The Art of Being Human in an increasingly artificial world

For three days, Theo Brunner and I took on a funny and whimsical mission: Find the stereotypical and formulaic post-tournament captions of a beach volleyball player who didn’t win said tournament and put them on what I labeled “ChatGPT Watch.”

You’ve seen the caption. It goes like this: “Finished X place in X country. It isn’t the finish we wanted, but we learned a lot and we’re hungry for more! Onto the next one!”

Brunner and I joked about that type of caption when we had him on SANDCAST last year. When he asked the new Artificial Intelligence tool ChatGPT to make him a caption as if he had just lost a beach volleyball tournament, but still wanted to be positive about the matter, it spit out the above nearly verbatim. The day Brunner put that on his story happened to be around the same day of the Doha Elite 16 qualifier. Hours later, half a dozen athletes posted a picture with a caption that was essentially what the ChatGPT wrote.

Now, to be clear, I don’t know a single person who goes on Instagram for the captions. I certainly don’t. I hardly even scroll. I’m mostly a post-and-ghoster: I sign on, put up whatever I need to put up, answer some messages, and delete the app from my phone.

But Paige Hines, a former player at USC and a good friend to a number of players on Tour, asked what the deal was. Why was I suddenly calling people out for writing the types captions that have been used for as long as I’ve been in the sport?

It was little more than good-natured ribbing, but Paige suggested that maybe I could write a blog on it.

I’m glad she did.

Because the more I thought about it, the more I looked at the bigger picture of the matter, and the power that athletes have in their hands, a power that, prior to the advent of social media, they rarely had.

They control how much access their fans have to them. They control their stories, narratives, how much of them we get to see.

They control how much of their humanness we get to observe.  

Previously, there had been a middleman between athlete and fan. That middleman was the media: newspapers, radio, television. Athletes weren’t in control of their own narratives, stories, and viewpoints. They’d have to trust a writer or host to tell it for them, should they be asked for their thoughts at all. They could sit through press conferences, but even then, they’d be encouraged to offer canned responses that their PR team – the original ChatGPT – would write for them.

That’s no longer the case.

The middleman has been mostly stripped away. As a result, the economics of sport are changing radically, as the athlete-to-fan relationship is more direct and dynamic in ways that it has never been. The platforms of individuals are often being elevated even higher than their team and, in some cases, their entire sport. When Zion Williamson played his lone year at Duke, he had more Instagram followers than the team’s account.

The NIL is revolutionizing college sports in ways both good and bad. Haley and Hanna Cavinder, for example, are twin sisters competing for the Miami basketball team. They’re good players, not great, but they’ve leveraged their social media platforms to the tilt, hauling in what The Athletic reported to be $1.7 million in NIL deals.

Why?

It can be summed up in a single word: Access.

The Cavinder twins are but a single example of athletes whose platforms are far larger than their results on the court or field or pitch or course would otherwise suggest. They’ve allowed people into their lives, to the point that you, the viewer or reader, feel as if you know them. They expand the relationship beyond athlete-fan to something more intimate, something human. Some might say they feel as if they’re friends with the Cavinders. That creates a bigger, more passionate following — a platform, in today’s lingo. Today, the platforms through which you can build your following are numerous and wide: Instagram, podcasting, YouTube, email newsletters, Twitter, Facebook, traditional media, TikTok, OnlyFans (I don’t judge). There are more, and will continue to be more.

I write for a beach volleyball-centric fanbase, so I’ll use myself and the McKibbin brothers as examples of individuals whose following-to-results ratio is skewed towards the individuals without the results but who have provided a window into their lives. I have accomplished next to nothing as a player, yet I’ll have conversations with hundreds of fans at every tournament, some of whom came specifically to watch me play. While most have never met me before, many will offer the same refrain: “I feel like we know each other.” This is mostly the result of the multi-pronged platform I’ve built with my blogging, reporting, podcasting — which now doubles on YouTube — and self-deprecating Instagram account. (I have yet to play a single main draw match in which someone does not mention my #PeelDigDiaries)

It took two years, by my count, for Riley and Maddison’s YouTube account to surpass the AVP’s in terms of subscribers.

Two brothers, with one AVP win between them, were bigger — and still are — than the entire tour.

Why?

Access.

They let you behind the curtain. They filmed themselves winning in qualifiers and losing in main draws. I still remember watching their vlog after Seattle, Riley limping sideways down the steps, with the caption: “this is what it’s like when you get served every ball.” I loved that, and still remember it, because I had the aha moment any writer or producer wants to create: “Me too!”

It made for a human connection.

