The Over-Financialization Of Everything
On turning everything into a money grab.
You’ve seen the ads on the player’s helmets in the MLB playoffs. Everything is advertising. Space must be sold if money is to be made. It’s surreal.
This has happened for over a decade – sports uniforms are slowly becoming billboards. But it’s not just sports anymore. The financialization of everything is here. You can bet on the outcome of a single pitch. Higher education is not about learning but delivering profit. People’s dating lives can be enhanced by buying a premium subscription.
Of course, gambling and fantasy sports are the ultimate example of this. Those who message players who don’t perform to their standards will always annoy me. I will never understand criticizing a player who led his team to victory but didn’t live up to his fantasy football expectations. I can’t fathom being angry at someone you never met and who never owed anything to you. The number of people who messaged Lamar Jackson over his play after leading his team to a 25-point victory over the Buffalo Bills must have been large if he felt the need to tweet about it.
The worst are those, who don’t poke fun but take it too seriously and threaten these players for “poor” performance. Fans who can’t watch the game without betting on every prop, side, basket, or pass. Who can only watch a game if they have a stake in it. Who message people like Armando Bacot, a basketball player for UNC, and lead him to say,
“I thought I played pretty good last game, but I looked at my DMs, and I got, like, over 100 messages from people telling me I sucked and stuff like that because I didn’t get enough rebounds.”
Who doesn't understand that these players have lives outside of fantasy and care about a paycheck not fantasy points. The worst is hearing stories like David Montgomery’s, a running back for the Detroit Lions,
"When I was a rookie, I had a real, real stressful time in the league. I was at a point where I would have this suicidal thought and it was just a depression... And unfortunately, the people in fantasy were kind of helping me be aided to feeling that way. And I was at a point where I was scared to live."
It is horrible. These are the most extreme examples – but monetizing everything is ingrained in us now. The pressure to always make more money or involve money somehow is a real issue. We are addicted to monetizing everything and along the way, lose the fabric of what made something beautiful. The Costco Hot Dog is infamous because it has always been $1.50. The $1 Arizona Ice Tea is iconic.
But this is what keeps the company afloat and helps to make things fun! In what world? Sporting events, baseball uniforms, and higher education used to not be like this.
Look at the things that stray too far into over-financialization. Twitter now encourages slop and fear. It is fraying from the fabric that built it. Fear gets clicks, not educational content. A fight at a sporting event or a person getting their leg run over by a bus is much more eye-popping than a video on renting vs. buying a home. But we continue to fall for it. We so easily forget what making everything about money can do. We forget how irrational money can make us. What it leads us to see in our everyday lives.
It is why I resent everything turning into a money grab. Those who make the most money focus on it the least and don’t try to extract every penny out of you. Monster Energy, Lululemon, and Domino’s Pizza are great examples. Isn’t this a basic rule of business? Focus more on your product and pleasing your customers, and that is how you do better business?
Here’s the thing: a lot of people hate it. They don’t want their favorite team’s stadium naming rights to be sold to the highest bidder. They resent wearing their favorite player’s jersey because it is a billboard, not a jersey. They rarely use Twitter anymore because it is not what it used to be. People gravitate towards things that improve without selling its soul for money.
Maybe we are too deep for people to believe. We have time to switch. The NFL doesn’t have a single ad on their jerseys. Students are prioritizing their financial well-being and finding cheaper alternatives for higher education. People are ditching dating apps to find love in real life. To make everything about money is unnecessary. Hoping to monetize something is not what we should aspire to. If anything, it should be the opposite. It is superficial and empty in exchange.
Stop selling off our lives to be about money. Stop selling it to be about making the most money. Some things are sacred. The $1 Arizona Ice Tea works. An NFL jersey keeps its beauty because it doesn’t have a “STRAUSS” label in the middle of it. We don’t have to monetize everything.
-Scantron
Appreciate you and your time. I would love to hear from you.
1) This reminds me of the FIFA docuseries on Netflix. It takes us through the history of the game, how it had zero sponsorships and ads for the first century of international play, but then in the mid 1900s it turned into one of the most commercialized and corrupt sports leagues in the world.
2) Small rant: The worst part of the baseball postseason has been the green screen ads behind home plate, which interferes with where the batter stands, so it looks like hitters are cosplaying Timothee Chalamet wearing his shield armor in Dune.