Leave the Bears' Twitter account alone
Plus, more delicious beers and the NFL's Dan Snyder problem
I grew up an Ohio State fan, living in Michigan, during the 90s. For as much fun as the rivalry has been for me as an adult, it was not an enjoyable experience when I was a girl.
I’ll never forget what it felt like immediately after another loss in the John Cooper era and the dread of going to school that following Monday, waiting for the Michigan fans to pounce. Recently, a similar feeling crept over me, gnawing away at me until I could identify it: that’s what being on social media feels like most of the time now. Every time you log on, you know you’ll just be greeted by people being a-holes to others, often for no reason.
I took a minor Twitter break following Ohio State’s upset OT loss to Oral Roberts in the men’s basketball tournament last week. It was a tough outcome and though not all that surprising to OSU fans who watched them play way too many close games down the stretch, I didn’t want to deal with the nasty glee from other fanbases who knew nothing about this team, the fight they had, the sacrifices they made, the fact that they were missing one of their best players, or that they had played five games in eight days, three of which went to overtime while the other two went down the wire.
I swear, it didn’t always used to be like this. In 2013, after a gutting loss to Michigan State in the Big Ten football championship, I remember changing the TV to the dumbest thing I could find (the final 15 minutes of Adam Sandler’s statutory rape-themed That’s My Boy) (this is also the movie that ruined Rex Ryan’s coaching career -- Christian) and live-tweeting it (Vanilla Ice is there! Oh, an incest plot twist!) to help deal with the heartbreak.
Now after a loss, I just log off for a few days. I don’t think I’ve gotten more sensitive — or maybe I have. Too much time on Twitter, or Facebook or Instagram, has a way of changing us.
But mostly, I just think people are meaner now and that this past year, and the toll it’s taken on our collective mental health, has only exacerbated the problem. Honestly, I really worry about how some of them, who have spent 12+ hours a day on social media during the pandemic, will handle reintegration into society after brain poisoning-platforms have chipped away at both their empathy and ability to see others as human beings.
I didn’t watch much basketball the rest of the weekend. Every time I did, it was only to see how the final minutes of a close game would unfold. And I inevitably felt horrible for the losing team and hoped that none of the players would face the kind of online abuse that E.J. Liddell and others did. Afterward, I had zero desire to hop on Twitter to read smarmy reactions to, say, Texas’ or Virginia’s early exit (schools I have no affiliation with) and the same tired jokes at their expense.
During my self-appointed hiatus, I felt more relaxed and less busy. My day wasn’t immediately soured by reading a bad take and arguing with it in my head, or wondering why someone I followed liked a certain obnoxious tweet. While I also felt a bit out of the loop, I’m not really sorry I missed whatever the Cinnamon Toast Crunch/shrimp story was.
When I returned on Wednesday, I was quickly met with two developments that reminded me why I needed the break in the first place. The first was that Chrissy Teigen, one of the biggest Twitter presences of the past decade, deactivated her account because she couldn’t stop internalizing the constant vitriol directed at her for whatever (usually pretty innocuous) thing she did.
The second was this tweet, in which the Bears’ official Twitter account declared Andy Dalton as “QB1”:
I don’t know why the people in charge of the account chose to tweet that, but I have a hard time believing they were trying to troll their own fanbase. What purpose would that serve?
If I had to guess, they were either instructed to tweet something positive about Dalton or the social team decided, after a week of harassment, to do it on their own. I can’t defend the actual tweet they used — like others, I was not a fan of the Dalton signing at all because he’s a backup at this point in his career and the Bears needed a starting quarterback. (While Dalton claims he was signed to be the starter, we’ll see. Mike Glennon said the same thing a month before they drafted Mitchell Trubisky.) But I understand the sentiment behind the tweet, trying to rally around a new quarterback, even if the move was panned.
The reaction to the tweet was predictable and exhausting: people lining up to take turns dunking on it and whoever runs the account. It’s not that the Bears don’t deserve scorn or jokes at their expense for acquiring Dalton. It’s that they should be directed at GM Ryan Pace, the guy who gets paid millions to make terrible quarterback decisions. Not the young, underpaid people manning the social accounts. And not Dalton either.
I’m sure the nonstop negativity wears on whoever is behind the account, and the athletes and their families who are exposed to it. It’s draining enough to see it from the outside.
I still think there’s a place for social media and some benefits to it — keeping up with events in real time, shedding light on issues that often go unnoticed, occasionally having fun with your online friends, and sharing your silly pop culture theories. Overall, though, it does more harm than good — the misinformation, the perpetual mock outrage, the joy-thieving scolds who treat everything in absolutes and refuse to allow any room for nuance.
