
Half joking, but totally serious, the heart show socialite recently accused Gerard Piqué of copying another Mediaset space, Save me. “We have all the evidence,” announced a reporter before projecting a video showing the influence of the Telecinco muses on the project of the former Barça soccer player, the Kings League. “Although the sportsman’s show supposedly starts out as a soccer program,” says a dramatic voice-over, “he soon realizes that they haven’t talked about a game.” Identical scenes are then reproduced in both formats: fights between collaborators, threats of leaving the set, snacks and mouthfuls live and information bait, there called “bombs”, with a countdown.
Faced with the overwhelming evidence of the expert, viralized on networks, the Kings had no choice but to admit, with humor, the evidence: “This is the most real and accurate video I have seen in my life,” acknowledged Ibai Llanos, streamer and president of a team called Porcinos. Satisfied with the success of the hook at a time of certain wear and tear after 14 years on the air, in Save me They then proposed changing cards, transferring some players from one program to another, even forming a team. “We are experts in touching the balls”, they proclaimed to try to convince them of the advantages of a synergy.
This is the most real and accurate video I’ve ever seen in my life.
— Ibai (@IbaiLlanos) March 6, 2023
While the representatives of Save me and the Kings League talk show negotiate the clauses, it is worth asking why, if their audiences are, in principle, different, they resort to the same methods to capture their attention. It is true that football and the heart share the philosophy of bread and circuses of the Romans: they are a way of distracting the people from more serious matters. The most important of the least important things, as coach Arrigo Sacchi said, has shown an incomparable power for abstraction and forgiveness. The World Cup in Qatar is the best proof of the former. Diego Armando Maradona, of the second.
For France and Argentina to play, in the middle of December in a Qatari stadium, one of the best matches of all time, they first had to distract to FIFA first and to the rest of the planet afterwards, of the serious human rights violations committed in the construction of the stadiums and sorryr the death of hundreds of workers, the persecution of homosexuality, the system of guardianship of women. The RAE defines cynicism as the doctrine that “expresses contempt for social conventions and moral norms and values.” It is quite similar to the intervention of the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, at the beginning of the competition: “Today I feel Qatari, gay, immigrant worker (…) We defend human rights in our own way.” He then mocked the boycott threats, assuring that those who boasted that they were not going to watch the World Cup in protest of the hosts’ resumes would do so “on the sly.” In this, they proved him right: almost 1.5 billion people watched the final, according to FIFA.
Some heart shows share that guilty pleasure. Curiosity comes first and the most common currency, hypocrisy, is handled with ease, dismissing, for example, an accused of mistreatment not when the alleged assault is known, but when the format that reveals it to the public is released. These kinds of practices scratched their creators, just like Infantino, but great passions have never lived off a good reputation. The formula enjoys iron poor health, as evidence that, in the middle of the leisure revolution, with a virtual and multiplied offer, the apparently most modern, the new TV, the one that is done on the Internet, has pulled the resources of the silly old box Originally, the Kings League, 7-a-side football between former professionals and amateurs, seemed to invoke the spirit of the pachangas, that fantastic world in which two jerseys are a goal. In practice, magic has not been enough and the product is sold with the characteristic and histrionic baits of Save me. The grandson consumes the same as his grandmother. It’s all made up.
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