Piers Morgan’s ‘nothing-but-gold’ philosophy is just plain mean
PIERS Morgan no doubt thought he had clinched another social media gold after creating a storm by writing: “Just can’t get excited by Silver & Bronze medals. You win or you lose. Gold is all that matters.” The sporting world and Olympics-watching public exploded in a wave of indignation whose Twitter crest was topped by Gary Lineker calling the columnist a “berk”. Of course, Morgan has done this kind of thing before. In the lesser-known sport of clickbaiting, he is a consistent winner. As he boasted himself, he is “the most followed British journalist on Twitter in the world”.
What a world we live in. Morgan, in other words, collects clickbait golds like Michael Phelps does swimming firsts. His talent for saying things that make people’s blood’s boil is breathtaking. Last week, his subject was winners and losers. Two months ago it was Muhammad Ali, when he tweeted, following the boxer’s death: “Muhammad Ali said far more inflammatory/racist things about white people than Donald Trump ever has about Muslims. #fact.”
Clearly, success in this sport lies in choosing a clownish position contrary to progressive opinion. Last week, Morgan’s words provoked a backlash from sports people. My favourite tweet came from former Olympic weightlifter Zoe Smith, who wrote: “Remember Bill Murray’s tweet about putting an average person into Olympic events for reference? Can it be Piers?”
But this episode is a reminder of how the urge to win, just for winning’s sake, can do more damage to society than good. One of the ways of winning on social media is to post inflammatory comments. While winning a gold in the swimming pool might be laudable, a gold for click-baiting is quite another thing, provoking as it does division, hatred and tension. Indeed, looking at Morgan’s serial clickbaiting, I would surmise he exhibits what has been called by trader-turned-neuroscientist John Coates, “the winner effect”. Coates’s theory, summarised in his book, The Hour Between Dog And Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings, And The Biology Of Boom And Bust, is that when you win, it alters your body chemistry, triggering higher testosterone levels, and that this increases your chances of winning again. But Coates also observed that: “If you keep winning, your testosterone level goes past that peak and sliding down the other side. You start doing stupid things. When that happens to animals, they go out in the open too much. They pick too many fights.” If you’re a trader, perhaps you get too reckless. If you’re a serial clickbaiter, perhaps you start saying things that are at best stupid, at worst loathsome.
One of Morgan’s points is that a PC culture, in schools and families across the world, is “encouraging future generations to put ‘taking part’ ahead of winning … Our children are not allowed to be winners and losers any more”. Hands up. I do this. Guilty as charged. At a recent kids’ birthday party, when judging a fancy dress line-up, I gave “first prizes” to four children and runner-up awards to all the others. Meanwhile, the word “loser” is frowned upon in my household, which contains two often-competitive sons – not because no-one is allowed to lose, but because everyone knows when they have lost and they don’t need it rubbing in.
But I disagree with Morgan: there is no dearth of competitiveness in society. From football trading cards which rank players to reality television contests such as The Great British Bake Off, popular culture is all about winning. Meanwhile, Morgan’s “nothing-but-gold” mentality is a philosophy in which the joy of doing something well, just for itself, is replaced by pure pursuit of the prize. Paradoxically, countless studies have shown this doesn’t always produce the best performers.
Of course, when it comes to sport, on some level, Piers Morgan is right. Gold is the acme – there is nothing beyond, except more golds. But he is also missing something. Gold, even at the Olympics, is not all that matters. For a great many athletes, and the watching public, the bigger thing is the competitor’s personal journey. Morgan even questioned why the Wales football team were “feted … for coming third in the European Championships”. But we all know why – because sport is also about the big stories, from personal bests to comebacks to surprise outsiders, not just who won.
Morgan appears tone deaf to all this. Not only that, but, in boasting of his Twitter following, he comes across as one of those awful winners who likes to rub a loser’s nose in it. He seems to have forgotten that there are good reasons why, as a society, we have learned to keep such behaviour in check, why we talk of good sportsmanship.
There are good reasons why we tell our kids yes, celebrate coming first, but don’t lord it over those who don’t. Break these rules and, like Morgan, you don’t look like a winner. You just look plain mean.