We know the great con of Mayweather-McGregor, but so what?

The big night is nearly upon us. After all the hype and anticipation and wagering updates and celebrity opinions, it has finally arrived.
 
The decision about where to go so that you don’t have to hear or see the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor event.
 
To call it a swindle is wrong because everyone who buys in, either with money or attention, knows what awaits them. To call it a ripoff is wrong for the same reason. To call it a degrading made-up glob of valueless nonsense . . . well, you’re probably on to something there.
 
No, Mayweather-McGregor is on all of us who yelled and bleated about it from the moment it was announced, 37 years ago. We know it’s a con, but that’s what we want. We know it’s a fraud, but it has so many bright colors and made-up anger. We know it’s a mirror we use to see ourselves being humiliated, but that’s we want, too.
 
Because ultimately it’s just us paying two guys to do something we really don’t care about. It’s a triumph of two people we would sell our houses to avoid, and a testament to how little we regard our work that we take the money from that work and turn it into their bounty.
 
And hurray for those of us who buy the thing, or watch it (or, in a fit of self-abasement, talk and write about it), because we chose to be suckered and/or bullied into watching the loud, shiny, obnoxious thing. Again. Mayweather-McGregor is who we are until we choose not to be that any more. We have lots of other forms of entertainment, but we decide to do this because . . .
 
. . . well, who cares? Where are the snacks? Grab me a beer. Hey, that’s my seat! Distract me, damn you!