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That's the way.

2020-09-08 · letter vlog · John · 3:54 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Sports (also: Philosophy & meaning) · mode: Personal essay · tags: community lore

Borrowing Donald Hall's idea of a 'third thing' that two people attend to together, John argues sports are at core shared sites of joint rapture, and holds up fan-owned AFC Wimbledon, now returning to Plough Lane, as a model where the third thing belongs to the people whose attention makes it valuable rather than to the rich.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Why people dislike sports: resources and attention spent on moving balls around

  • ★★ John says he gets why people dislike sports: it is weird that humans pour so many resources and so much attention into moving round objects into holes, through hoops or past lines. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Sports as a third thing: Donald Hall's essay The Third Thing and third things in relationships

  • ★★★ John argues that sports are not really about the balls or the people moving them: at their core, sports are a third thing. — 00:00:29 · third thing

    “at their core, sports are just a third thing”

  • ★★ John introduces The Third Thing, an essay the poet Donald Hall wrote after the death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon. — 00:00:29 · third thing

  • ★★★ Donald Hall (quoted): In the essay Hall writes that couples' gazes meet as they look at a third thing: objects, practices, arts, institutions, games or people that give a site of joint rapture; third things are essential to marriages. — 00:00:58 · third thing

    “a site of joint rapture and contentment”

  • ★★★ John says third things are essential not only to marriages but to many other relationships: BTS could be one in a friendship, a YouTube channel in a sibling relationship. — 00:01:20 · third thing, YouTube

00:01:27 — AFC Wimbledon as a third thing: losing Plough Lane, the fan-owned rebuild and the return home

  • ★★★ John says larger communities also benefit from third things that offer a site of joint rapture, and when sports work, that is what they do. — 00:01:27 · third thing
  • ★★ John suggests that might be why he is so enthralled with AFC Wimbledon, the third-tier English football team 'we' sponsor. (hedged) — 00:01:27 · AFC Wimbledon
  • ★★ John says that beginning in the 1990s Wimbledon fans suffered heartbreaks unrelated to the game itself, first losing their stadium, Plough Lane. — 00:01:36 · AFC Wimbledon
  • ★★★ John says fans were then told their club, founded in 1889, basically no longer existed: its wealthy owners moved the team to Milton Keynes, leaving fans without their third thing. — 00:01:56 · third thing
  • ★★★ John says the fans refused to accept this and reformed their club in the ninth tier of English football, owned not by a rich person but by the fans themselves. — 00:02:05 · AFC Wimbledon
  • ★★ John says each fan pays about $30 a year for an ownership stake (less if unemployed, retired or a student); paying more brings perks like a logo on the shorts, but everyone gets one vote. — 00:02:26 · AFC Wimbledon
  • ★★★ John says with that model AFC Wimbledon rose from the bottom rungs of amateur football to a full-time professional team now in the same division as the Milton Keynes franchise. — 00:02:46 · AFC Wimbledon
  • ★★★ John says this year (2020) AFC Wimbledon is at last coming home to a new stadium across the street from the old Plough Lane; after decades of singing a chant about the way to Plough Lane, fans are going home together. — 00:02:55 · AFC Wimbledon

00:03:20 — Two models of owning third things: investment vehicles of the rich versus fan ownership; sign-off

  • ★★★ John contrasts the model in Milton Keynes and most sport, including his beloved Liverpool, where third things are investment vehicles of the rich, with Wimbledon's, where the third thing belongs to those whose shared attention gives it value. — 00:03:20 · AFC Wimbledon, third thing
  • ★★ John says Wimbledon's way is messier and less efficient, but it really is the club of everyone who cares about it, and every fan should be so lucky. — 00:03:40 · AFC Wimbledon

In the description and comments

  • ★★ John says this video contains a code; in a pinned comment he adds that many future videos will too, asks solvers not to spoil it, and hints the code to the next step is in the first three seconds. — video description
  • ★★ In a comment John says he does not know how to write for younger kids but would like to write a soccer novel someday. — creator comment
  • ★ In a comment John says he started following Wimbledon's story in 2009-2010, as they made their way back to the Football League, and thinks he first heard of them on YouTube. (hedged) — creator comment · AFC Wimbledon, YouTube
  • ★ In a comment John says individuals do not work that well as third things, because they are very difficult to control. — creator comment · third thing
  • ★ Asked what he would do if AFC Wimbledon faced Liverpool, John says in a comment that they have, and it was strange and difficult. — creator comment · AFC Wimbledon

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: AFC Wimbledon · fan ownership · Plough Lane · third thing

Also: People: Donald Hall · Jane Kenyon

Projects: The Anthropocene Reviewed (podcast)

Works: The Third Thing

Organizations: Liverpool FC · Milton Keynes Dons F.C. · Wimbledon F.C. · YouTube

Groups: BTS

Concepts: Marriage

Places: Milton Keynes

Also centred on Plough Lane: Terraverse Over Everything: Thoughts from London

Also centred on third thing: The Unimportant Things

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