{"id":100792,"date":"2019-01-15T08:07:43","date_gmt":"2019-01-15T14:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=100792"},"modified":"2025-12-22T11:33:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T17:33:36","slug":"d-b-t-h-dont-believe-the-hype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/featured\/d-b-t-h-dont-believe-the-hype\/","title":{"rendered":"D.B.T.H. (Don’t Believe the Hype)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Base<\/a><\/p>\n

Growing up, Frank Thomas, \u201cThe Big Hurt,\u201d was far and away my favorite baseball player. As a member of the Chicago White Sox, he was a beast at the plate and seemed like a stand-up guy off the field too.<\/p>\n

I tried to do everything like Thomas. I emulated his stance and swing, I played first base, and if #35 was available, I was #35.<\/p>\n

One fact about Thomas that got particularly seared into my mind as a kid was that he affixed a piece of white tape to the door of his clubhouse locker which said \u201cD.B.T.H.\u201d<\/p>\n

Translation? Don\u2019t Believe the Hype.<\/p>\n

\"Dirty

As a 13-year-old, I scrawled D.B.T.H. on my baseball glove, in homage to The Big Hurt.<\/p><\/div>\n

For Thomas, the D.B.T.H. mantra seemed to work on several levels.<\/p>\n

First, he didn\u2019t want to let the (justifiably) flattering news coverage of him distract him from the job at hand. In his rookie season, he precociously emerged as a candidate for the Most Valuable Player award, and was already being compared to the legendary Ted Williams. But he didn\u2019t let it go to his head, saying<\/a>, “I’m not overwhelmed . . . I know what it takes in the way of hard work and concentration. I’m not caught up in the media attention. None of this really fazes me.”<\/p>\n

Thomas didn\u2019t see the need to feed into the existent hype by being showy either. He liked getting home runs, and hit plenty of them, but could also be incredibly patient and selective at the plate; he never minded taking a walk. A walk was still productive. He didn\u2019t want to be a flash in the pan, but instead aimed for steadiness and regularity. Said the rookie, “I’m excited about what I’m doing, but the MVP is won a day at a time and that’s how I’m approaching it. I mean, everyone loves to be successful and to read about themselves, but I’m just trying to stay consistent.”<\/p>\n

Consistency he achieved, becoming the only player in major league history to have seven consecutive seasons (1991\u201397) with at least a .300 batting average, 100 runs batted in (RBI), 100 runs scored, 100 walks, and 20 home runs. <\/p>\n

I think for Thomas too, \u201cDon\u2019t Believe the Hype\u201d also meant not getting caught up in trying to compete with those who weren\u2019t playing the game fairly. He called for drug testing of his fellow major leaguers back in the mid-90s and was the only active player to volunteer to be interviewed for the \u201cMitchell Report\u201d \u2014 an independent investigation conducted in 2007 into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional baseball. It must have been pretty galling for him to see the hype surrounding sluggers who were knocking out a record number of homers with artificially-enhanced strength. But Thomas never fell into that trap in order to keep up, even as his powers waned with age. When he hit his 500th<\/sup> home run near the end of his career, he could say, \u201cIt means a lot to me because I did it the right way.”<\/p>\n

D.B.T.H.<\/h3>\n

Even though I\u2019m a grown man now, I still think of Thomas as my favorite baseball player, and I still think of his \u201cD.B.T.H\u201d motto quite often. It seems like a more important mantra than ever in our spectacularly hype-driven age.<\/p>\n

Not many of us have to worry about media coverage giving us a big head, but it\u2019s wise to remember to stay grounded and focused when your parents, or teachers, or friends build you up with flattering praise.<\/p>\n

Perhaps even more importantly, it\u2019s wise to recognize that buying into the hype that surrounds other people and products can lead to poor decision making in several ways.<\/p>\n

The first is lending \u201cfake news\u201d too much credence. I\u2019m not just talking about outright false stories planted by enemies of the state, but \u201cnews\u201d generated by supposedly reputable media outlets. I\u2019ve read far too many stories put out by \u201cprestige\u201d news organizations that merely amount to: \u201cThis prominent person tweeted this. These random people responded with these tweets. This person made a meme out of it.\u201d This is literally the entire content of the article. It is paragraphs of text devoid of meaning and significance. Just hype masquerading as journalism. But consume enough of it and it can shape your world view, where you feel like something is happening, but nothing actually is.<\/p>\n

Second, there\u2019s of course the hype used in marketing: all the \u201cGreatest,\u201d \u201cProprietary Blend,\u201d and \u201cOne-of-a-Kind\u201d superlatives thrown around. This new diet. That get-rich-quick entrepreneurial course. This new multi-level marketing opportunity that is different than all the rest and definitely not multi-level marketing<\/a>. Sometimes the slickest advertising campaigns surround the flimsiest, most worthless of products. There\u2019s plenty of sizzle, but no steak. All hat, and no cattle. Unfortunately, you may only realize this once you\u2019ve sunk a sizeable amount of money into an enterprise or purchase.<\/p>\n

Finally, and perhaps most salient these days, is the fact that the hype machine can cause you to lend status, and thus credence, to people who don\u2019t deserve it. It\u2019s been said that we\u2019re moving from an information age to a reputation age<\/a>; there\u2019s so much information out there, that we increasingly rely on gatekeepers to filter it for us. We can\u2019t consume every bit of information, so we hone our sources of it to those that we trust, we base that trust on their seeming influence, and measure that influence on how well-known and seemingly successful they are \u2014 their audience size and how many social media followers they have.<\/p>\n

The problem here, however, is that much of this status has been bought or manipulated rather than earned. Instagram followers and podcast downloads and Amazon reviews can be purchased like any other commodity; even well-known celebrities do it<\/a>. A would-be Instagram influencer will follow a bunch of other people in hopes of their following him back; once they do, he\u2019ll then unfollow them all. (It\u2019s a fun exercise to run your favorite Instagram account through this site<\/a> to see if they\u2019re engaging in this practice.) So much of \u201cinfluence,\u201d authority, reputation, then, is merely smoke and mirrors. Hype.<\/p>\n

These artificially puffed-up people may not be the best ones from which to take advice; and comparing your status to theirs is a losing game, since you\u2019re judging yourself against what is actually a well-crafted illusion. It can lead you to compromise your values in order to compete.<\/p>\n

In this landscape of funhouse mirrors, of relentless self-promotion where \u201cattention\u201d is the coin of the realm and getting noticed, no matter what for, is the name of the game, it serves a man well to keep D.B.T.H. at the forefront of his mind. To concentrate on creating real value himself, and sussing out the real value of others. To always be seeking the kernel of truth at the center of a whirlwind of hype.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up, Frank Thomas, \u201cThe Big Hurt,\u201d was far and away my favorite baseball player. As a member of the Chicago White Sox, he was a beast at the plate and seemed like a stand-up guy off the field too. I tried to do everything like Thomas. I emulated his stance and swing, I played […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100805,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[502,6,42269],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-100792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-character","category-featured","category-self-improvement"],"featured_image_urls":{"large":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/01\/thomas-538x280.jpg","aom":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/01\/thomas-372x230.jpg","reactor-320":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/01\/thomas-320x213.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100792"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126477,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100792\/revisions\/126477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100792"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=100792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}