Normative Judgement on Human Value Based on Fandom

[00:00] I do have also a correction from last week.
[00:03] I may have instructed our listeners to commit a mortal sin, and I do apologize.
[00:12] I recommended if you're selling your house that it was Catholic tradition to bury a
[00:17] statue of St. Mary upside down.
[00:19] That is not the case.
[00:21] It is St. Joseph, who is the father, not the mother, who is just a different person,
[00:28] and that's a different thing.
[00:29] I do apologize.
[00:30] So get out your shovel if you listen to my advice, and fix that quick.
[00:34] Take up Mary.
[00:35] Yeah.
[00:36] Take up Mary.
[00:37] Put Joseph in there, and I do apologize for that one.
[00:40] And then two Hail Marys.
[00:41] Yes.
[00:42] A couple rosaries, and you should be good to go.
[00:46] Talk to your local priest if you're not sure.
[00:51] My apologies.
[00:52] That was the plan.
[01:01] I'm super excited.
[01:02] I told us we had to, sir.
[01:04] So we signed up for it.
[01:05] In the end, it's going to be better and more true than Google can give you.
[01:15] All right.
[01:17] We've got an under-Google-able this week.
[01:19] Coalson, what do you got for us?
[01:22] So I was hanging out with the folks.
[01:26] They're very excited about this, this pacer team.
[01:29] And they were...
[01:32] Actually, I think they're cheering right now about the game.
[01:35] They're just super into it.
[01:37] Right.
[01:38] And they were worried about the attendance, and whether they're not getting enough sellouts
[01:47] for how fun this team is.
[01:51] And I said that it's going to take some time.
[01:56] Everybody loves Victor Oladipo, but you've got to get a lot of wins because you need
[02:02] bandwagon fans to kind of jump on board to fill up the arena.
[02:06] Shout out to Catherine.
[02:11] She admits it, too.
[02:12] She has no shame.
[02:13] And it just occurred to me, why don't we talk about where the term bandwagon fan comes from?
[02:23] I'm sure there's a history to that idiom.
[02:26] First of all, can we define bandwagon?
[02:30] What exactly is a bandwagon?
[02:32] I assume it's just a rocket.
[02:33] So I always envisioned a Karastoga-covered wagon was the bandwagon.
[02:40] I was thinking like rock and roll van.
[02:43] Like a literal bandwagon with groupies in it.
[02:49] Okay, but how often are they pulling around a wagon?
[02:53] Well, like a station wagon.
[02:54] I want to say the term bandwagon came around well before
[02:58] little Richard childhood rock and roll.
[03:00] They were always groupies, though, right?
[03:03] Were there?
[03:04] You think there were groupies for like the Minstrels back in the...
[03:07] That's right.
[03:08] It's a band-aids.
[03:10] It's a band-aids.
[03:13] Some loot aids.
[03:19] I think that a bandwagon means like several wagons in a row.
[03:25] It's a band of wagons.
[03:27] Okay.
[03:29] Moving from one hamlet to the next or something like that.
[03:34] I want to say it goes back to Shakespeare-ish times.
[03:39] Clearly Shakespeare or Falconry.
[03:43] I would say, how about the westward expansion in the United States?
[03:48] You had people moving west and then you had...
[03:51] Okay.
[03:52] When somebody found a good location, when they passed by a hamlet or something,
[03:56] people would be like, hey, I wanted to go west anyway.
[03:59] Sounds like you guys have a plan.
[04:01] Let's go, Mr. Donner.
[04:03] I'm done.
[04:06] I have complete none of it.
[04:07] You say you're going to go through the Sierras in the region.
[04:09] I'm in.
[04:13] This is like Oregon Trail kind of thing.
[04:16] Yeah.
[04:17] The wagon train, if you will, was coming through town.
[04:19] You're joining that train, that band of wagons.
[04:22] I like that.
[04:23] Because somebody else had a good idea.
[04:26] Or an idea that sounded good.
[04:28] Or an idea.
[04:33] I like that.
[04:34] It does not involve Shakespeare, though.
[04:35] That is his main flaw.
[04:37] You could bring Shakespeare on the wagon.
[04:39] They did.
[04:40] It always read Shakespeare, though.
[04:42] Little known fact.
[04:44] Under Google it.
[04:45] So the bandwagon fan phrase is jump on the bandwagon.
[04:52] Sure.
[04:53] Are you jumping on the bandwagon line?
[04:56] That's not very literal.
[04:58] Harper's thing is we're hopping on the wagon for the band.
[05:03] Well, I think that it would be, yeah, you could do either.
[05:07] If you had a wagon.
[05:09] You just joined the bandwagon.
[05:11] Join the train of wagons.
[05:15] And if you didn't, you just jumped on and hoped nobody kicked you off.
[05:20] Most likely, if you had enough scratch to afford a wagon,
[05:25] you probably were less free wheeling and free spirited.
