The meanest person is always the smartest person

From Dictionary.com

Role Model

noun

1. a person whose behavior, example, or success is or can be emulated by others, especially by younger people.

This post is a continuation of the post section below that talks about #ALSicebucket challenge. It revisits past behaviors that have been discussed here before, with the understanding that these behaviors reflect patterns that continue to surface in Virtue and Moir's interviews, in the reality show, and on social media. It's organized around the idea that, while many of Scott and Tessa's choices in public relations and marketing appear to be calculated based upon what they believe will work on the absolute lowest common denominator (a/k/a "skating fans"), as well as what they believe will most effectively exploit and disparage that segment of the public, these choices are more telling about Scott and Tessa.

I believe Virtue and Moir are role models for other elite skaters when it comes to skating and training.They’re role models for how to be polite, low maintenance, considerate and gracious while the center of attention in public.They’re role models for how to be well put together and poised when rubbing elbows with notables.

The thing with Virtue and Moir as role models beyond those areas is they never appear to grasp any larger picture.Tessa, in particular, appears susceptible to imposing thought systems on everything beyond her personal framework. God forbid she take in what's actually out there. She's the original forest for the trees archtype.The woman is always looking for a state of the art filter, the best life edit app.

All of their lives, they’ve been at the center of the frame. It’s been about them.Tessa, in her social media presence, comes across like the stereotype of a sorority girl every parent wishes their daughter would be. Why can’t you be more like that nice Tessa Virtue. As skaters and athletes, they’re role models. Beyond that, there are skaters who are douchier, but also plenty of skaters who do a better job as role models a regular person could look up to. What Patrick Chan, Jeremy Abbott and Paul/Islam did with the #ALSicebucket challenge is absolutely effortless, but you never see Scott and Tessa thinking of it. Everything outside a universe that has the two of them as its focal point is just a metric.

It’s a bit ironic that the post below looks at the merits of raising “awareness”, when Scott and Tessa’s apparent lack of awareness around some basic issues of empathy, common sense and how "A" connects to "B" has been so marked during their time in the public eye.There are few supposedly intelligent public figures who are more obtuse.

I guess what they do works, if the goal was to turn many of their fans into eager, panting puppies, desperate to appease and please.What it looks like to me is a lot of fans are behaving that way in order to encourage Virtue and Moir to stick around. Fan dynamics tend to be the same no matter what fandom we’re talking about, but as far as I’m aware, this particular aspect seems particular to Scott and Tessa fans.This worry that if fans do something wrong, Scott and Tessa will cut off the supply of Scott and Tessa. I don’t see other fans worrying like that. Even Meryl Davis fans who respond angrily when her looks or skating are criticized don’t appear to worry that criticism will drive Meryl out of the public eye.

IMO there’s a failure on Scott and Tessa’s part to ever really consider what’s outside the frame. What’s outside is other people. Fans have another existence apart from their fandom.They’re human beings. In their public behavior, Scott and Tessa only consider fans as fans.That’s fine most of the time, but there are times it’s helpful to remember, before you open your mouth, that they’re also people. The beaten puppy syndrome described in the above paragraph is a consequence of Scott and Tessa’s manipulations over the past seven years. Fans know there's something elusive and shifty about Scott and Tessa's public personas, and many fans seem to believe that if they modulate their behavior, and control the behavior of other fans, Scott and Tessa will allow themselves to come more clearly into focus.That's the game. Scott and Tessa's appearance on twitter and instagram is just the most current iteration of this dynamic, a dynamic driven by Scott and Tessa's constant public relations mind fuckery.

Scott and Tessa don’t appear to make very obvious connections, of the sort that require empathy and a grasp of basic context. As many blog participants know, a few years ago Scott made a rare appearance on his facebook page, requesting suggestions for a profile picture. Until that point, his profile pictures had been of him alone, all of them as interesting as if someone had pressed the shutter by mistake.The only thing missing was a blurred thumb across the lens.* His request made it appear as if he were finally willing to have a "real" profile picture. As he's not an utter moron, he knew fans would suggest an appropriate photo of himself and his skating partner.

