Commercialism Destroys Everything It Touches
The Ultimate Fighting Championship kills me. Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me right back in. Just when I had grown sick of Dana White’s relentless cash-grabbing and had sworn to give reduced attention (and time and money) to the promotion, I woke on Sunday to the news that UFC320 was a barnburner which included a career-defining and aura-restoring win for the great Alex Pereira, the most compelling fighter of the 2020s. “Poatan” saves the day again, and in such style. Never before have I seen a combatant press the gas pedal to the floorboard from the opening bell: within three seconds his opponent was backed up against the cage, and within eighty seconds the fight was over. I couldn’t stop watching the clips of what I’d missed, from that fight and others, and spent the rest of the day elated.
So on the one hand I was kicking myself for missing the big night; on the other hand the whole thing makes even more dismayed at the obvious failings which gave me good reason to skip it. Those failings are tied to commercialism and mass consumption—which is what this essay is about (even if it appears to be about a fight promotion).
The UFC started beckoning my interest a few years back, as the NBA and NFL were busy disgracing themselves during the social upheavals of the Floyd Riots and the Pandemic. By that point, the Super Bowl had long been a Regime holiday celebrating Regime values like Inclusivity, Progress, Consumption, and more Consumption. Even if the term sportsball is kind of dumb, it’s obvious enough why people use it: professional team sports leagues and associations have lost their way.
It was the perfect moment for combat sports to seize the opportunity, and the upsides of the UFC were both obvious and subtle. On the obvious side, the organization not only specializes in flashes of individual greatness that one rarely sees in the 21st century, but it conducted itself with admirable boldness during the Pandemic, carrying on business mostly as usual and challenging others to do the same. The UFC also distinguished itself by letting its athletes (see: Sean Strickland) freely express views that horrify journalists.
On the more subtle side, a night of fights encourages camaraderie. It’s a great excuse to have your buddies over and get rowdy together—and not just your friends but also your neighbors or guys you work with. A viewing party is a perfectly low-stakes way to reach out to would-be friends (especially in a world in which most guys find it hard to make new friends). Not every fight is exciting—far from it—but a wild finish is always a possibility, and these moments of action are followed by a leisurely lull between fights when conversation naturally resumes. That rhythm lends itself to a convivial vibe than does a basketball game.
But the UFC experience was haunted by a specter—which I had tried to deny at first but found it harder and harder to ignore. Any halfway sensitive fan had to be annoyed by the increasingly cheap commercialism that they were hounded with. The UFC absolutely loves money and has sought to squeeze every last dime out of its loyal fans.
It’s not just the $80 you must shell out for a pay-per-view, nor the $12/month you must pay for a subscription to ESPN+ before you can pay the $80 for the PPV. What gets me more is that you are subject—after ponying up $92—to endless adds and promotions. You are shown a dozen repetitions of the same three commercials for Burger King, Bud Light, and Tostitos. You gaze upon the floor of the Octagon and it looks like the ridiculous satirical NASCAR driver’s jumpsuit pasted full of logos with hardly an inch to spare. You are encouraged every ten minutes to gamble on the fights and given lucrative special offers to get you going.1
The relentlessness conveys a unmistakable lack of respect for the fight fan. Dana White and company see you as a sheep to be sheared.
But could it be any other way at this point?2 This is what we get when we have abandoned any kind of ethics other than profit-maximization, the ethics of sheering sheep, which reduces all decisions to the bottom line. There can be no place for respect for fight fans—not if it means leaving money on the table. So if they have the opportunity to squeeze in the thirteenth replay of that Burger King ad—“At BK, have it your way / You rule!”—then they are obligated to do so.
(To be fair, I guess it’s somewhat to the UFC’s credit that they at least want to make money, unlike Disney and Amazon Studios and others who have abandoned that project and instead proclaim The Message at every opportunity. But that particular brand of corporate obnoxiousness seems to be on the other side of commercialism, somehow a fulfillment of it rather than a betrayal.)
What is the upshot of all this?
First, we probably shouldn’t expect anything else from an economy of mass consumption. The purpose of a system is what it does, and the modern economy is built to shear the sheep and to cultivate more sheep to shear. To understand that is to be a step ahead.
Second (and related), we might look for diversion on a smaller scale. Recently a couple friends and I went to an amateur boxing night put on at a local high school and had a fairly good time. Those young bucks weren’t exactly Oleksandr Usyk in the ring, but maximizing my personal consumer enjoyment was not the point. The point, instead, is giving smaller local projects a chance to get a little momentum. If you build it, they will come—and if you attend it, things might develop.
Third (and also related), if we are going to have a chance at rebuilding a real country and culture, we have to re-orient ourselves to a life aimed at something more solid than entertainment and goodies and flashing lights and slick production. The television was probably a mistake—not that we should chuck it in the dumpster, but we might only turn it on for special occasions (maybe even a UFC event every now and then). But if you watch UFC without training in some sort of martial art yourself, something is probably off. Get a heavy bag and learn how to pummel it. Train with your friends. Spar together. Teach boys how to throw a punch. Be more than just a consumer.
We need to build something better than a superstructure of bread and circuses. Everything depends on it.
https://thechivalryguild.substack.com/p/commercialism-destroys-everything