To be clear: by documentary I mean docuseries—the television programming genre where they take the snoozefest of the high brow, well-respected, educational film and break up the content into prolonged episodic, hyperbolic cliffhangers.
Let the record show: I love the documentary in all its forms1.
Now, there are a lot of people in my life who enjoy and appreciate the American football experience. I do not count myself among them. Football is useful2 for 2 things: A) white noise for napping and B) showing up to a watch party for the snacks. If I wanted to watch 4 full hours of slow-paced starting and stopping, I’d just engage in my normal TV habits where I pause and rewind the same scene on a 30 minute episode that I missed the first 37 times while I was scrolling my phone.
Hating things is not my brand and this is not meant to spark discourse on the faults of football. Under a capitalist society built on the patriarchy and racism, many otherwise harmless hobbies have profit-seeking, hateful problems to be aware of and stand against. However, football holds a special place in building community and common bonds for many. And that is all I will say on that. It is pretty messed up that college athletes are not allowed to be paid3 though.
Ah, now where was I
If you do not accept every Netflix suggested title without discretion, there is a chance you may never have heard of the Untold franchise. More specifically, Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist. And, if you do not watch football, you may have never heard of infamous Heisman4 nominee: Manti Te’o (MAN-tie TAY-oh).
A millennial like myself, Manti and the internet grew up alongside one another. He was born and raised Mormon on the island of Oahu, in a community firmly attached to “football, faith, and family” (direct quote). Maybe I have a soft spot knowing he grew up in purity culture like I did, and that he had to figure out the internet on the fly. Sort out what social connections online looked like before that was even a thing. He also graduated high school around the same time I did.
Manti was still legally a child when he was made a huge football star with an entire country’s worth of immense pressure on his (running) back. Heisman hopeful, first round NFL draft on the horizon straight out of the University of Notre Dame. I will spare you the full details of his career and every aspect this documentary’s details, because I think you should watch it regardless of your interest in American sports culture.
This is fundamentally a story about deception and vulnerability, exploitation and manipulation. It is about catfishing before Nev Schulman existed in the public sphere. It is about the earnestness and also the blatant lies of online personas.
Manti was a household name in the sports community when he was a kid, and he became a household name in the gossip column community when he was in his 20s when he got caught up in a catfishing relationship. He believed his girlfriend (who he had only spoken to online and via phone) had died unexpectedly the same day as his grandma. He relayed as much in a televised interview and became a (monetized5) hero for his perseverance.
As you’ve probably guessed, shit ultimately hit the fan(base) and the only thing the peanut gallery loves more than something to love is something to ridicule. Not only did this cost Manti his dignity, it cost him literally millions of dollars when he was bumped out of the NFL first draft due to the fallout.
This story made me cry for a lot of reasons. I cried for the vulnerability inevitably lost when you put your trust in someone who turns out to be a lie. I sobbed as someone who is intimately plugged into (and reliant upon) internet relationships—as I assume many of you reading this also are. I wept as someone who has been told I am not who I present myself to be online. I teared up as someone who would not assume that a lack of physical intimacy negates the level of depth in a relationship. But most of all, the walls of my emotional dam broke watching Manti exhibit straightforward, unassuming humility and forgiveness as he recounted this humiliation. You can keep that first draft money, and he kept his dignity after all.
Or maybe this is all just on overreach and projection of my own emotions onto one of my silly little programs.
I draw the line at The Staircase. THIRTEEN episodes? What is this, The WB teen drama programming of the early aughts? No man is worth that much investigation. I may have had the stamina for a show with a cumulative double digit sum per season to feed my Charmed obsession when I was 12, but those days are long gone.
The one and only time I invested my heart and soul in the sport was in the year 2015 for Super Bowl XLIX. Originally tuned in for Katy Perry, I fell victim to an extreme emotional investment in the Seahawks, where they ultimately fumbled the ball (literally) in a devastating loss. Fool me once. I’ve proudly been way ahead of the curve in despising Tom Brady. Russell Wilson + Ciara > Brady + Gisele Bundchen I rest my case.
Case in point: capitalism is the root of evil. There are minor exceptions to the nonpayment rule, so don’t come for me.
This is the highest honor, the Oscar, the Pulitzer, the Nobel—if you will—of college football.
There’s that pesky capitalism again.
Sincerely,
Lane