After entertaining earnest suggestions from fans over the course of a few days, his request turned out to be a fake-out. He left all of those fans with egg on their faces. Imagine the fans who took some time and thought, fans who sat at their computer looking at a few pictures before deciding on the one to suggest to Scott.Their suggestions and links were posted on his fan facebook wall for everyone to see. Some fans spent time trying to choose not just a picture they liked, but one they hoped might appeal to Scott. Everyone was trying to respond in a way that would encourage Scott to interact more on facebook.There’s a vulnerability in that.They trusted his request. How the hell does he miss that? If you’re only thinking about yourself and your clever gimmick, if you’re not considering that the other side are people with feelings and lives apart from the fact that they’re “fans”, that’s how you miss it. If you lack respect, you miss it.

If you’re unusually stupid, you miss it.There’s that, too. It’s not the fake-out itself that’s problematic, but Scott’s failure to make the basic connections that would let him know that what he planned was mean before he even did it.That’s why I say they’re up their own ass. Sure, he hadn’t shown up on his facebook in forever and day. Of course, when he does at last pay a visit, requesting input from fans to boot, fans are going to be extra excited – but also extra polite and cautious, so he’ll be encouraged to reach out more. Naturally, when it turns out to be a “gotcha”, he’ll look like a dick.

Think of those fans realizing he probably never even looked at their suggestions.Then falling over themselves to excuse him.

I’m pretty comfortable saying that just about nobody but Scott Moir, Tessa Virtue, some of Skate Canada's directors, and Moirville would do something like that in the context Scott did it.The mean of it would be obvious. No matter how douchey people are in private, most people don’t want to show their ass in public.

Flew right over Scott’s head.That’s the kindest, most benefit-of-the-doubt interpretation.

That’s them all over.Virtue and Moir have information.The public/internet fans, officially at least, don’t.The person who knows stuff someone else doesn’t is the person with power. Scott and Tessa use that power to humiliate fans all the time. But does it count if fans don’t realize they’re being humiliated? I think what possibly embarrassed Scott about the facebook trick was he was caught. Fans saw what he did. I don’t think the actual concept of humiliating fans bothers him much, as long as it can’t officially be traced back to him.  

A large component of the sham is creating and repeating a narrative that will later be deployed to leave the fans to blame for all the lying and manipulation Scott and Tessa have done.The general lack of decency in this agenda isn’t a consideration. For Scott and Tessa, it’s all about appearances, all about lack of accountability. It’s all narrative. Actual decency, actual integrity, actual empathy is irrelevant. It really is exactly the mirror of the Davis White trajectory to the gold medal.The exact same damn thing. Both things occurred within North American figure skating culture, a culture which is a piece of fucking work, going by the two teams at the top.

The failure to connect "A" and "B" also showed up in Scott's infamous “I’d trade places with my brother because then I’d have a beautiful daughter” remark.What human being would think of something like that and not hear alarm bells before putting it out to the world? Scott. He was too distracted by the triple twist, back somersault clever of it all. Up his own ass.

So many other skaters would make those connections automatically. Geez, I haven’t been on facebook in a long time, if I show up and pretend to care about their opinion and it turns out joke’s on them, I’ll be a dick. Automatically, they’d know it. Scott and Tessa don’t. They’re used to being the best on the ice; somehow that appears to have convinced them they’re also the smartest two people in any room. But it doesn’t look like smart. It looks like mean. I wonder if they think there's any difference.

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*Facebook is free, so it stands to reason.

I feel bad for Toddler Moir

 .
 ^Cassandra Hilborn kissing a little kid's married daddy on the lips, pretending to be his girlfriend and bed buddy. How does it scan in your world, Cass? You're doing it FOR the kid? If SCOTT doesn't mind, it doesn't matter? You have no non-narcissistic values of your own?