Through the McKibbins, you were let into the players tent. You were introduced to Geena Urango and her jump-serving tutorial. You learned how to pass like Chase Frishman, and picked up on his human quirk of saying “mmkay?” Prior to the Tokyo Olympics, you were allowed a peek into the mind of Taylor Crabb, one of the more reclusive players on Tour. In a recent podcast, Maddison chatted about that video. He loved making it because, for the first time, fans got a glimpse at the real Taylor Crabb, the human at the wheel of the seemingly superhuman defender.

Recently, you were given the gift of Theo Brunner rehashing a match alongside Riley McKibbin. You saw how he operates and thinks. You saw how damn funny he is. You saw these players, perhaps for the first time, not as beach volleyball players, athletes to perform for you on a stage, but as human beings.

In a short video on YouTube, your relationship with those athletes changed. It evolved from athlete-fan to something more. Now you wanted to watch Urango jump-serve. The way you viewed Crabb was different. Suddenly, Brunner’s dry wit and antics became funnier, because you knew him just a bit better. And you rooted for them, because you knew them on a different level.

The relationship had changed.

Tri Bourne and I have heard similar feedback with our podcast. My favorite messages are the ones from fans who say they’re now rooting for Zana Muno, because they love how into fashion she is, or the fact that she raises chickens. They were surprised to hear that Savvy Simo is actually nervous when she’s dancing prior to matches. People had no idea. But Savvy’s human, and she gets nervous, and that’s how she handles them.

It was an endearing and human confession.

It is for this same reason that documentaries, and docu-series, are having a moment.

Did Drive to Survive become the most watched series on Netflix because it tapped into a hidden nation of F1 fans? No. It provided access, behind the scenes glimpses of the drivers, their teams, lives, problems, and how they solve them (or don’t).

It humanized the men who look very much like humanoids, with their futuristic-looking suits and gigantic helmets and reaction times that seem otherworldly.

I’ve never watched an F1 race in my life. But I’ll watch Drive to Survive, and I’ll loosely follow Max Verstappen, because I liked what I saw from the show. The enormous success of Drive to Survive prompted the creation of a number of copycat docu-series. I recently finished Break Point and enjoyed it thoroughly, this in spite of never having watched a single tennis match. I’ve seen Free Solo no less than five times, and yet I’ve never climbed a single wall. I’m a tragic surfer yet binged every episode of Make or Break on a single flight. I now keep up with the World Surf League because of it.

You don’t have to be a fan of sport at all to enjoy these shows. We’re intrigued by human nature, namely in one primary aspect of human nature: What are our problems, and how are we going about solving them?

Gary Smith, one of the greatest magazine writers of all time, said that is the crux of every one of his stories: What problem is the subject wrestling with, and how is he or she going about solving it? That’s what makes documentaries and docu-series so good: We’re watching every aspect of problem-solving, from surfing to F1 to tennis to free solo climbing. We’re seeing the process by which humans are able to achieve seemingly superhuman accomplishments.

Sometimes, we get more than that.

Now, not all of us have a film company such as Box to Box to produce our stories in such a cinematic and engaging fashion. Most athletes will have to do it themselves, or hire someone else to do it for them. Either option, however, presents a similar issue: It’s up to the athlete to open up, to show their human side.

That’s a hard thing to do.

We want to appear perfect. For many, that’s the role of social media: To hide their imperfections behind a façade of photos and videos that give a false sense of reality. But perfection doesn’t work, because perfection is unattainable, and therefore unrelatable. Eventually, our flaws, whatever they may be, come to light. It did with Michael Jordan. It did with Tiger Woods. It did with Lance Armstrong. It did with Michael Phelps.

Woods and Phelps have now authored their own redemption stories by acknowledging and embracing their flaws, the very characteristics that make them human, and have rebuilt their lives around them. Jordan did the same with the Last Dance, opening himself up in a way the world hadn’t before seen. Andre Aggasi did the same with his mega best-selling memoir, Open, as did David Goggins (Can’t Hurt Me), and Cheryl Strayed (Wild), and Tara Westover (Educated), and Kevin Hart (I Can’t Make This Up) — and the list could go on and on and on, to anyone who has allowed their audience behind a well-crafted facade.

This is a hard thing to do.

Putting yourself out there is hard.

Being on camera is hard.

Writing is hard.

But people don’t come for the writing. It’s a fact that, as a writer, I’ve had to humbly swallow. We come for the story, the problem solving. We come for the human nature we love to see from athletes and celebrities who so often seem like they are somehow genetically different, better, mightier, more beautiful and courageous than the rest of us.

