"Reality Is Coming" is the ESPN headline about what a lot of WNBA stars are saying about Caitlin Clark coming into the league. I dunno, I think women's college basketball is kinda real. It's about as real as the pro version. The WNBA doesn't earn its money in the usual sense - the league is supported by $ from the men's side. I suppose you could say that the women's league has to exist for PR purposes, and if you are willing to perform that entertainment function you are earning the money.
Is it catty to notice that none of them arrived at their WNBA jobs already hated by the women already there, as Caitlin is about to experience?
This whole concept of The Real World is one I have objected to for fifty years, at least. My in-laws objected to the new priest because he hadn't been out in The Real World but was telling the parish how to live. Well, he'd been running a Korean orphanage. Doesn't that count as some kind of reality? I worked at a psychiatric hospital, my salary paid by taxpayers. Was that the real world?
As I wrote almost 20 years ago...
Those guys in the military, who supposedly need to be told what to do and have trouble adjusting to the real world, or teachers and professors who spend their days with the young, or at-home moms who don’t get out much – I guess that’s not the real world either. If you work off-shifts and sleep when other people are up, or spend most of your day at a computer screen, how real is that? If you trade commodities but never see any actual oil or wheat, then you are clearly not connected to the “real” world. Ministers, retirees, entertainers and athletes, wealthy people, those on welfare – pretty much everyone, I guess.
When people use the phrase "real world" in that way, they seem to mean something like "Until you have faced the difficulties I have faced, you haven't seen the real world." We have convenient definitions.
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The phrase does have legitimate uses, though. I've run across "simulated experiments", which as far as I can tell are interactive illustrations; no actual soldering is required. It could be used in describing someone whose interactions with a group have heretofore been buffered by (e.g.) parents, and now they have to navigate them themselves.
Adulting, as the kids say.
I disliked "keep it real" which was almost always an insult or reprimand.
@ Donna B - good example. It means "My world is the real one, I insist you come over."
Of course, now that I've said that, I wonder if I have been guilty of it in disguised language.
College ball has the same issue thanks to Title IX. The subsidies from men’s sports are less obvious but actually mandated by law.
Now the intended effect was achieved: women’s sports are more prominent and popular, and far more women are attending college on sports scholarships. I suppose we should notice the rare occasion of a government program actually achieving its stated aims. Still, the subsidy remains.
There were some opportunity costs to the program. In order to satisfy Title IX requirements, one school I attended had to can its men's baseball team. It wasn't a big box office office team, but it had been around for decades.
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