On Saturday I had the privilege of hanging in the Saratoga (Race Course) backstretch with two friends: a dear grrrlfriend and her horse-loving, 10-year-old daughter. (I’m not giving their names, because they know their names and you don’t need to.)
My friend and I sat in our lawn chairs near our picnic table in the hour-or-so before the races, and her little one sat at the table, her back to the track. Her back was toward the track, but in front of her lie the pony stalls and scores of barns. The constant clip-clop of horses walking all around filled the air: outriders on their ponies, horses walking to the paddock. And the neighing and nickering of all of those beautiful, sublime creatures.
And our little friend? She was fiddling with her Mother’s iPhone, joyously seeking something. She found it! Happily, she held aloft the phone and showed us: “Look! A picture of a horse!”
I looked up from my first cup of coffee, tried to focus on the photo and blanked. “Huh?” I thought.
(Clearly, I needed more java.)
Her Mother was much quicker on the draw than I. In a way that only my friend can, she barked the question/statement: why would a person look for PICTURES of horses on a phone, when there were thousands of ACTUAL HORSES surrounding her?
My friend told her daughter to put down the phone, and walk to the rail. To watch real, live, breathing, gigantic horses going by her. The child did so, then bounced back to ask if she could use her Mom’s iPhone to take pictures and videos of the horses as they went to the gate, and out for the 7F start.
Now she was getting it.
The child has an eye–and maybe iPhones are just That Good. Our little friend came back from the start of the race enthusiastic, effusive and revived. She’d taken some great photos–captured the start perfectly on video–and was overjoyed. SHE had generated pictures of horses for others to see. But now she understood that first, SHE, herself, had to experience those horses in the flesh.
She had to FEEL them before she could photograph them.
There’s a world of difference between looking at a virtual horse, and taking your own photos of an animal whom you hear nickering and snorting, pounding dirt as they get near you.
You can’t breathe the same air as a virtual horse.
(A virtual horse doesn’t breathe.)
You can’t feel the power of that massive body, pounding past you, with a virtual horse.
(A virtual horse has no mass, ergo, no weight. Ergo, no power.)
They can call it, 3D, if they want to. If that’s what sells a product. But that third dimension is depth, which indicates mass. And no computer actually can GIVE you that third dimension, it can merely show you what the third dimension would LOOK like. Big difference between
A microscopic, pretend horse, “running” past you on a screen cannot have the same effect as a living, breathing, soulful animal with mass.
That’s not my romantic notion–that’s physics.
My friend, who is not a marketing or horse racing professional, knows more about marketing the sport than 99% of the pros.
I’m sick to death of hearing almost-every racing organization touting the “fact” that we must market the sport to “the younger generation” by creating more and better apps and platforms.
To teach them to race–to wager–to watch–horse racing through the eye of a screen that’s an average of 4″ x 3.”
On the one hand, we hear marketing wonks telling us that absolutely, this next generation (the “tech savvy” gen) demands to get their information quickly and virtually.
On the other hand, we have an animal that is so powerful–so legendary–so superior–that no-less than writers of the Bible and Greek mythology sang its role in the Divine Plan. If you can’t confine God to an app–how can you take one of His most perfect, beloved creatures and cram it into a two-dimensional, hand-held screen?
You can do it–superficially. But you’ll never be able to explain the majesty–the perfection–the heart-stopping strength of that animal in any way other than in the flesh.
This “next gen” that’s growing up–or, maybe, not growing up–indeed is addicted to their smartphones and other techno gadgets.
But does that mean that we in horse racing should be their enablers? Should we continue to take young people to the track and NOT admonish them for turning their attention to a phone instead of looking at–oh, I don’t know–the TRACK? At an actual HORSE?
What’s the point, at all, of taking someone (of any age) to a race track for the first time?
Whether that person is my Grandmother or my friend’s 10-year-old daughter–the idea is to show the beauty and absolute authority of The Horse to someone who’s never experienced it before.
And they’re not going to experience The Horse if their two hands are busy looking up pictures or horses. Or finding the channel on which to find a race to watch–the very race that’s unfolding in front of them, LIVE.
If you witnessed this–saw anyone (young or older) glued to a phone, trying to find the race that’s happening 10′ away from them–would you not think that that is pathetic? An idiot, for not Getting It? That someone misled them, into thinking that a race track is an arcade?
The whole purpose of sporting venues of any kind is for fans and newbies to experience a sporting event, live. Why bother building or maintaining sporting events of the spectators really are there in person, but their minds are so addicted to the machines in their hands that they think they ARE experiencing reality via the tiny machines?
