Shachar Haad
Jul 22, 2017 · 2 min read

Consider, just for a moment, that you are a fan of Trekking. You don’t have much time for it, though, as you have a busy work life, home life, and social life. If you’re lucky, you might find the time once a month reserved for hiking and couple times a year for long Trekking opportunities, only you, the skies, and the dirt under your feets. No boss to worry about, no talks about the quarterly reports to discuss with your coworkers and no discussion about politics that seem to take more and more focus in the last couple of years.

You frequent websites that talk about your hobby, read posts on social media from Trekking aficionados, like yourself, who suggest routes, talk about equipment, and share their perspective on the hobby you like.

Unfortunately, lately, every time you visit any website on the topic, there are platitudes and commentaries on politics. Every time you go read an opinion on social media, the people you once respected seem to only care about the latest controversy. Instead of talking about the hobby you once seemed to share, people talk about how Trekking is very political. How there are not enough men, black people, white people, or brown overweight transgender lesbians who can comment on the topic. Instead of highlighting the best route for Trekking, there’s another commentary about how some company that manufactures hiking shoes is racist and sexist.

Now, your once enjoyed website becomes just another place to talk about politics and the managers of the website don’t understand why people cancelled their subscription, why their social media page has fewer followers, and why people stopped revering them, as they once did, which brings them to the realization that they are not talking enough about politics.

It doesn’t matter that you might agree with their politics or appreciated their take on it when they just started commenting on it. At some point, you started hating that politic because it was too much, it was all over the place, and it took the place of Trekking, which was the reason you started going to that website.

This is the problem with ESPN in a nutshell. The reason you fail to realize it is the same reason that The Ringer, although proclaims itself to deal in sports, pop-culture (whatever that means), and tech, write more and more pieces about politics and insert politics into topics where it’s not welcomed.

Perhaps there something for you to learn from what happens to ESPN.