Tag: owned

Are Ravens fans really this dumb, pt 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even before I had daughters, I’ve always been in support of women’s rights.  What’s wrong with believing in that whole notion that everyone should be equal?

So a few days ago, I saw while scrolling, a quote from a Ravens player I’d never heard of before, about how he thought it was literally disgusting to see Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles playfully giving the bow down motion to Gold medalist Rebeca Andrade of Brazil.

My first thought was, who the fuck is Marlon Humphrey, but then feeling my own disgust that someone was so offended by some women demonstrating a beautiful scene of sportsmanship and camaraderie with a fellow Olympian, to where they needed to use their influence as a for-lack-of-a-better-term, celebrity on Twitter to take a shit on it.

I felt the compulsion to comment on it:

Man plays on a team whose fans gave ovations to a guy whom had video evidence of him beating the Jesus out of his babymama in an elevator, and he thinks some sportsmanship is literally disgusting. Yeah ok

I didn’t give it much thought afterward, but clearly I had ignited Ravens fans for taking a pot-shot at their fanbase for how they so glowingly supported Ray Rice after his domestic assault charges against his fiancée, implying that they are as brainless and dumb as I genuinely think of most of them anyway, and the responses were about as predictable as one might imagine.

Firstly, most everyone who replied to my comment completely missed the point of being in support of female gymnasts, because I had committed the most heinous of sins, which was to take a swipe at the Ravens, and all these schmucks were blinded with rage when composing their own silly rebuttals, with denial, personal attacks, including a racist one where a black guy told me to stick to ping pong that either was deleted, or they had the wherewithal to delete themselves, and a not-surprising amount of people who were inadvertently taking Humphrey’s side just because he’s on the Ravens.

The thing is, what a lot of these butthurt commenters don’t seem to realize that by attacking me, they’re basically showing their support of Marlon Humphrey’s disdain for women athletes demonstrating sportsmanship as well as being okay with domestic violence towards women.  Yes, it’s a little bit of a reach to come to those conclusions, but looking at the gamut of people who took their time to air out their grievances with my words with their own, it doesn’t seem that far-fetched after all.

My favorites are the people who tried to defend Ray Rice by stating how he helped the Ravens win a Super Bowl some time ago, as if it makes it completely okay that he beat the living shit out of his fiancée in a hotel service elevator.  Or how she was spitting on him and cursing and smacking him first, so she seemed to deserve it.

I like when abusers, or those who are okay with it identify themselves, because it makes it easy for me to steer clear of the pieces of shit they are.

The thing is, my remarks also got a surprisingly high (300+) number of likes, showing that a lot of more intelligent people agreed with my opinion of Humphrey’s dumbass remark.  Unfortunately, those people were all smarter than me and didn’t comment in the first place, and frankly I don’t know why I do it sometimes, other than inadvertently embarking on some weird social experiments.

But hey, unsurprising as it is, it’s something to see, that even ten years after the last time I posted about Ravens fans being idiots, absolutely nothing at all seems to have changed.

I see you, Balakey

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t say that I’m particularly a fan of pitcher Blake Snell; I tend to not care for baseball players that act like out-of-touch man-babies when it comes to how much they’re paid for the privilege of playing professional baseball, and Snell is amongst the worst. 

He once suggested that players should’ve been paid their full salaries during the COVID season, and he’s one of those guys that it’s pretty clear that his full career objective is accumulating as much money as possible, which inherently there’s nothing wrong with, but it’s also the way that he’s trying to accomplish it with an inequitable amount of effort exerted to earn it that rubs me the wrong way.

This past off-season was a delight to see him flounder away during free agency, and basically becoming the cautionary poster boy for talented free agent to get absolutely pwned by the process.  He was looking for comparable money that the Dodgers had paid Japanese import Yoshinobu Yamamoto (12-year, $365M), and along the way had turned down an offer from the Yankees that was half that, thinking if he held out, he could get better, if not comparable.

He was wrong.  Delightfully.

Ultimately, he signed with the Giants on a two-year, $62M deal which is still an egregious annual value to a human being to throw a baseball over and over again, and seeing as how it had an opt-out clause in between, it was evident that Snell’s goal was going to be to pitch his ass off, opt-out, and try again for a Yamamoto deal, while also having the security cushion of a fat $31M second year with the Giants if things fell through.