I’d be interested to see an experiment. I’d like to see America’s Best Racing, for example, invite 20 young people to the races. As soon as their guests arrive, they would be told that they have to surrender their smartphones. Assure them that, in the event of a true emergency, their family would be notified. (So there’s no emergent reason or excuse to hold onto the phone.)
I can guarantee that their guests would refuse. Those who might give in and surrender their precious machines would be fine for a while, then they’d start to twitch. I believe that they’d start to get antsy, then nervous, then perhaps even full-blown difficult or angry.
Those all are signs of addiction, you know.
Addiction to something that’s bad for you presents with signs of escalating irritation and other negative reactions to the removal of the object of desire.
Horses, on the other hand, often are referred to as being addicting. And they are.
As I perceive it, the key difference between an unhealthy addiction and a healthy one is that removal of the object of desire may make one sad with a healthy addiction (horse), but it does not present with physiological and serious psychological reactions to the denial of the object. (Smartphone/techno toys)
No, I’m not a psychologist. I’m just a person who knows how to think logically–who’s lived for 58 years (so far)–and who first worked on computers in 1980, and had access to academics who discussed these very topics.
Yes, in 1980 I was privy to a conversation about the potential for video games to train human boys to perceive their targets as rewards in a point system–not as human beings. That, 34 years ago, the potential for computer-generated games was recognized for its ability to de-sensitize the human psyche by presenting an alternative “reality” inside the box.
And that was 34 years ago, before any of the machines we know today were a reality.
The differences between Frogger and PONG, and an app that allows you to watch horse racing live–are vast. In PONG, we watched two straight lines “play tennis” against each other. It was straight lines, but we players knew the rules. We might have imagined ourselves wearing tennis whites, etc.–but we knew it was just two straight lines on a black screen.
In Frogger, the frogs didn’t look like mere green, straight lines. It was more realistic, but still–we knew that the frogs on the screen were two-dimensional fictions.
I’ve observed–and so have you–that those who watch horse races on a phone WHILE AT A RACE TRACK are disconnected from the real joy of the sport. From REALITY.
(Make no mistake: I am not bashing the concept of watching race replays on your phone (or any other device). Nor am I suggesting that watching races as they unfold on such a machine has no merit: certainly, people who can’t get to a race track need such technologies.)
It’s a wonderful thing to have access to the races anywhere in the world, if you can’t get to the track to watch it in person.
But therein lies my argument: No one needs to twiddle with their smartphone–to watch a horse race–while at a race track that’s full of horses. For any racing organization to promote such addictive behavior or foolish at best–irresponsible, at worst.
And most definitely, it is NOT the way to market the sport of racing large, graceful, half-ton animals to ANYONE. If a kid–any young person, any person at all–can be at a track, surrounded by thousands of gorgeous, otherworldly animals who have the ability actually to take their breath away–if that person can be in such a place, and still insist that they are enjoying the sport more through the lens of a telephone–that child needs a Reality Check.
And those who insist that we must market the sport by encouraging such behavior–they need a Reality Check, too.
Do a self-test:
On the one hand, you have a phone with a screen that’s 3″ x 4″.
On the screen is a lovely picture of a horse.
On your other hand, you have a 1,200-pound, snorting, bellowing, hoof-pounding animal who has the physical power and speed to run down a car. An animal who–when not on the track, in a race–has the power to melt your heart and soul, dissolving you into puddles of love and goo.
Which of these experiences do you think will win over the most fans for horse racing? A virtual, two-dimensional photo of a horse? Or a horse whose three dimensions feel more like 1,000, because that animal can take you on a ride not just down the stretch, but across the Universe?
My message to horse racing marketing VPs: stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Technology CAN help established fans and new fans. Seeing a race on TV or phone when you can’t be there: good. Watching a race on a phone when you’re at the track, itself: stupid. And bad. And NOT the way to grow life-long fans.
Never, ever, ever will a life-long love for horse racing nestle in the heart of a human being who did not first meet a real HORSE. Those who think that it can be done in the opposite direction (technology first, horse second) either are deceived or have a product to sell.
No one ever fell in love with a horse or this sport because they stood at the Saratoga rail and watched the race on their phone. If you’re feeding the addiction to technology–and it is an addiction, don’t fool yourselves–don’t be surprised when that monster rears its ugly head and bites you.
If, however, you introduce a friend to a horse--any horse, anywhere–and your friend tells you that s/he slept wonderfully the night after–don’t let that surprise you, either. Technology never can replace in-person, live experiences of any kind.
The attempt to promote our sport by desperately insisting that a generation create loving relationships via artificial means is silly; lacking in insight and doomed for failure. And it shows that obviously, those of us who understand (truly) horse racing and humanity aren’t being consulted.
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