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Crazy Luigi's Crazy Thoughts - The LeBron James App: Why?!?

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So in case you've been living under a rock this past month, the NBA playoffs have gone underway with some interesting poise. While the Phoenix Suns didn't make it to playoffs as the big underdogs of the block (which sucks in an entirely different light, but that's a topic for another time), those that have been watching the 2014 NBA Playoffs were treated to some very big surprises along the way. Teams like the Memphis Grizzlies, the Dallas Mavericks, and even the Atlanta Hawks (one of whom shouldn't have made it, yet did for fuck all) have the top dogs in the Oklahoma City Thunder, the San Antonio Spurs, and the Indiana Pacers fighting for their playoff lives in the first round, and some unique aspects happened that help make this ride quite a journey for those that followed it. From racist allegations to multiple overtimes in a row to even surprising upsets from other teams, no matter what type of fan you are, you can certainly respect a wild ride with a potentially good climax to boot.

However, even now with the second round rising up out of the ashes for a big finale to make way for the conference finals, there's one polarizing character that still drives the NBA's playoffs into making it like a story like it is today. If you hadn't guessed, I'm of course talking about the former Cleveland Cavalier / now Miami Heat (and maybe future teammate for someone else?) LeBron Motherfuckin' James! Ever since LeBron made his way out onto ESPN that one fateful day in July of 2010 just to talk about what team he'd be going to, he had easily become one of the biggest "antagonist" players in the modern day NBA right up there with Kobe Bryant, if not even surpassing the likes of him. And why wouldn't it have been the case? His set up was that he had planned to help the Cleveland Cavaliers win the NBA Finals before he retired (which also doesn't help that he lived in the city of Akron, Ohio before being a Cavalier and then a part of the Heat), yet despite making it to the NBA Finals one time with them, he couldn't do it because the rest of the teammates he had (and his coach for that matter) more-or-less sucked in comparison. Because of that, he decided that he couldn't really do it with him being the big-time leader, so he had to join up with former Toronto Raptors power forward Chris Bosh and Miami's own star shooting guard Dwayne Wade (who I should note did win a championship back in 2006) in order to try and win not just one, two, or even three championships, but over 8+ championships! To say that's egotism of a massive degree is really putting things lightly.

Unfortunately, things have sort of worked out for the Heat since after losing to the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals (personally, I would have wished it was some other Western Conference team at the time instead, but whatever), they had come back with a vengeance by taking out the Oklahoma City Thunder (who I would have liked better if they had remained the Seattle SuperSonics instead, but again, whatever) in 5 games during the lockout season in 2012 and after grabbing Ray Allen from the Boston Celtics, somehow found a way to upset the much more experienced San Antonio Spurs through a brutal 7 games in 2013. To further exemplify the point, up until this year, LeBron had ended up winning four of the last five MVP awards for the regular season (with the lone exception before Kevin Durant this year being the youngest MVP winner in Derrick Rose who might never play at an MVP level again at the rate he's going). Even now they look like they'll have an easier path to not just being in the NBA Finals, but getting a three-peat thanks to an especially weak Eastern Conference that only had the aforementioned Indiana Pacers as a team that look to cause a serious threat to the Heat in the Eastern Conference. So with the NBA playoffs under way and the Heat get set to potentially cruise on over to the NBA Finals again, why not watch what he's doing with his own phone app... wait what?


In case you were wonder, no, this is not a joke. This is being dead fucking serious over something that might not last all that much longer. Now to be fair, LeBron's reasons for not posting things online to stuff like Twitter or Instagram or whatever social media websites he does is pretty dead set on for not being distracted on a goal he wants to achieve. If you have a major goal you want to achieve, the last things you'd want to worry about is posting whatever thoughts you might have online and potentially compound problems in the process. At least by being more reclusive on the way he behaves under a big time stage, he'd have the potential to not worry about much at all beyond the idea of succeeding in a simple goal of being a three-peat champion for the Miami Heat, much like how Michael Jordan did it under the Chicago Bulls (twice) and Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal did it under the L.A. Lakers all those years ago. Unfortunately, what this advertisement does (which is something I've been seeing on YouTube more and more these days) is make people that do dislike LeBron James make him think he's even more of an egotistical asshole than he already is (or was depending on what your feelings on the guy are)!

