Your favorite player isn’t the best. And that’s okay

People often confuse Favourite with Best. When a friend says, corner house is his favorite ice cream spot, he likes it the most, not that it is the best one objectively. You might think that is a very obvious statement, but we confuse favorite with “best according to me” more often than not.

This is most evident when people fight over their favorite sports player. Every group has that one Ronaldo vs Messi or Rohit Sharma vs Virat fight. They fight about the stats, the goals, the number of the Ballon d’Or awards, and the transfer prices. And even after tonnes of these debates, not a single Messi fan admits Ronaldo is better or the other way around.

Why is that? Shouldn’t rational beings change their opinion of who the best player is, when confronted with stats and evidence pointing the other way? Because favorite just means you like the player. Practically nothing to do with their performance. The same goes with favorite actor, favorite restaurant, singer, animal, color, and everything else.

Declaring a favorite anything is a commitment

When I told a girl on a date that I did not have a favorite actor, She pointed out that not having a favorite actor/singer, etc could be a sign of fear of commitment. Needless to say, we never went on a second date.

Rohit Sharma is my flatmate’s favorite cricketer. He suffers for that commitment when we make fun of him every time Rohit bhai goes for ducks (which happens more often than not). But Rohit Sharma is still his favorite, he is still committed to Rohit. Now if that isn’t love I don’t know what is.

TL DR: When someone (or you) says something is your favorite, it doesn’t mean it is the best. Having a favorite of anything is certainly one of those irrational decisions we make.

(FYI I had no idea that’s how Ballon d’Or is spelled. I kept googling the best spelling I could think of and Google kept mistaking it for Bellandur, the area in Bangalore)