Livvy Dunne and the no good very bad take

[cuuf]

Man, I remember getting stoned on some sites (maybe here) complaining about how Livvy sold sex and getting shouted down about empowerment and its not her fault creating a stir because men look at her like that, etc etc. Now she makes a comment about scoring and everyone piles on lol.

 

[MaryClare]

Man, I remember getting stoned on some sites (maybe here) complaining about how Livvy sold sex and getting shouted down about empowerment and its not her fault creating a stir because men look at her like that, etc etc. Now she makes a comment about scoring and everyone piles on lol.

Culpability and responsibility are two different things. Does Olivia Dunne knowingly engage in and profit from activities that promote misogyny and objectification of women? Yes. Is she responsible for insuring that people who consume her content behave like decent human beings? No, their behaviour is on them.

I don’t think there is an awful lot of Livvy love on gymnaverse, but I may be wrong.

 

[IratePanda]

Culpability and responsibility are two different things. Does Olivia Dunne knowingly engage in and profit from activities that promote misogyny and objectification of women? Yes. Is she responsible for insuring that people who consume her content behave like decent human beings? No, their behaviour is on them.

I don’t think there is an awful lot of Livvy love on gymnaverse, but I may be wrong.

It's a slippery slope. She can't control her fans' behavior, but she does enable it. That makes her part of the problem.

 

[KristyJ]

I don't blame her for the misbehavior of various fans. They have the choice not to act in a degenerate way. I do have concerns about how she intentionally markets in a way that encourages that male gaze so strongly that the effects travel beyond her to other gymnasts and strong women. She has every right to do it, but I also have every right to be sad about the cultural trends it perpetuates.

 

[JaJa]

I don't blame her for the misbehavior of various fans. They have the choice not to act in a degenerate way.

And Livvy has the choice not to encourage it and monetize it.

 

[rlayt]

@cuuf I think you got your forums mixed up. I haven’t seen a lot of love for her here.

 

[IratePanda]

And Livvy has the choice not to encourage it and monetize it.

Precisely. She is willfully unenlightened.

 

[cuuf]

It's a slippery slope. She can't control her fans' behavior, but she does enable it. That makes her part of the problem.

That's always been my point, you can't really disassociate the two. Her actions are intentional and promote or re-affirm the misogynistic behavior, that's how she monetizes it. So you can't 100% claim she has no responsibility on how people respond to her.

 

[OnlyBeansOnToast]

That's always been my point, you can't really disassociate the two. Her actions are intentional and promote or re-affirm the misogynistic behavior, that's how she monetizes it. So you can't 100% claim she has no responsibility on how people respond to her.

When we all saw the video of the baying mob screaming "BRING US LIVVY!" at other gymnasts leaving a venue and her response began with "“I will always appreciate and love the support from you guys" rather than "That was completely unacceptable, I do not like it, please stop, I do not want people like you coming to see me"...

 

[ugadawgkat]

Sounds like Livvy wants to be given a 10.0 to bolster her own popularity. However if her goal is to boost NCAA gymnastics exposure then perhaps an education in the evolution NCAA gymnastics popularity would benefit her. I have been a NCAA gymnastics fan since the late 80s. I've seen the sport's fan base and popularity do nothing but increase over those years. In the 80s and 90s there were no televised meets and the best you could do to see NCAA gym was to attend a meet. In the early 2000s there was little if any TV exposure and the best you'd get online for a meet was some majorly delayed scoring. Now and for at least the last 10 years or so almost all meets are televised, not to mention the fact that many are sold out. Sorry to tell Livvy this but in all those years when I attended almost every single UGA home meet, my observation was this: Even casual gymnastics fans know the difference between good routines and great routines. The crowds have roared many times in Stegeman immediately after a gymnast performed an exceptional routine. They didn't need to see the judges' scores to confirm what they just witnessed. Therefore to hand out unearned scores to boost NCAA gymnastics popularity would be an insult to their intelligence and do nothing to increase it's exposure and popularity. In fact it would probably have the opposite effect. Over the years when I have seen gymnasts get scores they did not deserve it not only made me angry but it made me think that the sport was rigged. Example- Jamie Dantzler's vault score in the NCAA 2002 finals in Tuscaloosa. She clearly did not stick her vault and yet several of the 6 judges gave her a 10.0. Did nothing but piss me off as well as the Alabama fans sitting all around me. While we weren't trained judges, we knew that an unstuck vault should never be given a perfect score.

Side note/observation: Maybe Livvy also sees the handwriting on the wall for LSU and that the chances of LSU repeating as National Champions will again depend on the best team imploding like last year. The liklihood of this happening are about NIL. Honestly If LSU does not improve they will be lucky to make the top 4.

 

[MaryClare]

@ugadawgkat
Am I missing something? LSU have had 1 bad meet?