The 2024 season couldn’t have started off any worse for someone playing the game Snell was trying to play; he would go 0-3, never getting out of the fifth inning, and have an ERA of 11.57.  His peripherals were shit, he was throwing too many pitches, walking too many guys, and downright sucked.  It was clear that he basically did no work or working out during the offseason, and didn’t prepare at all during the spring since he was technically unemployed almost until the start of the season, and it was showing on the field.

He was put on the DL for sucking, AKA bullshit injury to justify poor performance, and came back at the end of May, where he would proceed to string together three more shitty starts, where he still couldn’t get out of the fifth inning, and was pitching terribly, but was masked by the fact that the Giants still won two of those games in spite of him.

I relished in Snell’s poor performance, and despite my general disdain for Bay Area sports fans, even I didn’t think they deserved the turd that the Blake Snell contract was turning into.  Without question, he was going to opt-in to year two of his deal, and hamstring the Giants for another $31M that could’ve been utilized in so many better ways.

Once again he went on the DL for sucking, and he was back on July 9th and this is where the story really begins.  Snell would pitch five innings, giving up just a single hit and no runs, and the Giants would win.  The Giants would win two of his next three starts, with Snell pitching like the two-time Cy Young winner he was.

On August 2nd, Snell would get the first win of his season, after pitching a fucking no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds, and he would follow that with another quality start and another win.

The overall picture of Blake Snell’s current 2024 isn’t notable – 2-3 W-L in 12 starts, a 4.31 ERA, with the Giants going 7-5.  But since July, he’s gone 2-0 in six starts, has an ERA of 1.15 and the team has gone 5-1.

It’s very apparent that he’s finally woken up, and that he’s beginning to pitch his ass off so that he can opt-out at the end of the season and make another try for a long-term Yamamoto-money deal.

Here’s the thing though, as many words as I’ve spoken to be critical about Blake Snell, I actually have never bothered to really take a deep dive into the numbers that paint the picture of Blake Snell; until now.  And the most interesting thing I’m discovering about ol’ Balakey is that save for the no-hitter, the season narrative described above is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary for him.

I’ve read numerous times about how Snell is “a slow starter” but figured it was typical media defending of the guy.  But looking at his career numbers and splits, slow starter doesn’t do the man justice.

I’m now convinced that Blake Snell is probably the smartest baseball player there is, at the way he has absolutely gamed the game of baseball in order to make as much money as he can, with the least amount of effort possible.  I mean, the guy streams video games in his downtime, gaming is nothing outside of his realm of interests, and it’s apparent that he’s brought that mentality into his career strategy.

Looking over his game logs over the last few seasons, which were coincidentally the most critical years in terms of showcasing himself in preparation for free agency, his Aprils have as many L’s as the 2024 Chicago White Sox, and he looks like shit; can’t get more than five innings, giving up lots of runs, mundane strikeout numbers.

But then July hits each year, Snell’s fairy godmother materializes out of nowhere and turns him into fucking Nolan Ryan.  He starts piling up strikeouts, the inning numbers start turning from 5.0 to 7.0, and the team starts piling up W’s like they’re the 1996 Chicago Bulls.

This isn’t hyperbole, there really is that drastic of a split between the first halves and second halves of his seasons, career-wide:

1st Halves: 28-39 W-L, 3.98 ERA, 1.339 WHIP, 10.9 K/9
2nd Halves: 41-17 W-L, 2.41 ERA, 1.097 WHIP, 11.4 K/9

Now I know all these numbers don’t mean a thing to anyone who doesn’t follow baseball, but what it really says is that Blake Snell is trash in the first half of most seasons, and turns into a fucking demi-god in the second half.  He walks fewer guys, strikes out more guys, and the team just flat out wins.

And the thing is, I don’t think this is coincidental, I don’t think this is fluky, I think it’s entirely by design and mostly deliberate by Blake Snell.  It’s no secret in the world of professional sports that athletes tend to metaphorically hit the NOS during their walk-years, and there’s mountains of evidence that exist these days to justify such a notion.  It’s also no secret that professional sport is influenced tremendously by recency bias, where the most recent version of an athlete is the one to consider when it comes time to negotiate dolla-dollas.