[05:34] Whereas if you didn't have any possessions,
[05:36] you could jump on the bandwagon.
[05:38] Like literally jump in the wagon.
[05:40] Okay, so I like this.
[05:42] I like it.
[05:43] It's the Mavericks.
[05:45] It's the, it's the poor scrappy, you know, the Spurs heart.
[05:51] The nuggets.
[05:53] The heart of American industry.
[05:55] The 49ers.
[05:56] It's just jumping on.
[05:57] The trailblazers.
[05:58] Yeah, the trailblazers.
[05:59] If you will.
[06:00] Okay, good.
[06:05] And they jump on a band of wagons to go west.
[06:09] So we're putting this at what, 1800 something?
[06:15] Yeah, early, you know, yeah.
[06:17] 1830s.
[06:19] 1830s.
[06:20] 1870s.
[06:21] 1870s.
[06:22] And then do you want to, do you have a separate question
[06:24] about the origination of the bandwagon fan or just?
[06:28] No, I mean, I think, I think if, I, yeah,
[06:31] but I guess we defined a bandwagon, which is,
[06:34] and why you would jump on it.
[06:35] I think we got there.
[06:36] Okay.
[06:37] I mean, I don't know that we got there, but.
[06:39] Etymology.
[06:40] U.S. 1899.
[06:42] Mm-hmm.
[06:43] bandwagon carried the musicians at the head of a parade
[06:46] or at a political rally beckoning others to follow.
[06:50] This phrase is first attested in a letter by
[06:53] Theodore Roosevelt in 1899.
[06:55] When I once became sure of one majority,
[06:57] they rumbled over each other to get aboard the bandwagon.
[07:01] That's Wiktionary.
[07:03] And the, according to the website today,
[07:07] foundout.com, the term bandwagon
[07:12] comes from P.T. Barnum.
[07:16] I like that one.
[07:18] That's.
[07:19] The circus owner.
[07:20] So it was a wagon that carried a circus band.
[07:23] So this is like, you know, the origins of running off
[07:26] with a circus is jumping on the bandwagon.
[07:29] Maybe.
[07:30] I don't know.
[07:31] Yeah.
[07:32] But these both are literal wagons that hold literal bands.
[07:37] Oh, OK.
[07:38] I see.
[07:39] OK, so the bandwagon would go through town and that
[07:42] of circus performers and that would catch people's attention.
[07:48] And then and then there are records of the phrase
[07:52] used in political speeches throughout the 1890s,
[07:55] usually in the form of warning potential voters
[07:57] not to jump on the opponent's bandwagon in haste.
[08:00] All right.
[08:01] So it's political.
[08:02] Yeah.
[08:04] But there's definitely bands involved.
[08:06] Right.
[08:07] Right.
[08:08] So you would rent the circus's bandwagon
[08:11] and do your little political tour.
[08:14] And the opponent would say don't jump on that bandwagon.
[08:19] Why are we renting things?
[08:23] I mean, did the politicians have their own
[08:26] bandwagons or did they rent it from the P.T. Barnum?
[08:29] I don't think that it's necessarily you need to rent them.
[08:35] You need to rent them.
[08:36] How many how many bandwagons are out there, Joey?
[08:39] Any old wagon will any old wagon will do.
[08:43] Where do you get the grant?
[08:45] According to Wikipedia, the phrase jump on the bandwagon
[08:49] first appeared in American politics in 1848
[08:53] when Dan Rice, a famous and popular circus clown of the time,
[08:57] used his bandwagon and its music to gain attention
[09:00] for his political campaign appearances.
[09:05] Oh, the clown campaign.
[09:07] Mm-hmm.
[09:08] Okay.
[09:09] I saw one of those recently.
[09:11] And of course, Williams Jennings Bryan used the bandwagon.
[09:20] W.J.B.
[09:22] No, but he used it as a derogatory term.
[09:26] Gotcha.
[09:27] Okay.
[09:28] W.J.B., the guy that changed the course of American history.
[09:33] Then rock and roll.
[09:34] In sports, one who sports a particular sports team,
[09:40] despite having shown no interest in that team
[09:43] until it started gaining success,
[09:45] can be considered a bandwagon fan.
[09:48] One recent example in the United States is the Golden State Warriors.
[09:52] True, true.
[09:54] For instance, the bandwagon effect can be seen
[09:58] in the statistics of sales of point guard Steph Curry's jersey.
[10:02] Curry merchandise sales in the first two weeks
[10:05] of the 2015-16 season were 453% higher
[10:11] than in the first two weeks of the 2014-15 season.
[10:15] That's crazy.
[10:16] That's after he won a title, right?
[10:18] Yes.
[10:19] There you go.
[10:21] And he hit more threes than God that year.
[10:25] And God's defense.
[10:26] It was an off year.
[10:29] Okay, so Harper was kind of correct.
[10:34] Well, Harper, yeah, was correct.
[10:36] That it carried the band.
[10:38] But it was not rock and roll band.