What kicks it over the top is the comment. "Hot couple" and "tailgates and tanlines."

Scott will be twenty-six in two weeks. He's the father of a toddler, and here he is.

Toddler Moir doesn't have a chance of growing up to be a mature human being. I don't believe that Toddler Moir will be scarred in the particular way some fans fear the child will - I don't believe Toddler Moir will grow up believing that daddy cheated on mommy with Jessica Dube and Cassandra Hilborn.

Toddler Moir will just grow up without any official acknowledgment of TM's existence during the entire Sochi Olympic cycle, while the relatives in Ilderton elbow their way into the spotlight, and daddy's fake sex life gets its own cheering section. I know these are important distinctions. At least they didn't cheat, Toddler Moir! It was actually all about their love!

Everything was the opposite! No, seriously!

While I don't subscribe to "It was like this for me, ergo it must be like this for everyone" type thinking, I will nevertheless mention that I don't think I would have given a flying fuck that my daddy wasn't sleeping with these ladies, and it was all a con job to protect our privacy as a family. I would still be repulsed by somebody calling him and another lady a "hot couple" and all the rest of it, and I would have been and would remain extremely unexcited by some ladies putting a fantasy romantic life with daddy out on social media using his actual name, and knowing that there are members of the public that think this was daddy and mommy's reality.

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that even as a child I would know the difference between - we did this for the sham, and we overdid this for the sham. I might wonder how come some of the extra flourishes. #hotcouple, #sleepskyping. #Cass 0 - Tour 1, #definitely sobbed. #someones enjoying this #bad stomach ache #weird feeling.

This is elementary for most people, but as Moirville apparently does not believe in any sort of boundaries, including virtually crawling in between the sheets with their own children, they not only don't recognize that this is going to be uncomfortable for any child who remotely has their head on straight, but it seems to indicate that the sham is actually the least of all possible evils in terms of effective boundaries between Scott and Tessa's private life and the expectations of their nearest and dearest.

Everybody can see what the situation is here, not just the fans. That's what's so uncomfortable.

Everyone outside of Moirville of course, where the zamboni fumes have arrested a lot of people's personalities.

This is about intentionally alienating the public. When we're alienated, it seems to me they think Scott and Tessa belong to them even more.

I say the kid has no chance at growing up to be a mature person because look at the role models. TM may still be in diapers and is already living in a bubble.

This is not a performance by Daddy. This is a con by Daddy. A performance requires willing suspension of disbelief by the audience. The audience knows it is an audience. Here, we have Scott, as Scott, pretending to be in a relationship with someone other than Tessa. This is Daddy, not Daddy pretending to be a character. This is daddy pretending to BE with someone else.

Moirville is so good at understanding context and conveying critical distinctions that I'm sure Daddy's social media lip locking in all its permutations on the web will be explained with no problems, and the kid won't be upset.

They can't possibly anticipate that the kid WILL be upset but have gone ahead and done it anyway, figuring that's the price of dinner. Not when the only agenda at stake is the need to one up a fucking blog, save face to themselves, enable over-involved family members, and put some outspoken internet fans in their place.

If they thought it would upset Toddler Moir down the line, Scott would never do this. Right Scott? You've must have nailed this one down after Tessa studied it in psychology class. You must figure you're on solid child development footing here.

I wonder if they took a hot iron and branded "Property of Ilderton" on Toddler Moir's behind before putting on the first diaper.

For me this is sad, although I haven't articulated all of it for myself. I think this photo is there to provoke. I think it's there to flip the finger at fans. Scott as ever checks his balls at the Arctic Edge arena exit - or at the entrance to the Detroit/Windsor tunnel. I don't mean check them into Tessa's bag, I mean fork them over to the fam.

A family and community that chooses immaturity over respect for their own innocent family member. They choose a pissant fan war that they need to make themselves feel smart.