I may not be a fan of Blake Snell’s perceived-by-me money-grubbing ways, but I see you, Balakey.  I kind of respect the cerebral approach to optimizing his earning capabilities.  I’m not going to poo-poo on a guy’s effort to make as much money as he can, but at the same time, I’m not going to also not think that it does seem crappy to the teams, the fans of those teams, and those who root for him, to often be knowing that unless it’s July or later, he’s probably holding something back and not trying his hardest, because as he’s demonstrated for us all over the last few years, those April-May-June starts definitely don’t mean as much as the months July and on.

Someone put Miguel Vargas on (career) suicide watch

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No matter how much the Braves stink it up sometimes, and even if they miss the playoffs due to Bryce Elder, their feast or famine inept offense, and their complete lack of willingness to improve at the trade deadline or by signing Trevor Bauer, fewer things will be sadder than this image of now-White Sox infielder, Miguel Vargas, staring off into the abyss after the White Sox had lost their 20th consecutive baseball game.

A little over a week ago, Vargas was suiting up for the first in the NL West Dodgers, probably living his best life.  As being part of a Major League roster, his paychecks were probably getting nice and thick, and the team is so loaded with talent, that he was mostly a backup player anyway, living the American dream of sitting on a bench for the vast majority of every game, and at the most, getting a pinch-hit or pinch-run opportunity, or a Sunday start.  Life in LaLa-Land was beautiful and sunny, and even if his minor league performance hadn’t yet caught up to the bigs, he had made it.

But then Vargas was traded to the Chicago White Sox; not just the worst team in the AL Central, they’re the worst team in all of baseball, and they were riding a lengthy losing streak, that had no light at the end of the tunnel of stopping.  Aside from the trade that brough him to Chicago, anyone who had any inkling of a chance at stopping the bleeding were also getting shipped out, and the White Sox were undoubtedly raising the white flag on the season, and the organization’s only objective was to be able to field a team for the remainder of the games of the season, all while attempting to restore their farm system with assets and prospects from other teams via trade.

Originally, my knee-jerk reaction was that Vargas should suck it up and take solace in the fact that he’s still a major league player on a big league roster.  He’s still getting paid major league money to play a kids game, and being moved to a team like the White Sox, should alleviate pretty much all pressure there could be to succeed, because the team has no pressure to actually win games; and it’s in these conditions where a guy like Miguel Vargas could flourish and raise his stock, and either get paid, or possibly get traded again, after the season, and escape from the Southside.

However, apparently Miguel Vargas is at a precariously early stage of his career that he kind of has a reason to be depressed and mopey over his situation.  Being a pre-arbitration player, he’s making league minimum, which is still a ridiculous $775K to play baseball, it’s low enough to where he becomes a negligible risk of getting cut like a rounding error.  And if his performance doesn’t show some improvement soon, the two prospects sent to Chicago with him also play the same positions he do, and they could very well leapfrog over him in the organizational hierarchy.

Above all else, he goes from sunny beautiful Los Angeles to the south side of Chicago.  I don’t even know what their park is called nowadays, but I can’t imagine it’s improved at all from when it was The Cell™ AKA the worst ballpark in all of MLB in my own experiences.  Sure, I’d wager that he’s not actually living on the south end of the city, but he still has to commute there for all his home games, and the Southside really is as shitty as it’s made to look in Shameless. 

I’d be on the precipice of a breakdown if I were Miguel Vargas too, but at least there’s one possible silver lining to everything he’s going through – if the Dodgers actually do manage to not fuck up in the playoffs and miraculously win the World Series, then he is due a World Series ring too, because baseball is funny like that and even the slimmest of contributors get a share in the credit of a championship.

Either way, when I had the idea to write about Miguel Vargas, I originally thought along the lines of suck it up, buttercup, but then diving deeper into his financials and his performance statistics, I began to realize that he really did have a reason to be this sad, and that in itself is really sad, because professional athletes shouldn’t ever be sad, unless they’re losing critical championship-implication games, not some random August regular season scrap against another pitiful franchise like the A’s.

