War Minus the Shooting

One of the concepts of behavioral economics is the principle of loss aversion, i.e., most of us find the pain of losing to be much higher than the joy of winning. A reader of Dan Ariely's blog (Ariely is a professor of behavioral economics) asked him whether, by that principle, people should avoid being sports fans to avoid the pain that their team losing brings?

I found Ariely's response very interesting. After pointing out that people aren’t rational (the central tenet of behavioral economics!), he wrote:
“Sporting events are not just about the outcome, and if anything, they are more about the ways in which we experience the games as they unfold over time (yes, even the 7-1 Germany vs Brazil game)…The time of the game itself is arguably what provide the largest part of the enjoyment.”

Ariely was bang on target. The “enjoyment during the game” factor is why people become sports fans. Fantasy IPL and Fantasy Football take the fan involvement further by allowing fans to pick their dream team by picking players from all teams. How those individuals perform during the tournament adds to your team’s points. And boy, has it been popular world over. As Seth Godin said:
 “In addition to the show, people want to believe that they own part of it.”

Twitch (“a platform for making and talking about videos of videogame play”, as Peter Kafka and Eric Johnson described it) takes that involvement in a game to the next level. As Nicholas Carr puts it:
“The videogamer has always been at once player and spectator, in the action and yet removed from it. Watcher and watched, entertainer and entertainee, warrior and couch potato, the videogamer was fated to become the broadcaster of his own amusements, and that makes Twitch and its success — Amazon is buying the game-streaming juggernaut for a billion dollars — something of an inevitability.”

And then Carr gets philosophical (but in a fun way):
“What exactly are we watching when we watch Twitch? We’re watching a screen through a screen, virtual reality twice removed. It would seem to be media all the way down: sport as pure symbol, or, in Platonic terms, pure shadow.”

Those who moan about all the violence should listen to Godard:
“It’s not blood, it’s red.”
So just lighten up and enjoy the ride/view/game!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why we Deceive Ourselves

In their book, The Elephant in the Brain , the authors describe this weird aspect of deception that we practice: deceiving ourselves! That is so weird: “If our minds contain maps of our worlds, what good comes from having an inaccurate version of these maps?” The Sigmund Freud school of thought treats self-deception as a defense mechanism, “a way for the ego to protect itself”. The mind seeks to protect itself from anxiety and other negative emotions. Many object to this reasoning: since accurate information is so critical to our survival, surely distorting information would be dangerous. Wouldn’t the goal of protecting our self-esteem have been better achieved by making the brain’s self-esteem mechanism stronger instead? The new school of thought explains self-deception as “primarily outward-facing, manipulative, and ultimately self-serving”. This is based on Thomas Schelling’s work on game theory: “In a variety of scenarios, limiting or sabotaging yourself is the winn...
Read more

Europe #3 - Innsbruck

The last city we visited in Europe was Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. After the cold and windy experience (at times) of Paris and Netherlands, Innsbruck was a wonderful change – it didn’t feel that cold, it was not windy all of which made it easy to walk around. Something absolutely necessary given how scenic the place is.   Since the hotel check-in time was much later in the day, we left the baggage and went to the Swarovski HQ-cum-museum about an hour by bus from Innsbruck. The crystal exhibits were brilliant – colorful, bright, shiny. Jewellery aside, it was a display of what one can do with crystals. While my wife and daughter loved the jewellery, I liked the superhero themed exhibits of Batman, Spiderman, the Hulk, and Star Wars. We didn’t buy anything there, though we did buy stuff in the Swarovski store in Innsbruck – jewellery, not the superhero stuff.   Innsbruck is a major tourist attraction during the skiing season but now in summer, we saw many groups of ...
Read more

The Thrill of the Chase

So many people complain about the difficulty in making decisions while shopping. Do you buy Brand X that gives 20% extra free? Or Brand Y that has 10% off? Or Brand Z that gives something else free with it? Do you buy that flat screen TV today or wait for the sale at Diwali? Now since the customer is king, shouldn’t companies be simplifying pricing choices? Like maybe offering consistently low prices all the time? Not so fast, as the US store, JC Penney discovered to its cost. Turns out that while people do complain about pricing choices, they are irrational. Also, they enjoy the thrill of the chase. Huh? The word “sale” acts like a siren call for many people: it lures them in to make that purchase. Consistently low prices don’t do the same. Besides, if a competitor lowers their prices just one time of the year, and Poof! Suddenly that low price claim becomes suspect in shoppers’ eyes. Then there are those sites that offer coupons: have lunch at Restaurant A on Wedne...
Read more