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!

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