Suck it, Italy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That’s just ~a little bit~ racist: after Hong Kong’s Cheung Ka-long’s gold medal victory over Italy’s Filippo Macchi in individual men’s fencing, the Italian Fencing Federation files a complaint with the IOC, accusing the refereeing to be biased because the refs were from Taiwan and South Korea, and had geographical favoritism

Man, not a whole lot to unpack here, but some pretty flagrant racism in the middle of the Olympics going on over here.  Italians crying foul and accusing refs of cooking up some home field advantage is wildly ignorant and racist considering the fencer is from Hong Kong, one ref is from Taiwan and the other ref being Korean.

Sure, there is a degree of Asians supporting Asians from time to time, but usually when it’s something where there are very few Asians present in some sort of contest, like Jeremy Lin in the NBA getting a lot of love and admiration from most Asians regardless of race.  Not the fucking Olympics, where not only are there a whole bunch of Asians present and participating in all sorts of events, they’re all representing their own cultures in neat little conveniently categorized by country.

Like, Taiwan couldn’t give two shits about Hong Kong.  They already exist with tons of beef from the mainland themselves, so they actually have something in common with HK, but a Taiwanese referee isn’t going to put their career on the line and secretly pull for a Hong Konger.  And Koreans couldn’t give even lesser of a fuck about Hong Kong.  As the kids so eloquently say these days, the fuck on out of here, Italy.

While we’re making sweeping generalizations, let’s go ahead and proclaim that there are few countries that whine and act like sore losers than Italy does.  Lose to a Chinaman in fencing?  Obviously racist and biased refereeing.  Angela Carini takes a punch and throws in the towel?  Clearly her opponent was a dude (read: she wasn’t), and drag her entire name and reputation into the mud before being proven wrong.

It’s even worse in futbol, where Italians have demonstrated a laundry list of bad behavior and reactions in the name of defeat, like fans throwing fireworks onto the field, pelting opposing players with dangerous projectiles.  In 2002, the Korean player who headed in the game-winning goal that sent Italy packing in the World Cup who happened to play for an Italian club, was cut almost immediately afterward.

But this recent episode isn’t just sore losing, it’s just straight up racist.  Ignorant, reckless and completely idiotic racism, that I had to stop and actually process just how dumb it was after hearing about it, because I almost couldn’t believe that there were people in positions capable of having direct lines with the IOC, being so juvenile and flagrant with their accusations.

Haven’t Koreans already had enough bullshit already during this Olympics?  Getting announced as the wrong country first was pretty bad, but now getting dragged into this pitiful Italy tirade is pretty bad too.

Props to Pizza Hut HK though, for sticking it to Italian culture by offering up free pineapple on pizza for the next 24 hrs.  I really wish Domino’s in Korea would do the same thing in solidarity and retaliation for Italy’s bullshit.  Kind of makes me want to go out and get some pizza with pineapple on it myself, but I think I’ll have to keep that want in my back pocket for the next time pizza is a possibility.

Hello, L . . . GBTQ+

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was 16 years old and the WWF was in the midst of their Attitude Era, business was booming, wrestling couldn’t possibly be anymore mainstream than it was, and week after week was compelling television to the demographic that clearly targeted people like me, and of similar age mindsets.

When vignettes of Val Venis began, of him announcing is impending arrival in the WWE while simultaneously pantomiming all sorts of sexual activity, it really was a holy shit moment, as in the reality that professional wrestling was going to have a porn star character, was actually going to happen.

I remember debut on RAW is WAR, against Too-Cold Scorpio, and thinking this match was going surprisingly long for a guy’s debut, and after a vicious spinning heel kick from Scorpio, I actually remember wondering if Val Venis would be among the few superstars to actually take an L in their debut, the last one I could remember being Bastion Booger way back in like 1992.

Perhaps The Big Valbowski was being too generous as the noob in the locker room.  Or maybe Too-Cold was going into business for himself a little bit seeing as how he was eventually supposed to take the L; maybe the man that Mick Foley put in writing as having the largest penis he’d ever seen in his life was a little salty that some Canadian guy was getting to portray the porn star gimmick that he felt could’ve been his.