The photo itself is not a scandal. Scott's kissed a dolphin on the lips. Scott and Tessa are both in show business, which is what figure skating is, essentially, where you fish kiss every other person you meet at certain times of the year, even people you dislike. Cassandra has littered her facebook with photos of herself smooching friends similar to this photo and even more cozily than this photo, so for those who are interested in Cassandra context, it's there, but of course, she's not the point.

Scott's context is he's 26 years old, he's married and he's a father, and there he is.

He'd rather humiliate himself than actually deal with the crux of the problem, and IMO the crux of the problem is selfishness masquerading as support, requiring more time and energy to deal with than he can afford to spend at this time in his life.

There's this, too:

Hear that Toddler Moir? Mommy isn't married to that "Moir dick" and she hooked up with Sidney Crosby in Vancouver.

What do we have here, Toddler Moir-wise? The choice is either that Toddler Moir's nearest and dearest are a bunch of unfiltered, petty, needy, entitled, boundary breaching, overbearing, chip-on-shoulder, narcissistic cases of stubbornly arrested development that Toddler Moir's parents cope with by cravenly enabling left and right, OR the public supporters of Toddler Moir's parents' skating are such incredible assholes Toddler Moir's existence had to be edited out for almost four years. The latter scenario is intriguing - the idea that the fan intrusiveness they experience is dire enough to edit out their kid's existence from the record, while simultaneously fan intrusiveness was never actually serious enough to warrant the employment of a competent sports management agency.

Both scenarios are a wonderful reason to bring a child into the world at ages 21 and 23. Why wait til you can function like a freaking human.

Moirville wants the public to have all kinds of misconceptions and wrong ideas about Scott and Tessa, but especially Scott. That proves our inferiority, and it asserts their ownership.

I tell you what this is - it's humiliating. Not for US, but to see Scott. Where to even start - a twenty six year old man, a father, a husband, a man who as an athlete, a skater, a competitor - is ferociously smart and plain ferocious. He doesn't give a fuck what you, me or anyone else thinks or says in that arena. Fuck us. He knows himself, he knows what kind of skater he is.

Even if we don't know him, we know that about him.

So when we see that guy do this, it mortifies. We're in on something we shouldn't be seeing. Not the kiss. The family dynamics and agendas and how it works on Scott. We shouldn't be seeing it and that's one thing I don't think they know they're showing us. What we see is an Olympic champion and a husband and a father whose original family has no respect for him as a man, compared to what they expect from him. We can all see it. He's not a man to them. He's Scotty. The sham diminishes him, as do they.

I believe the intent of this photo is not sham. I think it's posted to alienate the fans on the web; it's to flip us off, and of course Scott throws himself on the sword, as usual.

I'm not saying he doesn't have a choice - he has a choice, but weighing the hierarchy of priorities and all of the other stuff he's got going on, the personalities, the histories - this is path of least resistance. Just chew on that one. THIS is the path of least resistance. Think about what the alternatives must entail.

It's uppity as shit of me, and very fanlike, but I'm humiliated for the guy. Somebody should be, so I'll do it! I'm mortified for him.

Scott and Tessa are connected to and part of larger communities (internationally, in Detroit, in the larger elite athletic performance community, in the USA, and others) that have nothing to do with Moirville. And so Moirville defaults to competing with the public for ownership. One-sided competition, but they need to feel better than, and we're all they've got.

They portray the public as wanting ownership of Scott and Tessa, so Moirville can assert their superior claim, and win. Ego-wise, it's as lowest common denominator as it gets, and weird. But if it walks like a duck ...

It's pitiful. Even if Virtue Moir's true status was public domain, we in the public wouldn't know Scott and Tessa, we wouldn't have a relationship with Scott and Tessa.

I think it's more than the type of competition involved in "being right" or "not giving in". It's more than pretending Scott/Tessa's marriage is a secret and insisting on the sham against all evidence that not many people even buy it.