But when we see the most human side of them? When we see, via Break Point, that Paula Badosa struggles with anxiety and the ups and downs of depression? Or the pause of Alex Honnold in Free Solo when asked if he has depressive tendencies?

Our first thought is “Oh, they’re just like us.”

The best part of the whole matter is that it doesn’t even have to be a problem, or something as grave as depression or anxiety. It doesn’t have to be something wrong at all. Moments like Giannis Antetokounmpo talking about the first time he dunked an Oreo, or a 19-year-old Shawn White joking with a reporter that all the drinks he was being given after winning his first gold medal were “Mountain Dews, baby” — those are absolute gold.

Because who hasn’t felt the sublime childhood pleasure of dunking an Oreo? What 19-year-old hasn’t attempted a fib to their parents or uncles or guardians that they were acting silly because those drinks in their glasses were just…Mountain Dews, baby?

In an instant, a 6-foot-11 Greek who runs like a deer and dunks with the power of Thor became relatable to everyone who has ever eaten an Oreo. He’s a kid, just like the rest of us.

A snowboarder who has the temerity to do flips and twists and all manner of acrobatics 20 feet above a half-pipe slicked with ice became relatable to everyone who snuck one past their parents when they were too young.

This is a relatability granted by access to the human — not the ChatGPT — behind the athlete.

We’re tribal creatures. We relate to those who look like us, talk like us, think like us, act like us. Perfection doesn’t work.

Being human does.

What kind of access athletes want to grant is a matter of their choosing. I admire those who stay off of social media. Privacy is a treasure. Being open is a tricky dance between relatability and allowing too many people into your life. But if an athlete is taking the time to post on social media, it’s to build an audience, or to engage with one, or to appease a sponsor. Anyone who posts on social media and claims otherwise might be experiencing cognitive dissonance.

If you’re bothering to post, you may as well be human about it.

Oftentimes, all you need is a snippet of your humanity.

Julia Scoles wrote a powerful piece on her journey through numerous concussions. Anyone who has had a concussion, or knows someone impacted by it, who read that story created a relationship with Scoles.

Kevin Plummer, the father of then-Stanford All-American Katherine Plummer, wrote about the experience of being Katherine Plummer’s dad. Every dad of an athlete could suddenly relate to Kevin Plummer, this in spite of the fact that their children will not be anywhere near as successful as his.

Both finished in the top-10 most read stories on VolleyballMag.com that year.

Did the thousands of people who read those stories come for the writing, or for the access?

For the words on the screen or the relatability those words created?

Brene Brown has made a fabulous career studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. She’s authored a number of books I’d recommend, namely Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection. Those books, and the lessons within them, are only getting more relevant with time. She blends science with anecdotal stories about the power of vulnerability, and how the ability to be vulnerable — to show our weaknesses, as opposed to hiding them — is a superpower. Flaws, and our ability to publicly acknowledge — if not embrace — them, are the fabric of human connection.

It’s why, when athletes such as Kevin Love open up about depression or mental health, their platforms are elevated far beyond anything they could achieve on the court. Or Michael Phelps producing The Weight of Gold, a documentary which explores the depths of depression into which many of our most celebrated and successful athletes can often sink.

Why?

Because we empathize with losing more than winning. Flaws more than strengths.

A vanishingly small percentage of the world will ever win an Olympic gold medal. But everyone, including those gold medalists, will lose.

When Hines initially messaged me about the ChatGPT jokes, she requested that I have some empathy for someone who recently lost.

I am up to my eyeballs with empathy for losers. Anders Mol and Christian Sorum have won more tournaments than I have won main draw matches, and I’ve played seven more professional tournaments than they have.

I’ve never won a single professional tournament of note. I have never even made a semifinal, unless you count NORCECAs and a one-star (I don’t).

I lose. All the time.

Which is why I know what a superpower losing can be.

We’re told that America likes winners. And we do. But what we like even more than that is seeing someone lose, get back up again, and re-enter the arena a better version of themselves. We love that story arc. Losing is, contrary to what we might think, our greatest opportunity to let people in, to build a human connection and rapport with anyone who watches us play or reads our writing or listens to our podcasts or clicks on our YouTube videos (or reads our Instagram captions).

The first somewhat viral story I ever wrote came in 2017, the day after losing in the Hermosa Beach qualifier. Someone on VolleyTalk wrote that, given what an easy draw I had, I should just quit and retire. Give up.

