It’s no secret that America loves a good underdog, someone who starts out at the bottom and ends out on top.
In movies, the plot is always the main lead has to fight for something that another person has, and they win. In the movie, The Wedding Singer, Robbie (Adam Sandler) fights for Julia (Drew Barrymore), and wins. In Dodgeball, a man starts a dodgeball team and he has to defeat another, better team, to get the gold and the girl, which does. Every single Hallmark movie has to do with a girl who leaves her big city boyfriend for the unsuspecting christmas tree farmer.
How does this change our perspectives in real life, though?
The Kansas City Chiefs went to the SuperBowl for the third year in a row. For the previous two years they won, and there seemed to be a general consensus that the American people did not like this. People on social media thought that it was unfair that they went to the SuperBowl so many times, and were begging the Eagles to beat them.
The Chiefs used to be just like every other team in the NFL, and they didn’t start getting “Super Bowl good” until 2019, and everything turned around. People rooted for them because they went from a middle of the pack team to a superstar team.
The Chiefs have become the one for the underdog to beat, and the American people were thrilled to watch it happen on live television.
For someone, or something to be good, it needs the public’s support, but once they are good, the public resents them.
Another example is Chappell Roan. Less than a year ago, Chappell Roan was just getting popular on social media. She had funny songs and an interesting style. Almost overnight her popularity grew, she went from performing in small bars to performing in huge arenas.
However, with great popularity comes a great lack of privacy.
Chappell Roan started asking people to stop coming up to her, and her family on the street, and the public resented her.
When she was just a small, Midwest girl, her fame skyrocketed because people wanted a fresh new face amongst the big time singers, but once she became one, she was “spoiled”, “entitled”, and “let the fame go to her head”.
What is it about one team being better than another team that makes people want them to lose?
Why do people hate the team that wins more and praise the team that doesn’t?
When someone is just starting out in an industry, people love them so much because they are new, and fresher than the people who have been in that industry for a long time. But once they are not new, they want someone to push them out.
Maybe if what was in every part of the media did not foster this great appreciation of an underdog, people would feel free to root for a team that is better, or the one they just want to root for.
