34. If I Feign Interest In Sport?
Baseball season is upon us, and it’s that time again: time to either deeply love or deeply pretend to love America’s game. If you put on a show of being impressed and fascinated by your amour’s knowledge of slugging percentages and deep bullpens, are you flirting? Oh, most definitely.
As Irving Goffman explains in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, we often offer idealized versions of ourselves to others, carrying out a performance based on our audience’s expectations. When you do this by acting interested in sport, it can play out in a handful of different ways. Maybe, in the process of pretending, you actually come to enjoy stick-and-ball games, and everyone wins. Maybe the flirtee sees right through you, but finds it charming that you’re making the effort, or thinks it’s cute when you say “Pujols.” Again, win-win. The only way you can lose is if you find yourself having to keep up the act too long. Taking him out to a ballgame is flirting. Buying season tickets from your office pool for all the games he goes to is just desperate.
