Saturday, December 26, 2015

Buffalo Bills Fans (Men Fighting, Men Drinking, Men Wrestling, Men Jumping Through Tables)

Deadspin occasionally posts videos of Buffalo Bills fans doing wild and crazy things. They recently posted "The Year in Bills Fans" video, which is really a compilation of men fighting, drinking, wrestling, and jumping through tables. Around the 1:30 mark, men fight near a grill and you can hear someone saying "Watch the grill, watch the grill." Priorities!

Does this video accurately represent the behavior of 70,000 Bills fans who attend games? Of course not, but that doesn't matter so much. This is clickable stuff, whether you click on it because you find it funny, or curious, or want to condemn it, or analyze it, or just be a voyeur. Most people aren't interested in videos of people tailgating quietly while having a few beers. "Bills fans gone mild" is boring. Bills fans destroying tables is more like it. It's in the mold of Jackass and I suppose it's what some guys do to get attention. I've written before about celebrities and the pursuit of attention. The Bills fans who make it to Deadspin are a good example of ordinary men doing stunts to gain attention. Their actions could be a way of getting attention in their peer group, or in hopes of ending up in someone's social media feed. Or maybe they're just drunk and having fun. If the antics make it to the Internet, people click for laughs or jeers or, in this case, for basic sociological analysis. "Here we are now entertain us" is a more relevant lyric than ever in our 24-7-365 media world.

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