[10:40] It was like, you know.
[10:42] It was the circus band.
[10:43] In the 1840s, yeah, the circus band.
[10:46] P.T. Barnum, 1855 is what I got here.
[10:49] Well, 1855 is the first time that P.T. Barnum used the term bandwagon in writing.
[10:54] But the bandwagon wasn't used in that context.
[10:57] It just literally referred to.
[10:59] Oh, yeah.
[11:00] Yeah, bandwagon.
[11:02] Right.
[11:03] We're not giving P.T. Barnum credit for the jump on the bandwagon phrase.
[11:06] No, although I think he tried to.
[11:08] I did run across something that he did try.
[11:11] People have tried to attribute it to him.
[11:13] Or he tried to attribute it to himself at some point.
[11:16] Hey, imagine the latter.
[11:18] That sounds weird.
[11:19] Exactly.
[11:20] Well, good.
[11:21] I'm glad that it was the case.
[11:22] I'm glad we've got this figured out.
[11:24] I feel smarter.
[11:26] If you want to feel dumber, I can read you the Urban Dictionary.
[11:29] Please.
[11:30] Please.
[11:31] Please.
[11:32] He is not allowed on.
[11:33] Just checking that out.
[11:34] No, no, no.
[11:35] My favorite is definition number three, which is anyone who became a Miami Heat fan in 2010.
[11:44] Nice.
[11:46] Oh, yeah.
[11:49] Those people, they were walking out of the NBA Finals games.
[11:56] Yeah, they were terrible people.
[11:58] Yeah.
[11:59] They show up late.
[12:00] They leave early.
[12:03] Got locked out of the final minutes of one of the greatest comebacks.
[12:07] Yeah.
[12:08] I love that I just made a normative judgment about human value based upon fandom.
[12:13] Terrible.
[12:14] The internet is an amazing time to be alive.
[12:17] Yep.
[12:21] Very good.
[12:24] Any predictions for the next bandwagon, like the big bandwagon leader?
[12:31] Houston, for sure.
[12:34] It sounds like you already are starting to look...
[12:36] I'm already in.
[12:37] I'm already in.
[12:38] I was listening to Zach Lowe's podcast.
[12:41] Shout out.
[12:42] Apparently, he had some stat that they're averaging wins by over 10 points a game.
[12:52] If they do that throughout the season, that will put them with 15 other teams in NBA history.
[12:57] Yeah.
[12:58] Like all the Golden State teams of the past three years.
[13:02] Yes.
[13:03] The Great Bulls teams and Lakers teams and Bucks teams and things like that.
[13:08] Well, nobody cares about Houston.
[13:09] The next bandwagon team is the Indiana Pacers.
[13:12] We're going to sellouts the rest of the way.
[13:14] It's going down.
[13:16] Go Pacers fans and half ass fans.
[13:18] We love you too.
[13:19] Yeah, exactly.
[13:20] Why don't you buy a 10 game package at the very least?
[13:23] Like just go and see your...
[13:25] Maybe at the very least, just go to a game.
[13:27] That's more like the least you can do.
[13:29] But go check it out.
[13:30] It's super fun.
[13:33] At a minimum, subscribe to our podcast.
[13:35] That's what all the bandwagon fans are doing these days.
[13:38] And let us talk.
[13:39] That's what the bandwagon...
[13:41] All the cool kids are doing it.
[13:48] Do you know any cool kids?
[13:49] We got to make an undefeated wagon.
[13:52] I'm just saying, all the hipsters I knew...
[13:55] All the hipsters I know knew about this podcast way before the people that are listening to it now.
[14:01] Well, that was when it was on vinyl.
[14:06] That's right.
[14:07] They're making their own soap and their own whiskey.
[14:11] That's great.
[14:12] Jason, do you want a literal wagon pulling literal undebateables down the street?
[14:18] Yep.
[14:19] And a band.
[14:20] I want an ornately decorated wagon with musicians and undebateables.
[14:30] It's very common in the late 1800s.
[14:34] I want a llama and an alpaca.
[14:39] One on each side.
[14:41] Go down.
[14:43] Okay, I like that.
[14:45] And perhaps a mountain lion and a puma.
[14:52] Puma, we'll see how they get along with the llama and the alpaca.
[14:55] I think we got to have...
[14:58] That's why the wagon goes fast.
[15:01] It's going to be hard for people to jump on and talk too fast.
[15:06] We have the pumas in a cage right behind the llama and the alpaca,
[15:10] so that they're just like...
[15:14] We're going to have a falcon and Shakespeare, right?
[15:18] Oh, of course.
[15:19] That sounds like we've got a new logo coming up here soon.
[15:24] Yeah, exactly.
[15:25] I've got some work to do.
[15:26] It's definitely going to be the logo for our national tour in 2000.
[15:30] I have to get the art department right on that.
[15:32] 20.
[15:34] I think it's a good time to end this one.
[15:38] It's always well passed.