Internet misinterprets multiple women in a viral “Philly’s Cullen” clip
Philadelphia Phillies fans, who appear to demand a home run ball from their father, elicited criticism online.
What are the trends?
Unless you live under a rock without the internet, you probably have seen the video.
Baseball jumps into the stands during a Phillies game. Lots of fans go and get it. The man will grab it and bring it to his child – they will hug it. Later, the women approach them. She and the man exchange words. He appears to be calm. She is angry and aggressive. Eventually, he takes the ball from his son and hand it over to the woman.
That moment turned into a virus online. There, people are bashing women called “Philly’s Cullen” – defending men. The rage became so intense that the man Drew Feltwell urged the public to leave the women alone.
“Don’t do anything to that woman,” Feltwell told USA Today Sports on September 8th. “Leave it as is. Someone knows her and you can talk to her, that’s not true. But God, I don’t want people to break their homes or anything like that. The internet has already messed up her quite a bit.”
Mental health experts say it’s not surprising that the moment exploded like that. In addition to being dramatic, the video also serves as a lightning bolt of deep root emotions that permeate society, they say.
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“Many people feel disenfranchised and uncounted,” says psychotherapist Stephanie Salkis. “To see such injustice happen… it really went home with a lot of people.”
The virus “Philly’s Cullen” and why she hit such a chord
With the power of the Internet, adults are notifying and acting at sporting events.
Most recently, there was a home run ball controversy that took place during a game between the Phillies and the Miami Marlins at Rondepot Park in Miami on September 5th. About a week ago, the CEO snatched the hat that Polish tennis star Kamil Majlzak tried to give to the boy.
Sarkis says these moments speak to something bigger than sports. After all, we live at once, she says, many people say that their voices don’t matter. For this reason, many people see adults steal baseball from their children.
“For a lot of people, just seeing someone behave that badly to someone who has all the rights and their kids, I think it really affects everyone,” says Sarkis. “Everyone feels that injustice, so I think we identify with it.”
Needless to say, she knows what it’s like to be blackmailed, threatened, or bullied for most people, and she adds that she can relate to her father and son.
“Someone can use intimidating tactics to get something that isn’t theirs,” says Sarkis. “A lot of people have experienced that.”
Licensed marriage and family therapist Eric Anderson says one of the inequality that what people are particularly working on now is the generational wealth gap. When he sees older people taking something from younger people, he says, this might be illustrated to many people.
“In the US today, we have a social narrative of the selfishness of older people that affect younger generations. There is a huge wealth gap between Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z, and the outcomes for each generation after Baby Boomers are getting worse,” he says. “Some of the resentment appears to be rooted in the resentment of that generation and the impact that older people feel is qualified and greedy for the younger generation.”
What is the big lesson in all of this?
There are some big lessons to take away from the video.
According to Sarkis, how well father models a tense, unpredictable situation by escalating and ultimately protecting the child’s safety – much more important than any baseball player.
“He had to think very quickly about what to do, so he uses it as a child’s education moment and this is how you de-induce it,” she says. “When there are people who are so bold to do something like this, I don’t know how much they escalate their actions.”
For those who are particularly upset about this video, Anderson recommends examining those emotions and channeling them in a healthy and productive way.
“The best way to work through these things is to find a way to be productive,” he says. “Not only is it worthy of anger, but in reality, it identifies one major social change you want to back up – identify the cleverly rational thing that you can fall behind.”
Contributor: Josh Peter