But Val Venis did win the match, and I remember thinking how unimpressive he actually was in the ring, based on that singular match.

Eventually, he would get opportunities to redeem himself, and seeing as how the WWF roster was stacked to the gills with guys like The Rock, Mick Foley, Kurt Angle and Edge, even the mid-card was loaded with guys like the New Age Outlaws, Hardcore Holly, D’lo, X-Pac, Ken Shamrock among many others.

Not only was The Big Valbowski a fun character, gushing with charisma and cleverly-written promos, the guy actually could work too.  Needless to say, I was a fan of Val Venis.

However, it should come as no great surprise that a guy whose character was a literal porn star, there would be a ceiling for him, dictated by the rules and regulations of public decency and mostly the FCC.  In order for Val to elevate to the main event and the top of the card, the character would have to grow and evolve, and there’s really not much growth or evolution a porn star would be able to do on national television.

Eventually, due to mounting pressure from outside forces, most notably the formed Parent-Television Council, the Val Venis persona eventually made its way to the block and was soon choppy-choppy’d from the program.

As talented of a worker as he was, workrate is only half of professional wrestling, and character is the other half.  Losing a persona like Val Venis was the kiss of death, and after flops like RTC member Val Venis and then Chief Morley, he would flounder some more in TNA before his professional career came to mostly an end.

Much like lots of former wrestlers of yesteryear, Sean Morley [his real name] could’ve faded into the sunset, or among the many things a guy could do in order to stay relevant to the modern wrestling community, utilize social media to announce their existence, but also to spout horrifically right-wing propaganda and become one of the countless right-wing nuts that pollute the population.  And if you went with the latter, at what you think Val Venis has been doing in retirement, you’re absolutely right.

Which finally brings us to the point of this post’s existence; apparently The Big Valbowski’s right-wing rhetoric and how much he blathers it has ruffled a few feathers, most notably the guy who has been running his website, ValVenis.com.  I didn’t dive too far to find out the context of just how bad the rift went, or specifically what caused it, but the result of such a fallout was that the guy who had the keys to the car, has decided to turn ValVenis.com into a site that now exists in support and allyship of the LGBTQ+ community; and if there’s one major demographic that exists in the crosshairs of the hard right, it’s the LGBTQ+ community.

Unsurprisingly, The Big Valbowski is none too pleased with this development, and has supposedly pursued legal action and is suing the webmaster to try to get the reigns to his website back.  I don’t care enough to have an opinion on whom is going to possibly come out of the legal battle with any advantage, but my knee-jerk thought is that webmaster probably has the upper hand, seeing as how they’re probably the one who registered, paid and are actually the ones still maintaining the virtual property.

Seeing as how the WWE hasn’t cared enough about the Val Venis character to bother renewing and retaining the IP, I imagine if Sean Morley secures the copyright for himself, he might have a leg to stand on, but in the meantime, I love that the Webmaster has turned “VAL VENIS” into a really reaching anagram of LGBTQ+ support in a long-shot way to justify using the domain for its current purpose:

VAL : Valued Allies of LGBTQ+
VENIS: Vital Educational & NonJudgemental Informational Services

Sean Morley didn’t really have that long of a career, but he kind of existed in the era when professional wrestlers were free-spending jocks who blew thousands of dollars on drinking, drugs and ring rats, and aren’t the athletic nerds of today who have gamified investing and earning, so I have no idea what his current financial status is.  But if I had to guess, it’s more towards the former, and I don’t imagine he has the means to get into a legal battle against a website, fighting over the web domain of a former wrestling porn star in an actual court of law.

The bottom line is as it stands now, Val Venis is in 100% owned status, and is a precautionary tale of the importance of being good to your webmasters, especially if you yourself don’t have any keys to the house.

I don’t think AEW knows what Unified means

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As I was doom scrolling before going to sleep, I came across a video clip of Dustin Rhodes and what appeared to be two members of the Von Erich family, winning the Ring of Honor Six-Man Tag championships at some Ring of Honor show.  I wouldn’t know which one, because ever since Tony Khan bought the entire promotion, it hasn’t held my interest beyond the one Final Battle show I went to a few years ago, and fuck if I’m going to pay actual money to see a TK production.

