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Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse, a survey of fans across MLB! Each week, we send 30 polls to plugged-in fans from each team! Reds fans, sign up HERE to join FanPulse!
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Hey, Reds fans of Red Reporter! Despite a 1-4 record, getting swept at home by the Brewers (three-consecutive one-run losses, no less), and a stupid rain out that dashed the plans of the team’s most attractive fans, 83% of plugged-in Reds fans who responded to FanPulse brought to you by SBNation are confident in the direction of the team! That is up ten percentage points from this time last week!
Of course, it is incumbent upon us to unpack the words “confident” and “direction.” Taken literally, I suppose we are all “confident” in the team’s “direction,” insomuch as the team is moving inevitably forward fourth-dimensionally. As far as our contemporary understanding of physics allows, it is likely quite impossible to move backwards in time. All that presumes the affirmation of conventional Western metaphysics, though. If we were to take a more phenomenological approach to the matter, which is certainly valuable even if just as a hypothetical, the answers are somewhat less clear. The notion of Eternal Recurrence renders the possibility of forward movement ridiculous. Time is a circle, you see, and all existence and energy have recurred and will continue to recur infinitely. So the idea that we, the plugged-in Reds fans of Red Reporter, could be “confident” in the team’s “direction” is just as nonsensical as saying we are tenned by the waterness of the yellow. The Reds are, the Reds will be, and the Reds have always been. The team’s lack of direction is as self-evident as the sun’s lack of moonness. And in that case, our confidence in it is meaningless.
Considering that 17% of respondents are not “confident” in the team’s “direction,” perhaps it was neither intended nor read that way. In that case, this FanPulse poll makes a bit more sense. But just a little bit.
Remember to sign up at the link posted above to be a part of FanPulse!