That prompted me to write what has been referred to as my ‘Man in the Arena’ story. Near the beginning, I wrote of the envy I had for many of my good friends who made the main draw, that

“I think all of these things because I’m human and that’s what inherently deeply flawed human beings do. I try not to write about these stupid things I think because it’s childish, petulant, immature, and altogether crappy.

“But this is an introspection, and I intend on it being a very honest one, because I think that what I’m currently thinking and writing is what 78 other losing teams are likely thinking and not writing.

“So, what do I intend to do now?

“Call it uncle?

“Hell no.

“I do not intend on calling it uncle.

I’ve been an athlete my entire life. I have accepted losing as part of the process just how my second-grade self once accepted that Santa wasn’t real. Ruefully, a little pissy, while also logically wrapping my brain around the fact that reindeer cannot fly and not even a magical, overweight, ageless man can employ an army of elves to build toys for a year and deliver every single one of them around the globe in a single night.

“Believing that I should be making every main draw three years after first picking up a volleyball is hardly any different than believing in Santa.

“I say this ruefully, and more than a little pissy, while also logically wrapping my brain around the fact that this is a tour for professional athletes, and three years and precisely zero coaching – aside from bugging the living crap out of every beach volleyball player I know, asking what I can do better and how –- is not nearly enough to be a professional volleyball player.

Have you ever seen anything of significance accomplished within three years of launch? I haven’t.

“So this is me calling my shot.

“I will make a main draw.”

I had three options when the VolleyTalk thread came to my attention: I could ignore it, lash out in anger, or I could turn the other cheek and give a deep, introspective and human response. I chose the latter, and that response created an entirely new fanbase for me. Every tournament I traveled to, I had people wishing, hoping, I’d make a main draw. I continued writing about my struggles — while not playing the victim, which is a vitally important bit — and every time I did, more people hopped on the bandwagon.

And then, in May of 2018, the shot I called in that story came true: I made a main draw. The response was massive. More than 100 text messages were waiting on my phone, ranging from Casey Patterson to guys I hadn’t heard from in years. They were happy for me, yes, but the word most oft-used was proud. Proud of how vulnerable I had been throughout the process, showing the ups and downs and everything in between. Proud of how relatable a now-professional athlete could be.

When you’re open like that, and you achieve a victory, however small that victory may be, such as finishing dead last in the main draw of an AVP in Austin, the response is huge. The story arc has been complete.

They ate up my subsequent piece on what it felt like to alas make a main draw.

And then they wondered: When’s the next episode?

My writing on the ups and downs of the life of a professional athlete has continued. The final chapter of my book, We Were Kings, is titled ‘The Wonderful Misery of Chasing Dreams.’

“Chasing dreams at once offers the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. It’s a bit like being in love, really, and here I’ll call to mind a scene from Hitch, where Will Smith, attempting to win back Eva Mendes, yells at her that he ‘just wants to feel miserable! Like, really miserable, because, hey, if that what it takes for me to be happy — well that didn’t come out right.’

It kind of did come out right, though, because only love can make a man feel so miserable, and yet to feel that miserable means you might just be in love — with a person, a craft, something — a sensation to which there is no comparison.”

JD Hamilton, a good friend of mine, reads that chapter often, because it’s a human thing, to think like that, and then to express it on paper. I’m not perfect, nor do I pretend to be. Sometimes my honesty and imperfections turn people off; most of the time, it results in someone messaging me, saying “thanks for writing that. I’m struggling with the same thing.”

And now we’re on the same team. We have a relationship.

Losing off the court, too, is something I’ve written on. My piece on the world losing Eric Zaun touched many people, and was a necessary bit of catharsis for me. Delaney’s miscarriage last December reshaped my entire perspective on volleyball, and life, something I wrote about this past year. The most common bit of feedback I’ve heard from women, and even the occasional male, is “thank you.” It’s a difficult subject, but I think a necessary one to talk about, because it’s so common (nearly 25 percent of pregnancies will end in miscarriage, but there’s strangely little material on how to cope). That story was one of the most-read stories on VolleyballMag, and has been nominated for the Best American Sports Writing.

Again, I’ll ask: Is that for the writing, or the access to my mind? The words or the relatability?

There are others who are doing a tremendous job of opening up and connecting, building loyal followings by just being humans. Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth filmed a fun vlog during the Cape Town Elite 16. Their responses to finishing fifth were wildly different: There’s Taryn, pouting a bit, saying she’s tired of learning.

I loved that.

It was so dang real. It was so dang human.

And then there’s Kristen, one of the spunkiest competitors I know, speaking — and, later, writing — about how losing, while never optimal, isn’t such a bad thing sometimes, because that means she gets to experience Cape Town in all its beauty, hiking Table Mountain and Lion’s Head.