Yet I’m still trying to find the right balance and figure out how to have a healthy-ish relationship with social media, something I’d encourage of everyone. The best advice I can give right now: Think before you hit send, take a break when you need it, and remember that the people on the other end are all humans with feelings. Well, except for the bots. — SH
The 2021 Beer Bracket gets its Final Four
It was a harbinger of things to come. This year’s beer bracket -- a predictive NCAA Tournament model that revolves solely around how good a school’s local brewery is -- called for chaos in the first weekend of the dance. Top seeds folded, underdogs prevailed, and underserved programs across the nation earned their time in the spotlight.
This year’s real, no-foolin’ bracket went down the same path … only with significantly different teams. While the beer bracket saw three different historic 16-over-1 seed upsets, the real world went without a UMBC clone. Ohio and Colgate earned Sweet Sixteen bids and a poorly-represented Syracuse squad actually went home in the brewery rankings. It was the opposite in Indianapolis.
The good news is there were *some* hits. The Midwest Region, where chaos reigned in real life, shares three of four semifinalists with the beer bracket. And … no wait, never mind, those are the only three teams your IPA reviews correctly divined.
NEVERTHELESS. Let’s take a look at the 16 teams remaining and fight our way to a Final Four. Here’s who stuck around for the second weekend of hardcourt action.
West Region
Norfolk State (Benchtop Brewing)
Ohio (Little Fish Brewing)
Wichita State (Central Standard)
VCU (Hardywood Park Craft Brewery)
South Region
Hartford (New Park Brewing)
North Texas (Armadillo Ale Works)
Colgate (Good Nature Farm Brewery & Tap Room)
Florida (Swamp Head Brewery)
Midwest Region
Loyola Chicago (Revolution Brewing)
Oregon State (Block 15 Brewing Co.)
San Diego State (Ballast Point)
Houston (Saint Arnold Brewing Company)
East Region
Texas Southern (Karbach Brewing Co.)
Colorado (Avery Brewing Company)
Michigan State (Ellison Brewery & Spirits)
UConn (Willimantic Brewing Co.)
Winners in the next two rounds are determined by Beer Advocate ratings for brews with at least five user-submitted reviews. Each company spent its top-two beers to make it this far, so depth will become an issue. And, as previously mentioned, the kind of person who makes an online profile just to talk about beer is also typically the kind of person who really likes trendy malts, barrel-aged behemoths, or both. Expect a lot of frou frou choices here instead of, say, an Oktoberfest lager or a regular porter.
Loyola-Chicago! The Ramblers keep Rambling! Cameron Krutwig looks like more of a High Life guy, but his city’s top craft brewery, Revolution, looks like a national championship favorite at this point. Loyola is joined by a pair of reasonable Cinderellas with Wichita State and UConn. And while double Nutmeg State representation would be weird in the actual Final Four, you don’t need to look much farther than the proliferation of New England IPAs or the early craft movement in the northeast to understand why Hartford isn’t an entirely surprising participant.
So, there you have it. Your Final Four teams are:
Wichita State (Central Standard)
Hartford (New Park Brewing)
Loyola Chicago (Revolution Brewing)
UConn (Willimantic Brewing Co.)
Based on this weekend’s results, it looks like we’re headed for a classic Chicago-Connecticut rivalry. We’ll have the exciting conclusion to this year’s bracket ready to go … next Friday, because we make sure we wring every drop out of our schtick here at the Post Route. —CD
So much for the Football Team
For the first time in, well, forever, there’s been a lot to like about football the Washington Football Team. Over the last year, the name FINALLY changed, dropping the ugly racial epithet that “honored” nobody was a big, big deal after years and years of obstinacy from team owner Dan Snyder, his fellow NFL owners, the league office, and legions of online dipshits. Cleaning out the lackeys in the front office and bringing in a legitimately good person and good football coach, Ron Rivera, helped put a wall between the organization’s larger dysfunction and the product on the field. And they even made some smart moves in free agency to improve the team.
Despite that progress, sexual harassment allegations concerning the team and owner Dan Snyder himself got the usual NFL sweeping under the rug via independent investigation. Snyder settled in December over the allegations he faced. So, the problems in the foundation of the franchise are still there, even if they’re concealed by a fresh coat of paint on the house itself.
But this won’t be the end of dysfunction for that team. It’s probably just a lull. How do I know this? Because of the news that broke this week:
The main source of the Football Team’s underlying problems is still there. Worse, he now controls the whole operation, and he’s only accountable to his fellow owners. So instead of giving him the Jerry Richardson treatment—i.e. forcing him to sell the team and fumigating pro football of his foul essence—Synder maintains his place in the NFL’s billionaires club, atop a franchise he can’t help but fuck up.
So just in case you thought it might finally be safe to root for Washington, NOPE! —RVB