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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38426 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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But nice wasn’t good enough, and he seems intent on throwing his career down the toilet to prove it. And he doesn’t even have the courtesy to become unlikeable.

I will point out that on /r/nfl there have been a surprising (and, to me, refreshing) number of comments about how Lamar Jackson is basically a complete moron, that everyone has known for a while that he’s very low-IQ (by QB standards, at least) - there was a lot of mockery of the atrocious grammar in his tweet, and one user even referenced the fact that based on his Wunderlic score and interviews with teams before he was drafted, many teams were scared off by the fact that he is functionally illiterate - and that this has been a needless shredding of the goodwill many fans had toward him.

Of course, I do not expect any but a handful of NFL fans to start connecting any forbidden dots about what that might suggest about larger racial patterns in the league, but I was heartened by the exasperated response of most fans when there was some scuttlebutt about Lamar Jackson feeling racially-marginalized because Daniel Jones (a dead-average and whiter-than-white young quarterback for the New York Giants) got a contract and Jackson didn’t. The fans overwhelmingly shouted this down and pointed out the absurdity of the claim and the vast differences between the two players’ expectations and situations.

I will point out that on /r/nfl there have been a surprising (and, to me, refreshing) number of comments about how Lamar Jackson is basically a complete moron, that everyone has known for a while that he’s very low-IQ

I was heartened by the exasperated response of most fans when there was some scuttlebutt about Lamar Jackson feeling racially-marginalized because Daniel Jones (a dead-average and whiter-than-white young quarterback for the New York Giants) got a contract and Jackson didn’t.

He has no constituency. Usually, fans of the QB's team would go through threads downvoting critical opinions and making things unpleasant for anyone commenting on the emperor's clothes. But Ravens fans have emotionally detached from Lamar at this point.

/r/nfl threads don't reflect average opinion, but who can turn out the most passionate mob of slactivists at a given time. If Lamar had an energized base of fans, they'd probably be out in force playing the race card.

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