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Kelce is a Super Bowl champion, charismatic, good looking, talented, and interesting to a lot of people because he’s dating the most famous woman in the history of the world. It don’t think it’s anything besides that.
The most famous woman in the history of the world would be Virgin Mary, I believe.
If we only consider women who were indisputably real, I suspect the most famous woman in history would be Queen Elizabeth II.
The first answer to come to my mind on "Who is the most famous woman in history apart from Virgin Mary" was Cleopatra, though Queen Elizabeth II would be a great answer.
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The Chiefs have been in 4 of the last 5 Superbowls (winning 3), and 6 of the last 6 AFCCGs. Kelce has the most postseason receiving yards in NFL history. And Mahomes is famously weird and uncharismatic.
I mean, I don't agree with the conclusions here but his fame outside of football is absolutely manufactured. Though, that doesn't mean it wasn't built on something that exists.
But I didn't know he existed until last summer when suddenly he had a documentary, started dating Taylor Swift, hosted Saturday Night Live within like six months. Not to say that most people that are famous aren't manufactured in some way as well, that's the game. It's just personal PR but it's certainly not coming organically. I had no idea who the last like (insert number) of whatever boyfriend's Taylor Swift had before this so it can't just be that. Nor were there personal stories inserted into non-gossip publications dedicated to them simply being Taylor Swift's boyfriend. Maybe it's a convergence of things and simply luck, that they decided to run more stories about this relationship than the previous ones, but it's still manufacturing fame.
Thats because for a few years she was much much more famous than who she was dating. Prior to that there were interminable articles when she was dating Tom Hiddleston, and Harry Styles and Joe Jonas and Calvin Harris etc. Kelce is significantly more famous in the US at least than Matt Healy or Joe Alwyn (accounting for about the last 6 years before Kelce).
Hard to sell a power couple most of your audience couldn't tell who one of the couple is. But a pop star and a sports star? That is simply PR gold, covering multiple demographics. I'm honestly surprised they aren't on even more.
Even before Swift, Kelce was more famous than even a very good football player that he was due to his podcast with his brother, and that unlike many football players, who can be shockingly uncharismatic and boring, they're actually funny, interesting, and such together.
I can sort of see the conspiracy argument if it was truly random TE or LB, but if you actually know the NFL, you know Kelce isn't a random player, even if TE isn't usually a sexy position.
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Travis Kelce has been 'good football player' famous for a while, though arguably his brother did more to spark the initial interest in the Kelce brand and then provided the vehicle for Travis to be more outspoken.
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This is just the substack equivalent of the more deranged branches of critical theory. They posit that because they are against the people who claim all media is actually engaged in fighting a war for the fate of the soul of society and YOU need to pick a side, that in fact all media is actually engaged in fighting a war for the fate of the soul of society (but different). I'm fond of reading tea leaves but I think one loses the point (and fun) of it when you start smashing your head into your cup.
I was reflecting upon this earlier today when I saw on Reddit that the children's show Bluey had uploaded to youtube an episode that had been "banned" in the US. It wasn't actually banned, but Disney decided not to include it in the show's episodes for American subscribers. You can watch it here and take a guess as to why that might be. If you haven't heard of Bluey, it was the second-most watched television show (in total minutes) in America last year in spite of its short format. It's a charming show and is much more tolerable to adults than much of contemporary children's programming, most of which seems like the virtual equivalent of crack cocaine. It's been in the news recently because it may or may not have ended (?) despite being massively successful and profitable. I took a gander at some of the culture warring over it and it's invariably idiotic. The lunatic left see its messages of friendship and inclusion as proof it is secretly Marxist; the retarded right see a wholesome nuclear family with nary a Pride flag in sight and think it's hiding its power level. This kind of reading-into-things seems to me little different than the kind in the linked article.
Any time I see stuff like this my eyes protectively glaze over and my curiosity is ended. All of this kind of culture war obsession just strikes me as so incredibly infantile.
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I think the author needs to take his schizophrenia medication.(I deserved the warning).Up-efforting my comment:
I don't really see a lot of the connections the author makes in the piece. I think the excerpts in the post here are some of the more cogent parts and even those are questionable. The piece seems committed to the idea that there is some shadowy they out there that are responsible for various culture shifts but it does little beyond vibing to actually make that case. What particular entities are responsible for Kelce's rise? For his dating Swift? How did they do that? What is the evidence that they did this? You will search this piece in vain for answers to these questions.
You need to read 'The Populist Delusion'.
There always is a 'they'. In any mass society. Bottom up organisation never lasts. They end up controlled by people who had to keep them organised. US is a very old society. No purges or revolutions for 200 years. Not to mention, US was founded by freemasons. (lol) 'they' is very traditional here.
They didn't. Merely are exploiting the event to restore normalcy. Someone was afraid US might totally crack up before WW3.
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Sigh. I suppose I ought to pay it forward.
Please don’t insinuate that people are off their meds. It’s rather antagonistic.
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I think this is tying things into a conspiracy that doesn’t exist.
Bud Light had an advertising campaign aimed at growing their audience (tik tok liberal teenagers) blow up in their face. They then spent a ton of money to try to win back their core audience (young white men). Seems like normal course of business.
Brett Favre (and tons of other celebrities) has appeared in pharma ads. Kelce being in one is hardly surprising.
Neither of these seem at all conspiratorial to me and don’t relate to Trump.
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Football has for decades been a way to stave off unrest. First, the sport attracts the attention of violent men without impressive economic prospects, as the sport itself is visibly violent and masculine. It is the closest similitude to war (armor, helmets, commands, clashes). It gives these men a castrated, impotent tribal identity in the form of regional teams, which are corporations motivated by capital without any serious tie to a region or interest. The men wear the insignia and colors of their favorite team and recite the assigned warcries. This establishes the attention of the cohort who are at most risk of unrest. Now that they have your attention, they push domestication propaganda in the form of rituals (national anthems, even the new “black” national anthem) and spectacles (ads, half time shows). After a Super Bowl there are occasional riots, but this is like when the waters of a flooded dam are redirected so as to keep the integrity of the dam — the Super Bowl brought tens of thousands of the most passionate fans, and not all of them will have their masculine energy siphoned off completely; they are allowed to expend the rest of their energy in a controlled way.
You might think, “but what about the kneeling for the flag controversy? Didn’t this create more controversy rather then unity?” No, this acted as a marketing campaign to give football more attention in the at-risk cohorts (black nationalists and MAGA guys). Both of them are now tuning in to football news, maybe they watch and want the kneeler to lose, maybe the opposite. Were they to ignore that controversy, they would not be capturing the full cohort they want and neither would they be accomplishing the sublimation ritual. Adding gambling to football culture was another way to do this (while producing an enormous profit), because gambling was already in video games but you want attention given to football as well. I think this is also why the “Sketch” streamer is being astroturfed. This is where Travis and cowboys and TSwift come in. They code right, they bring in more viewers.
The what? I’m not American and don’t get the reference?
America has rolled out a new national anthem, except only for black people: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sQ0B7cF3DQk
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I largely agree. Most historic societies have had similar things (chariot races etc). Arguably in a more functioning society there would be even more need, because there would be higher birth rates and as such more young men.
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There have always been popular white people, and vaguely well-known people who can be funny and charismatic sometimes rise unusually fast. The prosaic explanation is the best one, and I’m enjoying the opportunity to refer to Taylor swift as ‘Travis Kelce’s girlfriend’ with the explanation that football is more important.
Not to forget that just five years ago very few people would have considered there to be anything strange or political about a well-known American celebrity cutting an ad for a pharma company.
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