Look, there's nothing really wrong with following something you like (such as a person like LeBron James) on social media websites where the words they say take more precedent over people like us since you might honestly be a fan of the person (or at the very least might find some of the things posted to be legitimately funny). However, just because you can make an application for just about anything these days doesn't mean you should, especially when said app is the equivalent of following just one guy around for just about anything he does anywhere. Most of the supposed 18 million or more people that do happen to follow LeBron on these types of websites should surely have some more time to themselves or some other interests they have beyond the man; otherwise it kind of makes them look more creepy than some of the more horror themed flicks we seem to have these days. I mean, looking at someone's posts, videos, or even pictures is one thing; having something where you could look at someone's travel plans (even if it's something as simple as playing in Brooklyn for either two or three games (depending on how Brooklyn plays for the rest of their playoff match against Miami)) and even what kind of shoes someone's wearing is something else entirely. Still, this application has the stench that just screams out short-term gain over something completely superficial.

What this commercial says is that until June (and that's just assuming that no one upsets the Heat early on in the playoffs), LeBron will not be posting anything from places like Twitter or Instagram like he usually would (probably). If you really did want to follow LeBron James and see what kind of shit he sees as well, you know very well that the application might end up lasting for at least one more month for people at best. After the Miami Heat's playoff run is over, regardless of whether they do win the playoffs or not... what exactly happens to it? Does it still end up working beyond the playoffs (as in, what might happen for free agency if he does declare for it), or does will it just go offline altogether until the next playoff series? If it's the former, then why would some of us even care about the app when we could check out other outlets for any news regarding LeBron in the first place? If it's the latter, then all it does is waste gigabytes of data for your smart phone that could have been put to better use for something like playing a game or checking out news or even coding for said smart phone for something else! Either way, unless you really do care about finding out what kinds of food LeBron eats (in which case I'm sure there's an application for cooking some of these same kinds of foods as well), it almost feels like a waste of time beyond the initial plan of following the guy that might not win the championship at the end of the day. Still, I might be able to forgive some of the quirky faults at hand if it weren't for this commercial's annoyance factor that it has.

To start things out, the narrator has this big, self-righteous ego that feels almost exemplified when he says that even though LeBron James is his favorite, it's just him and "18 million other people" checking him out. However, assuming you weren't watching this advertisement as a YouTube commercial and didn't close out of it as soon as you were allowed to for certain videos, as soon as he ends up introducing the app starring LeBron James himself, it starts getting worse. Oh sure, it starts out a bit promising, if not a bit cringe-worthy due to the "Bron Bron" nickname the guy game him, but once the James family gets mentioned, it kind of gives off a strange vibe of sorts that doesn't feel all that genuine. After that, we get to what might very well be the point of no return with it not only giving out some very, for lack of a better word, facepalm worthy language that includes a hashtag Twitter kind of trendy two word phrase and even calling a picture of some admittedly good-looking food a "food selfie". Top it all off with the guy pretending that he can talk to LeBron by having him "pound his chest two times if he thinks people will love this app" and then having him cough due to that chalk shit that he does before games for some odd reason despite being nowhere near it in real life, and you've got a reaction that best fits the picture below...

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Admittedly, it might not be as annoying as I'm letting on. After all, one general trait of annoyance is having something being bludgeoned straight into your head over and over and over again until it feels like it's something you can never, ever get out of your head no matter how hard you try. If you haven't been seeing this advertisement anywhere either online or on TV somewhere like ESPN, you could say that I'm overreacting, and I admit that it's certainly a viable possibility. However, my question is not whether a better advertisement could make me like it or even if I were a fan, would I want it? Rather, the proper question I'm asking is why does an application like this even exist in the first place?! I mean, we don't have an application promoting what the President of the U.S.A. does throughout his day, do we? No, and a good reason why is because it would be like an invasion of privacy to the President since people would get first-hand information of him on the spot. While it may sound like venting something out of my system while it's still fresh in my mind, it still seems very odd to have an application dedicated to just one guy and what he does throughout his day. Hopefully we don't get too carried away with what we might end up creating with our applications; otherwise we might see something either more insane or more stalker-ish by design in the near future.

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