As the sham has morphed over time, I think it's now morphed into an alienation device. The more we're alienated, the more Scott and Tessa belong to Moirville.

This will be one of those posts that gets a lot of editing because it's one of those posts where I'm processing my reaction while posting.

P.S., while this next remark may be egocentric of me, I don't care. I suspect that because the blog banner mocked the Cassandra sham's recent use of poorly lit long shots, they decided to one up with a clearly focused lip kiss. That's the level here.

And I may owe Meagan Duhamel an apology. I may call her out for being a poor sport, for taking potshots at her teammates on social media, but at least she signs her name to that activity. That's unlike Scott and Tessa who pretend to be completely above it but engage on a pettier level than Meagan. Meagan may be breaking athlete/fan protocol by directly engaging a fan (you should never EVER break that fourth wall). But Moirville is actually mud wrestling with the fucking blog and other fans on social media while posing as too good for any of it. Meagan, I apologize to you.

And btw, Scott is choosing his original family over his child. I understand how everything can be wanked to rationalize that this is all for his kid, but it isn't. Erasing this child for the entirety of the Sochi cycle while his brothers make sure their own kids get their moment in the spotlight is not for the sake of his child with Tessa. It's because he's chosen to enable his original family, which means he's chosen them over his new family. If a kid comes into the world and for the first three years - and who knows how long it will continue - daddy is smooching it up on social media with other women (in photos that will be there forever with gifs, commentary, tumblr, fan wars, etc. in public) while denying he's even dated mommy, let alone admitting you're alive, while the kid's relatives are out there in public with their hands out, hustling their skating club, there is something wrong, and it's not fans.

I wonder this: if who you are or pretend to be for the public doesn't matter, and won't matter to Toddler Moir (who at some point we may see competing in novice claiming to have been cloned in a petri dish) - why did Jeff Buttle use an article on his hockey playing to unofficially come out? Why does Jeff care how real he presents himself to the public.

And why did Scott give a fuck that someone was faking as Tessa Virtue on facebook? That's just social media, Scott, why did you care?

Scott appears far more sensitive about his wife than he is about his child. But that's just a public impression.

Why is Scott completely unable to pretend he's anything but in love with Tessa, even in public? He can't say anything about her that doesn't adore her. As that is something that undermines the whole sham, why doesn't he put that in check? When he was Jessica-Dube-ing, he could have done a whole lot better, quote-wise, than to say "My girlfriend is sometimes bugged by it all, but you know, fuck her if she can't deal with it. Tessa is part of me."

That was his tone.

Everything he does with Tessa appears to be in his DNA - it doesn't matter if he's in public. It's DNA.

It's odd that it doesn't seem to extend to his child.

(P.S. - all that said, and as embarrassed for Scott as I am, I completely believe that if money were involved he'd suddenly grow a pair. They're wonderful like that.)

Another question about Toddler Moir to throw out there - Scott adores Tessa; she adores him. She's locked down. But Tessa never kissed Fedor for the sham. She never kissed Ryan Semple for the sham. Scott's a little sensitive, so you know, let's respect that.

Yet Scott has placed his lips on women who are not Tessa, while his child is growing up, a sitting duck to see these photos. As sensitive as Scott is about Tessa and even freaking gay guys who have no interest in getting into her pants, as sensitive as he can be about sham matters on her end when he knows everything's platonic, and as sensitive as he is when she's interacting with guys for work, his child is expected to just take what he does for the sham in stride. He can't handle it with Tessa even when it's nothing, but apparently his kid is a lot tougher and less sensitive, and will process all of the stuff he does in photos with women not mommy just fine. It will make perfect sense to TM.

Are these photos wish fulfillment for Moirville - look, what if he were married to a narcissistic idiot we could manipulate instead of Tessa?

Can't blame us if we wonder, but us wondering shit just serves their purpose. Alienation. That's what they want.