The point isn’t it being modern and new. The point is us knowing. Our beloved althetes, our heroes, some of the only public figures who love us back, are turning to sex work to make ends meet, and you know what? That’s something a lot of us can relate to. And the thing is with sex work is that it always exists, and is always present. In economic downturns we see it more because it becomes less separated from us and the wall between us and sex workers erodes. Right now, that wall is as collapsed as it has ever been, as is the wall between us and athletes. We can see now that everyone outside of the ultra-wealthy, the billionaires, has more in common than many realized. And we’re also starting to hear athletes say things we’ve never heard them say before. We have things like NFL running backs saying that the real reason they go on strike to get the worker benefits they deserve is to show us how powerful we are as people. They show us the absolutely most incredible things a human can do Mondays, Thursdays, and Sundays, but they also show us the most incredible things humans can do when we don’t get the things we earn by creating value to society. “Without us,” they say, “there is no product.” And to a much more explicit degree than ever, right now, they’re saying “and ‘us’ includes you. You can stand up for what is right. There are so many of us and we don’t have to live at the whims of the ultra wealthy, the billionaires, if we choose not to.”

A lot of our heroes know they’re our heroes. And they’ve always known. And they know they have parasocial relationships with us, but the weird part for them, unlike many of our public figures, is that they see this love, and they return it. Our new degree of access to our celebrities has given them new access to us without the filter of ultra-wealthy, billionaire, media owners. And we, their brethren, have access to their messages in ways we’ve never had before. Look at the involvement Minnesota professional athletes had organizing Black Lives Matter protests. Look at Colin Kaepernick. Look at MLB pitcher Josiah Gray. They’re all on the same message and always have been. You and I are being taken advantage of. When we watch sports on ad supported television, we are not the customer, we are the product. The value the athletes create and the relationship they have with us entirely benefits the owners of the ad platforms. The only benefits the workers get, the ones truly creating the value, is won through refusing to make the product. And they want us to know that, too.

I just hope we hear them before its too late