V.A.R. and the Rise of Our New Tech Overlords

I watch the World Cup with a tinfoil hat on my head. Every alleged plot feels real, every iteration of international bias and geopolitical scheming seems plausible. These days, almost all soccer-related conspiratorial thinking gets processed through the Video Assistant Referee, which, in the World Cup, involves an unseen, mysterious group of officials who hawk over every moment of the game from multiple camera angles and determine the legality of every touch, every foul, every pass, and every decision by their colleagues on the field. This setup, wherein a group of arbiters hide behind a curtain like the Wizard of Oz and hand down decisions that inflict generational trauma on entire countries, almost feels purposefully built to invite all sorts of wild speculation.