When Will I Learn That I Always Regret My “Hot Takes”?

The TLDR: It would be prudent of me to make sure I understand all sides of a controversy before I comment on it, and then gauge how much I actually care. If either of these don’t pass the “definitely yes” test, I should just keep my mouth shut.

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One part of me says, “You should just be yourself. If you’re feeling something sassy, and it’s not outright mean, share it.” And the other part of me says, “Is sassiness worth sharing when it could potentially make people upset? How much do I actually care?”

In reality, I detest “hot take” culture. It started with ESPN, infiltrated all news, became a whole 24/7 business model for every network ever, and earns sensational content creators views and $$ because our brains are wired to click on anything that could potentially pump us up with adrenaline. Maybe I’ve just read a title or quote from a talking head that I vehemently agree with. Click! Or, something I vehemently disagree with. Also click! And in this fervor, the adrenaline starts pumping.

The problem with this gut reaction is that I and plenty of other people don’t recognize this as a “take” immediately. “Takes” are a money scheme and should be treated as such. I neglect to do my research sometimes, which entails reading the article/watching the video fully, researching how often the poster posts “takes”, researching the history of the poster or company in general, figuring out what their motivation is to promote “takes” (it’s always money), and importantly, finding other sources that contain the same information and see if any details have been added or omitted.

So, in the heat of the moment, sometimes I post whatever sassy thing that I feel has to be said. Almost every time, though, I’ll come across a source that gives more information about the object of my “take” and makes me feel like a jerk. I usually delete it but worry that whatever I’ve said will come back to haunt me later in my life.

The situation that prompted this blog post:

I have a lot to say about baseball, clubhouse culture, and especially the Mets. We had a player named Tommy Pham for the beginning of the season, but I deemed him a macho jerk before he was on the Mets because of a Fantasy sports situation between he and some other players. Two days ago, he engaged in a yelling match with a lady who was heckling him during a game. He was calling her names, but you couldn’t clearly hear what *she* said. Then some guy chimed in to defend her saying, “Hey, go strike out,” which made him flip out and pull the race card. “Of course it’s a white man blah blah blah.” I don’t respect this particular brand of cheap conversation hijacking, so I posted this:

Me pooping on Tommy Pham for being bratty to fans

But then a few hours later I deleted it. I think TP looks for opportunities to have outbursts like these, but I watched the post-game interview and the couple other comments he made about it, and realized that I just don’t know enough about the situation to cast a judgement. And for all I know, maybe race was brought up at another point that we didn’t see.

Then I watched this video about all the adversity TP has dealt with all his life, and I thought about how in my own life, I’ve been lucky/blessed to not deal with major adversity besides bipolar disorder. BP seriously ran the show for the first 28ish years of my life and I was more than prone to unnecessarily mean or “take-like” outbursts littered with low blows just to get someone to shut up, or to make myself look like I’m “telling it like it is.”

I didn’t even deal with adversity and I was certainly more bratty than Tommy, more often, to people I actually like or even love. How can I preach when I spent so much time being a jerk and never bothering to develop the “keeping my mouth shut” skill? What right do I have to judge this dude? He was awesome with the Mets. He’s an awesome player. And also he’s (rightfully so) got a lot of pent up chips on his shoulder.

Then I thought, what if he saw this tweet? Do I really want to be in a public e-fight with an MLB player whose athletic ability I deeply respect? No, I sure don’t. In fact, I’d probably get along with him spectacularly because I like passionate people. I’d probably adopt him like I adopt all sorts of defense-mechanisming people because I can see past the defense mechanisms and understand their heart.

Ultimately, the impulse to do hot takes is not a workable impulse that I should be acting on. In my head it’s warranted, but in real life, I preach to give people the benefit of the doubt, but didn’t do that myself, here. I didn’t, don’t, and never will have all the information because I wasn’t there. I vent about when people do exactly the thing I did- have a hot take without understanding the full context or purposely omitting important details. And more importantly, I thought about this situation for about 3 total minutes and then didn’t care any more. So why do it?

I need to just stop. Fans are malicious. I sure couldn’t handle the heat. I’d be a Bryce Harper and lash out often if I played sports professionally. I wouldn’t be able to handle the publicity of an e-fight, either. I could, but it would be a perfect example of opening my mouth and attracting controversy that leaves two people annoyed, takes up both of our valuable energy and time, about a situation that doesn’t affect my life in any way. I don’t care. I just wanted to be sassy.

Perhaps there’s a better outlet for this, like writing hot takes about having hot takes.