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Wit & Attitude Quote by Marcel Dionne

"Now you watch reality TV, you watch them in all those pools or Jacuzzis, and I say to myself, was I that stupid? But that was me then"

About this Quote

Dionne is doing something rare for a sports icon: puncturing his own legend without turning it into a tidy redemption arc. The line moves like a replay review of his younger self, spliced with a modern cutaway to reality TV. Those “pools or Jacuzzis” aren’t really about leisure; they’re shorthand for a whole culture of performative indulgence, where being watched is the point and self-awareness comes only after the fact. He’s looking at today’s spectacle and feeling the sting of recognition: the camera didn’t invent vanity, it just upgraded the lighting.

The intent is half confession, half warning. “Was I that stupid?” lands as a self-roast, but it also smuggles in a critique of how fame metabolizes time. You don’t need a script to play the fool when the environment rewards it. For an athlete of Dionne’s era, the contrast matters: his peak came before social media, before celebrity became a full-time job, before “content” was a second scoreboard. Yet he’s admitting that the impulse was already there in him - the same susceptibility to status, attention, and easy pleasure.

The kicker is “But that was me then.” It’s not an excuse; it’s an insistence on change. He draws a clean line between the person who lived for the moment and the person who can now watch that moment from a distance, with embarrassment but also mercy. The subtext is adult humility: growth isn’t glamorous, just honest enough to admit you were once exactly the type you now side-eye on TV.

Quote Details

TopicLearning from Mistakes
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Dionne, Marcel. (2026, February 16). Now you watch reality TV, you watch them in all those pools or Jacuzzis, and I say to myself, was I that stupid? But that was me then. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/now-you-watch-reality-tv-you-watch-them-in-all-114492/

Chicago Style
Dionne, Marcel. "Now you watch reality TV, you watch them in all those pools or Jacuzzis, and I say to myself, was I that stupid? But that was me then." FixQuotes. February 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/now-you-watch-reality-tv-you-watch-them-in-all-114492/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Now you watch reality TV, you watch them in all those pools or Jacuzzis, and I say to myself, was I that stupid? But that was me then." FixQuotes, 16 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/now-you-watch-reality-tv-you-watch-them-in-all-114492/. Accessed 26 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Marcel Add to List
Marcel Dionne on Fame, Regret, and Reality TV
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About the Author

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Marcel Dionne (born August 3, 1951) is a Athlete from Canada.

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