Colin Sheridan: The 'Mayo Effect' explains why everyone is talking about their All-Ireland triumph

Colin Sheridan explores why Mayo's All-Ireland victory captivated the world — and why the attention will inevitably fade

Colin Sheridan examines the 'Mayo Effect', arguing the county's All-Ireland triumph became a global media phenomenon shaped by the attention economy. Picture: ©INPHO/Tom Maher

Forgive me, readers, but this will be a column about Mayo. Not about famine and emigration. Not about the Atlantic nor the peculiar burden and privilege of growing up in a county that somehow managed to turn centuries of suffering into an identity. No, this column is about what happened next, and what happened deserves a name. 

A psycho-social phenomenon heretofore known as the Mayo Effect. The Mayo Effect is what happens when one completely authentic story collides head-on with the modern attention economy. The result has been extraordinary. One minute, Mayo — a place unknown to most of the wider world — simply won a game of Gaelic football.

The next, every journalist, podcaster, academic, influencer, deposed dictator and professional overthinker on the planet decided Kobe McDonald's joie de vivre perfectly explained whatever they were already planning to talk or write about.

And yes, I appreciate that I am part of the same hypocrisy I intend to lament and satirise hereunder.

I have spent the better part of this week — and the decade before it — asking what Mayo winning the All-Ireland says about memory, belonging, resilience, collective trauma and the human condition. 

I have quoted Homer and Durkan and the Hardy Bucks. I have probably overthought the whole thing to a degree that should concern my friends. But I'm from Mayo. That's different. I'm not analysing the fish. I'm in the friggin' bowl. I'll still be here — intellectually speaking — when everyone else has moved on to the next cute story. For me, and the many others like me, this isn’t a story. It’s life.

What about the rest? The New York Times quite rightly wanted to tell the story. It is, after all, the greatest story ever told. The Athletic apparently commissioned a new Gaelic games department on the back of Croke Park fever. And the fever was catching. Somewhere, Colin Barrett was surely being asked to write 8,000 luminous words for The New Yorker under the title The Geography (and Weight) of Waiting. This is allowed. Colin is not just from Mayo, but Knockmore, which is the Helmand of Mayo.

The FT was likely preparing an analysis of what Mayo's victory means for regional economic development in the context of the global oil crisis. The Economist commissioned a graph demonstrating the positive relationship between lifting ancient sporting curses and GDP growth, calling it the Rising Tide Report.

The Harvard Business Review is finalising Seven Leadership Lessons From Waiting Seventy-Five Years. The High Performance Podcast will interview Hunter Biden, who will neatly attribute his recovery from everything to his resilient Mayo roots.

Before long, The Spectator, the New Statesman, The Atlantic, and Playboy will have epic spreads under some version of the banner: "What Mayo Winning Really Says About..."

Fill in the blank. Artificial intelligence. Masculinity. Toxic masculinity. The rise of fascism. The fall of fast fashion. The Islamification of Christianity. The collapse of counter-culture. The end of sex.

Douglas Murray will publish an essay on Mayo and Critical Race Theory: The Two Great Lies of Our Time. Rory Stewart will walk from Doohoma to Ballaghaderreen and write a book about it. The Joe Rogan Experience will do a four-hour, 36-minute episode with David Brady. 

LinkedIn will crumble under the weight of the lessons it’s learned. Jane's Defence Weekly will float a think-piece titled 'What Mayo's Tactical Discipline Reveals About Ireland's Requirement for Long-Range Precision Strike Capability'.

You think I’m joking? Some of these things have already happened, and because it’s Saturday and we’re almost a week removed from the greatest story ever told (sorry Jesus), those ideas pitched that didn't make print have already soured like last month's milk. Rest easy, you dilettantes, the Mayo Moment is almost over. The Mayo Effect, however, is alive and well.

The truth is, we've seen this pattern before. Not with Mayo, but with everything that burns bright for half a day, occupying our imaginations and giving us the dopamine we need to avoid life for a while.

The internet, and all of us on it, fall gloriously, hopelessly in love with something - a story, a person, a dog, a phrase, a radio commentary - and for one magical week every one of us uses it as a prism through which to interpret everything. Why Russia invaded Ukraine. Why Fitzy left Love Island.

But the cycle dictates a shift must occur. After the love comes fatigue. The overexposure. Then the explainer, the reaction, the counter-reaction. The backlash. The backlash to the backlash. A mild cancellation, perhaps. And then, the silence.

Not because the affection wasn't genuine. It was. People the world over really are delighted for Mayo. The tears in Castlebar were real. The extraordinary commentary from Midwest Radio was real. None of it was manufactured or cynically designed to go viral. It simply happened to contain every ingredient that modern media finds irresistible. The wait. The weight of the wait. The curse. The underdog. The redemption. The sea and the bog and the holy mountain. It was the most montageable moment in Irish sport in recent history. It deserves a Reeling in the Years episode all by itself. Reality occasionally produces stories so perfect that fiction would reject them as implausible, so of course people were captivated.

The mistake for Mayo people especially would be to confuse fascination with understanding. Those are not the same thing. People can love the story without understanding the place that produced it. They can marvel at the ending without fully appreciating the generations that lived through everything that came before. 

History is stubborn. It doesn't need validation from algorithms. Attention, on the other hand, needs oxygen. It arrives noisily and departs without saying goodbye. By next week there will be another story. Another underdog. Another viral clip. Another county. Another curse.

Which is why my only advice to my Mayo brethren is this. Enjoy every second of it. Accept every congratulation, every invitation. Smile when strangers stop you in airports. Laugh when people in London or Sydney tell you they cried listening to Midwest Radio. Bookmark the think-pieces. Even the ones that accidentally discover the meaning of life somewhere between Ballina and Ballyhaunis.

Just don't let any of it change you. We've spent seventy-five years without the world's attention. We'll spend the next seventy-five without it too. That isn't something to fear. It's something to cherish.

Because attention isn't the prize. It never was.

You were Mayo before the world noticed.

You'll still be Mayo long after it goes looking somewhere else.