Hey, buddy. I know it’s been a few years since you’ve heard from me. I hope you’ve been doing well over the past decade. I never wished you any ill will; it was just time for us to go our separate ways. We had some good times, though. Remember Saturday Morning Cartoons? Curling up on the couch together with a bowl of Lucky Charms, sharing adventures with He-Man and Jonny Quest? Or calling up the radio station to request that new Def Leppard song? Or years later, getting the baby to sleep and settling down for the evening with my wife and the castaways of Survivor?

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I stopped by last Sunday to see if there was still something to this relationship. Something that could convince me you have grown. You see, the reason I left all those years ago was because you just didn’t get me any more. I had moved beyond your ridiculous advertisements, your insulting premises, and your “I know what’s best for you” censorship. In short, I found someone else who understood me, who gave me what I didn’t even know I was looking for: unlimited and uncensored music, comedies that didn’t cater to the lowest common denominator nor require a laugh track to tell me what was funny, full-length feature films that were not interrupted every 13 minutes by 2 to 4 minutes of ads… and the internet and I have been happy together ever since.

But a while back, I heard a rumor that you were starting to listen. You were going to share your biggest stage with the internet. YouTube would be sponsoring the Super Bowl pregame show. The most well-known stars of Twitch would be joining your party. You even hinted that your halftime event would include an honorarium to one of the internet’s most beloved creators. And so, despite my trepidation, I dusted off the old digital antenna and tuned in.

Had I only known how prescient that opener was, I would have bailed right away. I love John Malkovich, but I couldn’t write a better metaphor for who you are than middle-aged white men in suits deciding what everyone else wants to see. I’ll leave game commentary to those more versed in the sport – I’m sure you and the NFL will be hearing plenty from them. I want to instead focus on the parts you can actually control, starting with:

The Ads

Once again, booze came in on top with a whopping NINE prime advertising spots, trying your best to distract us from your shitty product by telling us that it doesn’t have corn syrup, or it’s wind powered, or it has special water, or it doesn’t have corn syrup, or it’s so mega ultra light it’s basically Gatorade, or it might have corn syrup but at least it’s organic corn syrup, dammit, and it makes a pretty sound when you open it.

Meanwhile, when we cut the cord and stopped listening to your advertising bullshit years ago – and instead shared our own opinions with one another – we found out that there is actually good beer out there. There’s a reason the craft beer market has risen 5% while the overall beer market has dropped 1%, and it has nothing to do with the message you’re peddling.

And booze only came in first because I separated tech and apps from wireless providers in the technology category, which included what should have been the uncontested winner of the bad taste award: Verizon, going on and on about how much they care about first responders, despite throttling the internet speed of firefighters during one of the deadliest blazes in California’s history.

I say, “should have been,” because Dodge – one of the seven car advertisers – managed to one-up them on the disgustingly tasteless meter by using Martin Luther King, Jr.’s image to sell a fucking truck… yes, the same Dr. King who once said:

Now the presence of this instinct explains why we are so often taken by advertisers. You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. In order to be lovely to love you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know, before you know it, you’re just buying that stuff…I got to drive this car because it’s something about this car that makes my car a little better than my neighbor’s car…I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I’m going to continue to say it to America.

And lest you think that I was only appalled by Dodge and Verizon, your use of “sadvertising” was not limited to these two soulless behemoths. It seemed like you were intent on convincing us the world is a black, soul-sucking ball of pain and misery, with tiny little bright spots like [insert sponsor here]. “You’re unsafe in your own home,” declared the two home security companies. “Everyone is horrible to each other except the wonderful people who use our app,” lamented the company who needed 20,000 of their own employees to walk out the door before they started taking complaints of sexual harassment against executives seriously.

The point is, we’re not morons. The days where you controlled the message are over. We know what kind of crap is in your beers. We know what kind of shady politics and pricing and pollution practices your auto manufacturers and big food conglomerates are involved in. We know we’re living in the safest time in this country in the last 40 years. Most importantly, we know how to connect with information and with one another without you being in the middle, steering us toward your products, your facts, your message.

Also, as a side note about morons… Did you happen to notice that four of your biggest competitors were advertising on your platform? Did you also happen to notice that all four of them, who each regularly kick your ass all over the field, were creating ground-breaking entertainment? And so, squared up against

1. one of the greatest epic fantasies ever told on screen,
2. a third season of an award-winning, thought-provoking, gut-wrenching political drama,
3. a stunningly filmed, breathtaking nature documentary, and
4. an action-packed spy thriller

what was the crown jewel in  your lineup? The big gun you whipped out to let the world know you’re still relevant?

Matt “Joey” LeBlanc playing a guy literally too stupid to open a fucking bag of potato chips. (And of course there’s a laugh track.)

Seriously, are you even trying anymore?

I can only imagine the answer to that is a resounding, “Huh?” based on:

The Halftime Show

Oh, the halftime show. Did I think you were oblivious of my feelings before? I had no idea of how little you actually thought of me.

When Stephen Hillenburg, creator of Spongebob Squarepants, passed away last year, and over a million fans rushed to Change.org to voice their support of one of the Titans of the meme-verse pantheon by requesting that Sweet Victory be performed at halftime, I didn’t expect you to listen. What’s a million people, really? Just like Boaty McBoatface, I don’t think anyone really expected anything to come of it.

But then, there were whispers. Maroon 5, the halftime “entertainment,” released a video that included a few quick frames of Spongebob. Then, the Squidward voice actor, Rodger Bumpass, announced that Squidward would be introducing the show. It was happening! A million voices cried out and were not silenced.

And so, we stayed. Through another metaphorical portrayal of old TV sports guys reliving their glory days while one of the biggest stars of e-sports waited on them like a plebeian and another major Twitch streamer had his sequence cut entirely, we waited. When rock star turned pop star turned exotic dancer Adam Levine began breathlessly barking out whatever formulaic nonsense was at the top of the charts 15 years ago, we persevered. Until finally, the lights went down, and Squidward’s voice rang out over the crowd. The trumpets trumpeted, the stars fell from the sky, and…

…and Travis Scott, in desperate need of his autotune machine, began belting out a CENSORED version of his hit “Sicko Mode.”

I was floored. I was literally speechless. You allowed explicit language just to silence it out? And worse, you didn’t even have the creativity and foresight to use a dolphin whistle! Quite ironically, in the middle of a halftime show that was the safest, cleanest, most controversy-free performance in recent memory, you managed to fuck 1.2 million people on live TV. And I found myself asking the same question millions of others were asking themselves:

Unfortunately, I think you’re beyond learning. I think you honestly don’t care about me anymore. You have your boomers and their love of your 18 different variety shows and your 37 versions of the same procedural crime dramas to carry you along for another 20 years, and you seem satisfied with that. I hope you are happy together.

Maybe I’ll stop by in another year or so and see how you manage with the Olympics, but I gotta admit, I don’t have much faith. Oh, well, at least there’s YouTube highlights.

P.S. In case you were wondering how epic your halftime show could have been, here is the Dallas Stars hockey team giving the fans what they want with probably about 0.003% of your budget.

#sweetsweetvictory @tweetgrubes @jeffk_stars @Jonathan_Maniet pic.twitter.com/5ICME9CQLz

— Jason Danby (@jadanby) February 4, 2019