In The Aesthetics of the Algorithm: Why “Drama” Is Just Inefficiency, Jacob Brunts argues that the “drama” in sports—those dropped passes, botched reads, and missed shots—is nothing more than system waste generated by imperfect athletic hardware. Brunts frames errors as variance to be removed, noise in an otherwise optimized system. He suggests that as humans become enhanced and mistakes rarer, the aesthetic of sports will shift toward a new, “higher form” of engagement.
One of Brunts’ key points is that:
“The ‘excitement’ comes from the variance—the gap between what the human should have done and what their flawed biological hardware actually did… It is system waste.”
— Jacob Brunts, “The Aesthetics of the Algorithm” (2026)
Brunts’ perspective is provocative and technically savvy, but it rests on a fundamental assumption: that spectators enjoy mistakes because they are inefficient. I want to push back on this idea and argue that what spectators actually enjoy is not inefficiency per se, but psychological engagement rooted in meaning, identity, and emotional resonance.
Sports fans don’t just watch for the sake of randomness or error—they watch because they feel something. Contemporary research into spectator psychology supports this. A recent study in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living develops a structural model connecting immersion (deep psychological engagement), team identification, and sports consumption behavior among spectators. (frontiersin.org)
The authors write:
“Immersion showed a relatively high mean, indicating that respondents generally exhibited strong attentional focus and emotional engagement during competitions.”
— Xiaogan Chen & Zhenxin Huang, Frontiers in Sports and Active Living (2025)
This shows that spectators enter a psychologically meaningful state while watching games. Mistakes and uncertainty activate attention and affective involvement, which are foundational for identification with teams, storylines, and social belonging.
Brunts frames error as inefficiency. But mistakes operate as affective signals, not mere noise. The pratfall effect in social psychology illustrates this idea: competent individuals become more likable when they make small, human mistakes. ([pratfall effect])
In sports, mistakes generate uncertainty—and uncertainty drives emotional arousal, attention, and memorability. Optimized efficiency reduces variance, compressing the emotional and narrative space where meaning and identity flourish.
Brunts is right that AI and optimization technologies will make athletes smarter and more efficient. Performance analysis, wearables, biomechanical feedback, and AI coaching systems are transforming training. But efficiency does not automatically translate to boredom in spectatorship. We must distinguish between performance dynamics and narrative and emotional dynamics.
Drama is about risk and uncertainty, not error alone. Optimized athletes can produce complex, unpredictable outcomes if strategies interact dynamically. AI shifts what we find engaging rather than removing it.
Brunts’ call for a post-error era misunderstands the psychological roots of sports engagement. Mistakes are not merely inefficiencies; they are affective signals shaping narrative tension, emotional resonance, and identification. AI will transform play and analysis, but it does not undermine the human need for story, uncertainty, and emotional involvement. Instead, it can enrich the spectacle, clarify meaning, and highlight narrative depth. What keeps us watching is not just efficiency, but the human story behind every play, perfect or imperfect.
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