Chapotraphouse

I have to rant tangentially about this for a moment cause I'm not even a sports fan but recently had the displeasure of being in the room when someone put on a basketball game. It was like the NBA hired the same team that does all slot machines to do the production for their games. All the artificially produced audio was just really off-putting, it felt so plastic and fake and less about the sport or the players than just manipulating the lowest-common-denomenator of viewers into paying money for the experience.

The chants, which were usually the same one or two on repeat, didn't have anything to do with what the players were doing, didn't have anything to do with the region's audience (as in, a Lakers audience would probably have different chants than a Pistons audience), and the audience very clearly was not actually behaving in line with any of the audio cues. Not even the shoe squeaks were real, which ironically enough is probably cause you wouldn't be able to hear the real ones over all the produced bullshit. Not that I really give any fucks to hear them but NBA very clearly considers them part of the experience they are aiming to conjure.

I don't know why anyone still watches it. I could have been watching someone play NBA 2K and had the same experience.