By Ron Wolforth –
Bless her heart, my wife tries very hard to get me to regularly comment on our social media outlets.
In her defense, I know I should write more content in support of our business and share our information, our philosophy and our processes, but in my mind, this is what immediately comes to my mind when I hear the term ‘social media’:
Quite frankly, most of it actually repulses me. While some of it may even be offered in good fun, and some of it may actually be helpful and inspiring, I find a vast majority of it sophomoric, insipid, narcissistic and desperately shallow. Therefore, I RARELY indulge.
Then there are the Twitter and Facebook wars. Sports, religion and politics….’woof’. Those twitter dumpster fires are incredibly hard to read sometimes. They are often full of insults, slams, vitriol, disparaging remarks and gotcha punch lines. Then apparently, my followers are supposed to ‘blow you up’ and then your followers blow me up some more. Sounds more like a 7th grade girls clique soap opera to me. I want no part of it.
Lately these media platforms are doing something even more sinister. They are censoring what can be posted. Sounds like a good idea, right? ‘Let’s keep the discourse civil and truthful’, they say. ‘Let’s get some ‘adults’ in the room!’ they say.
Here’s ALWAYS the problem with limiting speech. Who is going to determine what is ‘civil’ or ‘truthful’? Is that determination one person’s judgment or a group’s? What are the metrics of that decision? How are those decisions arrived at, levied and administered? And if I disagree with that assessment, what is my recourse for arbitration?
Just the other day Selena Gomez made national news by demanding Facebook stop sharing “hate, misinformation, racism, and bigotry”.
Bravo Miss Gomez, right?
As I quickly scanned the piece it was clear to me that her naivety was absolutely breathtaking. How exactly does one go about defining and assessing ‘hate’ and ‘misinformation’ so that the assessment is both fair and equally applied without influence or favor? This is no small feat.
What Miss Gomez was really saying was, “Mr. Zuckerberg there are some very mean people who are saying some things I don’t agree with so can you just kick them out of our club?”
She completely fails to comprehend that in making her perfect dream society, when only people’s perspectives that she approved of are acceptable, what would be the result if in the future, someone else came into power at Facebook and designated her viewpoint as counterfeit, evil or unacceptable? Hmmmm.
I have a strong feeling that thought NEVER occurred to her. It should.
That’s the challenge with free speech in a free society. It is messy. There are already some small restrictions on free speech in the USA…for example you can’t call out ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre when there is no fire and cases on free speech go to the courts every single day…some even to the Supreme Court. Again ‘free speech’ is not a simple assessment nor a simple application. We’ve been working at it for over 200 years and it’s still very much a work in progress.
While we in the USA are not perfect at it, our freedom of speech remains one of the greatest blessings of our American heritage.
Every day I see the insidious nature of censorship and expurgation leaking even into our discussions in sports. Case in point, pitch counts in 2020 have just been accepted by the baseball universe at large to be sacrosanct and directly tied to injuries even though reality clearly indicates that pitch counts need all important context to be useful and valid.
Far too often coaches who break these arbitrary pitch count rules will be ostracized by the self-appointed ‘pitch count police’. This of course is absurd on its face but very few are interested in having a real discussion on ANY subject that takes longer than 27 characters or doesn’t end in a real zinger. We want to simply impose our will and tell the opposition to stuff a sock in it.
Did you watch Tuesday night’s debate?
I rest my case.
Until next time,
Stay curious and keep fighting the good fight.
RW
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Important TBR Updates
- Our Fall/Winter Elite Pitcher’s Boot Camp dates are filling up fast. Those dates include October 10-12, November 21-23, December 28-30 and January 16-18. For more information or to register go to www. TexasBaseballRanch.com/events.
- Only 2 spots remain in our Youth Pitchers Camp (October 17-18) so don’t delay in registering if you want to attend. For more information on this camp, please visit www.TexasBaseballRanch.com/events
- Newest events added to our calendar:
- Our 21st Annual “Ultimate Pitching Coaches Bootcamp” is December 4-6 with bonus night on December 3rd. Coach Wolforth has put together another great lineup. Details at www.coachesbootcamp.com
- Our 2nd Annual “Elite CATCHERS Bootcamp is December 11-13th. Space limited to the first 30 catchers ages 14 & up. Click here for all the details!
- Response to our “Ranch Remote” training option has been exciting. It’s a program for people that would still like to get access to, and ongoing instruction from, the TBR staff but prefer to avoid travel due to the virus. Click here to get more information on this NEW, hyper-personalized training option. Space is limited in this program and we only have a few spots still left so if you’re interested, don’t delay.
for more details or to sign up for any of these options.