The thing is, up until seeing this title change, I had no idea that the ROH Six-Man championship was still in existence.  I was under the impression that in an attempt to reduce the sheer volume of blets in AEW/ROH, that when the Bang Bang Gang* defeated The Acclaimed and “unified” the ROH Six-Man blets with the AEW Trios blets, six blets would be reduced to three.

*The amount of turrible that this name is, is unprecedented, and even in a carny, smarky bubble that AEW and their fans exist in, this stands out as that bad

Naturally, instead they ended up with nine total blets to cart around, as Jay White, Colten and Austin Gunn would lug around each an ROH Six-Man blet, the gaudy pink-strapped Acclaimed-version Trios blet, as well as the OG black, blue and gold AEW Trios blet.  There exists enough physical blets in AEW and ROH combined for every single talent that appears on screen to have one.

Anyway though, the whole point of a unified championship is the consolidate the number of titles, to increase the prestige of a singular championship, and despite the fact that there were at one point nine blets to signify the Unified Trios championship, the reality is that the Acclaimed-pink blets and the ROH Six-Man blets should have been taken off television.

Recently, whether it was legitimate or kayfabe, Jay White was injured, and taken off television; I’m hoping it was the latter, and that an injury angle is what was needed in order to break Jay White away from the Gunns and Juice Robinson, so that a guy that hasn’t been even a full year removed from being the IWGP World Champion can actually reset his trajectory in AEW, instead of being like Kazuchika Okada and being used at a fraction of his true capabilities and instead stashed with C-tier talents and meaningless television segments.

As a result of White being out, the Bang Bang Gang was stripped of the Unified Trios championship, and forced to fight The Patriarchy for the right to win them back.  And with their top worker out, Christian and his cronies would pick up the win, the titles, and hopefully he will elevate the Trios blets as well as he had elevated the TNT championship.

The thing is, what everyone failed to mention, and/or I was never made aware of because I don’t pay that much attention to AEW/ROH, is that the ROH Six-Man championship was un-unified just like that, and it wasn’t until I saw Dustin Rhodes and the Von Erichs winning them did I even learn that they were even active championships again.

Look, I’m fine with championships being resurrected when the need arises, but the thing with this convoluted journey of Six-Man/Trios championships is that it all happened within the span of a calendar year and basically ended up in the same place in which it started:

  • August 2023: The Acclaimed win the AEW Trios Championship
  • January 2024: Jay White and the Gunns win the ROH Six-Man Championship
  • April 2024: Bang Bang Gang defeats The Acclaimed, becomes the Unified Trios Champions
  • July 2024: On account of Jay White’s injury, Bang Bang Gang are stripped of the Unified Trios Championship; unmentioned, the unification is severed, and both sets of championships are rendered vacant
  • July 20, 2024: Christian and the Patriarchy win the AEW Trios Championship
  • July 27, 2024: Dustin Rhodes and the Von Erichs win the ROH Six-Man Championship

AEW/ROH doesn’t need 35 championship blets floating around, and yet they had the opportunity to pare down for the sake of the others, but instead they added more, and when they had a second chance to consolidate again, they only reduced out the custom-variants of the Acclaimed, and ended up with two different six-man titles in the end.

What all this amounts to is the sheer frivolity and unimportance of six-man tag team wrestling, if their championships are going to be monkeyed around with and passed around like a blunt at a rap concert. 

It’s funny, because the WWE often got flack for their dismissive attitude towards tag team wrestling, to the point where when AEW came into existence, they made it a high priority point to emphasize tag team wrestling, because of the Young Bucks and FTR.  But whereas the WWE shit on tag team wrestling, AEW apparently has decided to basically create a six-man tag division, so that they could have something to shit on as well.

I hope Southwest is ready to be mediocre

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WaPo: Southwest Airlines eliminating open seating starting in 2025

In the grand spectrum of things, Southwest Airlines getting rid of open seating doesn’t really impact my life that much.  I don’t fly enough anymore to really be affected by this, because my life is too hectic at this juncture in my life and when it’s time for a family trip, driving is more economical and logical albeit more time consuming, but it’s better than dropping $2,100 on a trip to like Orlando.

