In this digital age, everything written, everything videotaped, and everything performed just adds onto each other. A press conference. A mic’d up moment. The way someone walks and talks. What they wear. It all goes into the giant landfill that is the internet. Put simply, the internet never forgets.
It’s been a tough week in that respect. It has been hard for us to watch. And the backlash has been furious and karmic.
The universe always collects its debts—even if it has to wait through insufferable touchdown dances and victory laps.
The crowing and the gloating and the dangling it in front of everyone that this is the only way that is right and will be forever more. If you pull on Superman’s cape, Superman will eventually turn and launch you into the next mountain.
The universe has a weird way of balancing the scales — like a drunk plumber with a wrench, clumsily tightening bolts until something finally bursts. And we saw that with such ferocity this week. And America had to see it. Live. In living color. This might actually be the beginning of the end.
And then it happened. The stumble. The pratfall. The interception returned the other way. It wasn’t just a crack in the armor, it was the kind of misstep that makes everyone gasp, rewind, and say, “Did that really just happen?” Within minutes the highlights were clipped, replayed, GIF’d, meme’d, dunked on, and passed around like stale nachos at Arrowhead.
The schadenfreude was so thick it practically needed its own halftime show. In the eyes of some, this wasn’t just a stumble; this was karma tripping over its own shoelaces, then getting up and trucking somebody in the open field.
It was so swift to circle the globe, too. Within minutes, there were replays, memes, hot takes — oh so many hot takes. It speaks to how polarizing the times are in our country that perhaps half of America was really waiting in the weeds to capitalize on any stumble and this was certainly more than a stumble.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m talking about the 0-2 start, the end-zone pratfalls, the joy of some in America watching the Big Red Machine grind its gears. Wrong game, folks.
The parallels are hard to miss. Strut, gloat, pretend the scoreboard will always tilt your way… sooner or later the universe runs the highlight back the other direction.
Division and violence are never the answer. Neither is acceptable. Neither should be celebrated.
Whether it’s a dynasty dropping a couple games in September or a talker running out of clock at the podium, the lesson’s the same: the internet is a giant landfill that keeps receipts.
(Find Chris Kamler on Twitter, or call it X if you insist, as @chriskamler)
