FanPost

Sometimes bad things (or seasons) just happen

Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Once upon a time my day job was to troll around message boards run by people that believe in conspiracy theories. Why this was my day job would probably take too long to adequately explain. Let's just say it involved me getting sucked into a clandestine organization and there was a voluptuous Swedish redhead in the mix.

I found myself on message boards run by people who think all rocketry is fake and communications satellites are actually tall invisible broadcast towers. I found myself on message boards where people think an antennae array in Alaska controls the weather. I found myself reading posts from people who sincerely thought Sandy Hook was faked with crisis actors. I found myself arguing with people who were convinced any day now the UN was going to put everyone in death camps run by FEMA.

So why do I bring this up? Because I'm seeing the same pathology here on this blog. People have seemingly descended into some vortex of insanity and I'm afraid it is going to get worse before it gets better. Which is why I'd like to just make a sensible suggestion to everyone: take a deep breath and calm down!

The best parallel is with how people are feeding into a narrative where they have constructed an archetype villain as responsible for all this: Jed York. Once a collective agreement was seemingly reached, that everything was his doing, it became easier for people to create an ever expanding flowchart of wrongness that all flowed like a sewer towards their hated nemesis. This can be seen in just the verbiage of the blog where "Yorked" was turned into a colloquialism.

I've seen that before. When I spent many years arguing with Truthers it became clear they thought Larry Silverstein was behind everything wrong in the world. They turned his name into a colloquialism too. That seems to be a tell that a collective of people have uniformly lost all pretenses of fair and unbiased information processing. They created a narrative that Silverstein was evil and reinforced it with a kind of groupthink bullying that punished anyone that dared disagreed.

Notice that in this blog even timidly floating the idea that York might not be the super villain everyone has made him out to be gets you insulted and harassed.

"Ha!" You all might be saying in your head right now. "The season has been terrible so of course he is a super villain!"

No. Sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes a horrible conglomeration of bad things happen that results in a tragedy. That does not mean any one person planned it all in advance. Buildings collapse. Bridges fail. Vaccines don't work. Chasms open in Montana and armies of heavily armed leprechauns issue forth. [citation needed]

Bad things happen. We don't always need a super villain to be responsible. Sure having a singular target of wrath that we can concentrate on makes things seemingly more digestible. It might make the situation seem less chaotic and offer a mole of comfort in a world where the cold randomness of crap can make someone just want to curl up under their bed and never come back out but it isn't realistic.

York made some decisions that were controversial. The season hasn't gone well. It is possible, folks, that he was just wrong. People can be wrong. It happens. I get that many on here would like to think that he wanted to tank the team. That he wanted to create a failed season. That he planned this all from his lair while minions threw dolphins into a fire because he likes to hear them scream in pain. But, no, it is far more likely he was just wrong than that he is a Captain Planet super villain doing things for the cause of MOAR EVIL!

Too many people on here seem to have made this personal. I don't get it. But I have seen it before in the conspiracy world. I'm just calling it like I see it. A lot of bad things happened. The team lost an aggregate of 26 pro bowl appearances in one off season. The team basically became an expansion team overnight. And that sucks but trying to put the blame on any one person is just uncalled for. It is just reductionist reactionary nonsense.

So, please people get some perspective. This is a game. I'd like my team to win on Sundays but my life isn't that depleted if they don't. Turning this blog into a haven of conspiracist muckraking is only piling pain onto a salt filled wound. Instead of wanting pitchforks, witch burnings and mass graves couldn't we be more constructive? Instead of calling for mass firings could we not come up with more positive plans?

I mean from where I sit I think the team is a new offensive coordinator, an improved offensive line and a pass rusher away from being relevant again. But, maybe I'm wrong. And maybe that means I'm EVIL! So it goes. If the pathology of conspiracy thinking holds I'll definitely be accused of being a York PR person in the comments.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Niners Nation's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of Niners Nation's writers or editors.