I loved that, too, because that was also so dang real.

They vlog, send newsletters, and yes, even write fun and whimsical Instagram captions. After they finished fifth in Doha, Kristen’s caption was, simply, “We got fifth.”

It was perfect. And here’s why: “We got fifth” is full of tension. For one, it’s informative, for those who don’t bother to follow the results of the tournament. Two, you know, from the terseness of the three-word caption, that Kristen isn’t happy with it. She doesn’t have to write it out and then lace it with the sugar of “but we’re coming away with lessons and hungry for more!” That would take away the tension, and the inherent value of it. In writing, this is called showing, not telling. Show me how you feel, don’t tell me.

It makes a difference.

Like all literary devices, however, Kristen won’t be able to use that one again, unless that becomes her schtick, which could become quite funny. In fact, her next caption was three words. Maybe now she’ll become the three-word-caption-queen, which would also be funny. Or maybe she’ll continue flexing her creative muscles. For me, that’s fun. For others, it might be work.

It’s hard. But when building a platform based on your realness, your humanness, it’s important.

Being human means doing and going through hard things. It means losing. That doesn’t make you flawed. That makes you relatable.

Relatable is good.

Alix Klineman is 6-foot-5, stunning, and so good at her craft that she has an Olympic gold medal to prove it. Given that context, she is as relatable as a unicorn. And then you see her geek out about cooking, and food in general, and in a blink, everyone who loves chocolate, pasta, or cooking can now relate to Alix Klineman, Olympic gold medalist.

As a quick aside, Klineman hit the human relatability jackpot by opening up about her passion for all things food. Maybe that’s an accident, maybe not. But food is something we all have in common. Doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, American, European, tall, short, fat, skinny, blonde or red-haired. Christians may note that in the New Testament of the Bible, Jesus is almost always coming from, going to, or sitting at a meal.

How did the Son of God choose to most frequently relate to his followers?

Food.

The most human thing in the world, and another element Nuss does so well, with her Food Chronicles on Instagram.

It isn’t the only way, of course.

Melissa Humana-Paredes does an excellent job of being human, as opposed to simply being the best setter in the world. So do, off the top of my head, Geena Urango, Jeremy Casebeer, Anouk Verge-Depre, Carly Wopat, Evan Cory, Trevor Crabb, Brandie Wilkerson, April Ross, Molly Turner, Seain Cook, and a number of others, all in their own separate ways. James Shaw has an excellent Substack on his life as the son of a legend and now a professional volleyball player in Germany. Urango and Casebeer are open about their training methods and sports psychology. Trevor talks trash, which is polarizing. For athletes, polarizing be a tremendous tool. It’s up to the athlete, and how authentically polarizing they want to be.

Anouk wrote a thoughtful piece on a polarizing topic – bikinis in beach volleyball – that went viral and is still getting traction on LinkedIn more than a year later.

Becoming real, and therefore relatable, doesn’t take much.

All it takes is a passion, like cooking. Or, in Julia Scoles’ and Hailey Harward’s cases, the Bible.

Many of their posts are Christian-based. For some, this is a turn-off. For others, it makes them instantly likable, regardless of what happens on the court.

It’s human in an age where humans are routinely being replaced by computers and artificial intelligence.

Do you have to post on Instagram? Write witty captions? Podcast? Make videos? Open up?

No, of course not. As I said: These tools and platforms are only for those who want to build an audience.

I admire people who don’t.

Sometimes going dark is the best tool in the proverbial belt. Miles Partain has created an air of mystery about him. That can be powerful. Kent Steffes disappeared for more than 20 years. In that time, most people’s impression of him was that he was a winning machine devoid of emotion. All he cared about was winning. And then we came out with Kings of Summer, and he began posting regularly on Facebook, and suddenly, so many of his detractors found him…human? Likable?

Imagine that.

After Emily Stockman and Kelley Kolinske were knocked out of the Tokyo Olympic race, she posted a quote from Tim Grover, about how sometimes losses knock us down, and the best thing is just to stay down until we’re ready to get back up.

I loved that.

She went dark.

And now she’s back up.

I’m rooting for her, some of it because of that.

I like to imagine all of these platforms, and the way we engage with them, as tools with their own separate dials. We dial some up while cranking others down. Messing with frequencies, volume, emotions, finding the balance that best suits us and the audiences we’re building. Not every piece needs to be a sob story. Robert Greene does a masterful job describing these many tools in The 48 Laws of Power. The most important thing about those laws?

They’re about humans.

And the best way to connect with a human is to be one yourself.