unscripted but carefully controlled and edited manner. What do we want? Wealth. Opulence. Cribs. Bling. What did we see on Bedoya’s social media? None of the above. In fact, Bedoya’s shocking revelation of a Mac desktop threatens to puncture the image of success we like to project on total strangers to help us sleep at night. It jeopardizes our comforting thoughts of “At least somebody has made it” and “In another life I could’ve….”
Please, Alejandro, buy an IPad and twittpic us. At least ask for a Kindle Fire or Google Nexus for Christmas.
Major props to the Gaffer for unearthing this gem via social media.