 

[dweiss324]

I guess I just don't understand what "sold out" means to her. 5-10 years ago, I could drive an hour to Athens to watch UGA and pay 10$ at the door with a kid on my lap, and then move down to empty seats almost instantly. Now, in Orlando, I have to pay $30+ online to get a ticket in advance, or risk showing up 2 hours away and hearing they're "sold out". There's always empty seats. Never seen a meet without tons of empty seats. Even when they say it's sold out, tons of people don't show up..

My experience, but, it's changed significantly in the last decade, and I've never been to a meet where I don't spot empty seats. Ive never been to a meet where I haven't moved to empty seats, with children

 

[RedBirdie]

@ugadawgkat
Am I missing something? LSU have had 1 bad meet?

LSU lost to Arkansas last weekend, 196.875-196.600. For them, that's a bad meet.

 

[MaryClare]

LSU lost to Arkansas last weekend, 196.875-196.600. For them, that's a bad meet.

Yes. 1 bad meet. They are still ranked 3rd?

 

[RedBirdie]

They are. They're a bunch of drama llamas.

 

[ugadawgkat]

UGAs first meet this year was sold out. Yes there were empty seats but there were at least 9,000 fans in a venue that holds just over 10,500. It's not as if half of the coliseum was empty. I doubt anyone was allowed to move down to better seats in that meet. I've gone to almost every home meet for 30+ years and UGA meets have always had great attendance on Friday nights. Sunday & MLK day meets not so much.

I'll make a prediction right now about LSU: They will not repeat as national champions, nor will their final ranking be above 3rd without Oklahoma or Florida self destructing. I'm not trying to put them down. They literally are my second favorite team after UGA. I just don't see them as beating out Oklahoma or Florida this year. It looks like other teams may be capable of besting them in the rankings as well- Utah and UCLA seem to have the talent to do so.

 

[Regionals]

Rebecca Scally's take from collegegymnews.com:

"I had as good a time as anyone with that Livvy Dunne tweet. We got some great jokes out of it. People got to apply my beloved Patriots Principle. How silly, right? Coming out as pro-overscoring because, what, you’re annoyed at losing to Arkansas? Being willing to sell out the soul of the sport in exchange for a few ticket sales when we’re already seeing sold out arenas and attendance records weekly because your personal fans who never understood the sport or cared to try are confused about a 9.875?

I totally understand being worried about the future of non-rev sports in the revenue-sharing world. I am too. I definitely think programs will be cut in the upcoming years. I don’t think whether an already-famous gymnast gets a 9.95 or a 10 has any bearing on their survival whatsoever, and I think it’s cheap to use them as a bargaining chip in an argument that otherwise only applies to the top gymnasts at the top teams, but I thought it was pretty unlikely that she’d thought that far.

And that’s when I ruined the fun for myself by becoming a conspiracy theorist, because I increasingly suspect that other people have thought that far and that this sentiment is part of a serious and coordinated attempt to kill the SCOREBoard and judging reform that will probably succeed.

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes here, and I’m only privy to very small parts, but there are enough rumors and snatches of information circulating that I think that there are people with power in the sport who explicitly want the scores to stay high and are throwing their weight around to do it. It just doesn’t make sense to me otherwise. I’d love to think that we as a community could understand that scoring had reached a point of being an existential threat to the sport’s integrity and that standing by and allowing it to continue because 10s draw crowds is equivalently morally bankrupt to turning a blind eye to doping because it’s cool when muscley man go faster. I’d love to believe that deep down, everyone involved in gymnastics does believe that there is a core truth in the Code of Points that we are all imperfectly aspiring to reach and represent. But I’ve been around for long enough at this point that I understand that the biggest threat to gymnastics’ credibility as a real sport is that a critical mass of people on the inside actually and seriously do not want it to be one. If the PMAC is full and the NIL money keeps flowing and the leotards are Swarovski, who cares what we sacrifice to get there? Well, I do. But there might not be enough people who think that way to save judging."

 

[wishfulgoddess]

There is enough space in the world for the sport of wrestling as well as the entertainment of professional wrestling. If some people want to see everybody get 10s in scripted meets where the scores are made up and the points don't matter, they should leave the sport alone and invent professional gymnastics.

 

[cuuf]

Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I would say the meta of her (poorly worded) statement is that college sports are changing and the sports that will survive are the ones with the best TV revenue. (maybe I am giving her too much credit) Pretty much every college sport is lamenting how things are so different and "un-pure". As I stated earlier, in this context she has a point. TV wants compelling sports stories offered in a neat 2-hour package. They want to fill scheduling slots. We will continue to see changes in how meets are structured and scheduled to chase the TV dollar. And I can see TV execs (ESPN) pushing conference commissioners and ADs for better "stories" to draw viewership.

But also I would never say Livvy is the model of college gymnastics lol.

 

[irichluck21]

Dunne also has some built in deductions that are going to be taken every single time she competes.
Not sure why she wants judges to ignore that?