Put down the remote and pick up your own brain, because the internet is having a full-on emergency about TV and entertainment, and somehow your thumbs are the only adults in the room.
Last weekend’s Super Bowl and the rest of the world traded places in a grand, glittery referendum on America, and the loudest voices won the microphone lottery. Bad Bunny’s halftime show became a cultural weather system: some people called it revolutionary, others called it bad for the country. But it doesn’t just stop with football themed Latin music. Anger at your TV spans the gamut.
One of my favorite shows right now is Star Trek’s Starfleet Academy, a tonal shift that feels like the franchise borrowed a magic wand from Dawson’s Creek and waved it over the Starship Enterprise. It’s aimed at a younger audience, which means more color-coded uniforms, more beep-boop techno, and a captain who doesn’t wear shoes. (Oh this is a biggie for the mad online crowd). The keyboard warriors howl in chorus: this isn’t real Starfleet, this is a junior-varsity salute to space. And yet, there’s a sweet, earnest audition in the mix—the impulse to grow up with the characters, to believe you might pilot a vessel someday, even if your real life is a commute and a mortgage. Melodrama turns into mid-grade sci-fi candy, and somehow that sweetness sparks as many dog-pilled takeaways as the original canon did.
Anyone with a cheap phone and a thumb seems to be Roger Ebert and it takes only one hot take to fire up the crowd.
Super Bowl commercials? Oh, they’re not ads; they’re expensive episodes with product placements stitched into the plotlines, leaving viewers to decide whether the moral is “buy more stuff” or “appreciate great budgets.” The ads arrive with cinematic entrances, pop-culture callbacks, and enough nostalgia to revive a few old fads and perfumes. There was one commercial that had like 15 people from 1980’s TV for some reason all sitting around eating donuts. You guessed it, reception to these were mixed. Any reaction is a good reaction if you’re Madison Avenue, I suppose. When you’re trying to sell Bitcoin and beer, you just need the eyes to recognize you later.
Maybe we just watch TV, ingest what the idiot box gives us and not run to the internet to say how the Ensign on the starship is too short and how that is a drag on societal norms. Or that the Clydesdale horses seem a little fatter on that Budweiser commercial. Or how an American citizen singing about love winning over hate (even though it’s in Spanish) is the end of the world. Maybe we just watch, eat our chili cheese dip, and leave our phone in our pocket?
My advice: tune that stuff out, watch and form your own opinion, then write it down and burn it. Or better yet, tuck it into a drawer and forget it exists for 24 hours. Then come back, pretend you’re a regular human with a remote, and live a less angry life. Namaste.
(Get more from Kamler on Twitter where he is @chriskamler)