But Southwest was always a company that I had some admiration for, because their general people-first modus operandi was always refreshing in the vast ocean of big businesses that existed solely to part dollars from the hands of the people and put them into the pockets of soulless shitheads known as investors and other finance-ey words used to describe old white people. 

And it’s not like they were starving by any stretch of the imagination, even during some of the most brutal recessions and stretches of financial wastelands, SWA was one of the few airlines that continually turned profits, mostly on account of their generally friendly business practices.

Reasonable fares, convenient routes, free checked bags, and free change policies; there was a lot to like about SWA, but if there was ever one thing that conversely blew the minds off of the dull-watted, and to some probably perceived as a deterrent and turn-off, was the open-seating policy that probably defeated more people than the internet itself.

Personally, it was, and has never been an issue for me, because I have a brain.  It’s not that hard to queue up in lines in little chunks of five behind clearly marked totems, and it takes either a little bit of upfront discipline or the willingness to pay a little extra to get Group A boarding, and seeing as how the vast majority of my travels on SWA have usually been by myself, I’ve almost always been able to grab an errant single aisle or window seat closer to the front of the aircraft, meaning I can get the fuck off sooner rather than later being wedged into the back of the aircraft and needing an extra 20 minutes just to deplane.

But if I had to guess, in spite of being their policy for over the last 50 years, SWA has simply had enough of the bullshit of dealing with passengers who just haven’t gotten it after a half century, passengers who conduct themselves like entitled spoiled assholes on the aircraft, and having to deal with passengers who they have to reimburse or give free second seats to because they’re the sizes of Pontiac Azteks.

Like the vast majority of things in the world that end up being declared ruined, there’s nobody really to blame, except people.

Sure, at the root of it, I want to accuse some managerial change at the higher rungs of the ladders at SWA, where some bean counters have identified a vast field of earning opportunities to be had by ditching open seating, and that’s probably not inaccurate, but the company had resisted many opportunities to switch in previous decades, but in this day and age, the bullshit of passengers has probably grown too much, their workforce has grown flakier and full of impatient younger heads, and enough is enough and this is where we’re headed.

The reality is that SWA has probably lost out on millions over the last few decades, by trying to be The People’s™ airline, with their friendly policies and acceptance and inclusion, and thanks to mounting passenger bullshit, they’ve probably just hit a philosophical wall of why they should be handicapping their earning capabilities being nice to a ton of assholes, when absolutely nobody else is doing it?

When the day is over, as I said, it doesn’t impact me a whole hell of a lot, but I would be curious to see what lies in the future for Southwest.  I don’t imagine the loss of open-seating is really going to impact the airline as much as many outlets on the internet make it sound like it’s going to, but for those people who were married to the concept, and are going to revolt, or at least no longer prioritize them because they’re basically transforming into an “ordinary” airline on the level of United or American or JetBlue, SWA is just going to likely blend into the pack, except, barring a change, more handicapped by virtue of not partnering up with travel aggregators like Google, Kayak, Travelocity and Expedia.

Their free baggage and lack of change fees might be enough to retain some customers, and I’m really curious to know what’s going to become of the large passenger policy once seats become assigned, and big people won’t be able to just lumber to the gate and assume an empty seat will be available next to theirs, but in the game of airline thrones, the most important thing is solely going to hinge on if as long as SWA can remain competitive with fares.

Regardless, I still lament over the days before SWA engulfed AirTran.  Not a travel day goes by where I don’t miss AirTran and the time where I could get sub-$200 RT fares to visit my family and eastern-based friends, and then cash in my credits to trips to Las Vegas or Seattle.  After the merger, all those routes have nearly doubled in cost, and despite my general positive opinion of their brand, I was not happy about it.

Things change, this is where we’re headed, and I hope SWA is ready to slide into the middle of the pack.  But as long as they don’t have to see any further videos and articles about their passengers being douchebag pricks on the internet, they probably are happy to take that deal in the long game.