Why is the Super Bowl so disgusting?

This is America. Don’t you know entertainment is king?

Billions and billions of dollars are sent over seas to other countries. Billions are spent on the space program. Billions are wasted on government spending. I’m not annoyed at the Super Bowl spending after considering the other money that could be spent in the United States.

@FutureMemory has it.

Is this real life?

Not hardly.

Well, I’d say if it was that traumatic for you perhaps you should refrain from viewing next year. lol

I don’t get caught up in entertainment or news land, not healthy. Havn’t watched prime time TV in over a decade.
Hows the song go? ‘and I ain’t missin’ a thing, watchin’ the full moon crossin’ the range, ridin’ the storm out….. ;-)

Football is lame.

Having not watched this Superbowl, enlighten me: How were your tax dollars flushed down the toilet with the GM commercials?

Add to that the articles that ran in the New Yorker and New York Times about the permanent brain damage football players get from repeated concussions, and you will be reaching for the barf bags for sure.

I loved the game. I didn’t see anything disgusting. I didn’t enjoy Fergie’s version of Sweet Child of Mine. What the heck was on the will-i-am guy’s head? Other than that. Excellent game. Excellent.

That game sucked (my husband is a serious Steelers fan LOL). I don’t get why you think tax dollars are spent on those ads either? Do you mean because the government lent money to GM? I think about how those expensive commercials add to the price of a car for a consumer.

Quit whining.

@bkcunningham I liked Ferie’s version of Swwet Child of Mine. Did you notice her mic seemed to not be working in the beginning? I felt throughut the performabce her mic was not quite loud enough.

Because you are unhappy. When you’re unhappy, everything looks worse.

I worked through the game, and then sat and watched all of the ads online. Thank you, marketing minor, for teaching me how to appreciate that unique form of entertainment!
The ironic thing? The player would pause every 2–3 ads… to run an ad to support the site.

Wowza! I’m excited to see where this conversation goes. I’ll encourage those of you with questions regarding GM to do your own research as it is a long and slippery slope and I can only assume you have the internet. I’ve got nothing but love for football, and beer, and nachos for that matter. But I’ve a strange feeling that the rest of it is the work of aliens. If not, the future is bleak my friends.

Half time show blew ass.

I thought the half time show was painful to watch. Was it Fur.gie’s poor singing? Wil.I.cnt.spell’s antics? The silly helmet? No. It was the tragic waste of all that Electroluminescent material.

“Maybe it was the Black Eyed Peas lovely performance…”

So sorry that they couldn’t get Alabama and Kenny G to come out and put on a show just for you.

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“maybe it was watching my tax dollars being flushed down the toilet in 30 second GM commercials…”

You do understand that advertising is a well understood and accepted practice in terms of driving new business, right? It’s actually necessary in order to compete. The Superbowl has the largest sports audience in the world… and GM has some significant new models to announce. Their ads were fine.

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“perhaps it’s the fact that the kiddos down the street from me aren’t sure if their school is going to be open next year while there are billions of dollars to be spent on commercials.”

What does the one have to do with the other? Are you saying that corporations should eschew advertising altogether and put those dollars into public schools? What about the employees of the ad agencies who’d then be out of work? And besides, most major corporations do have charitable outreach. One example from last nite is CarMax and their CarMax Foundation.

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“Whatever it was, it hit hard. Is this real life?”

Apparently, real life for you is complaining about how you perceive other people don’t measure up to your ignorant expectations. You know what? Go do something about the problems you see yourself. Maybe then you’ll learn that these faceless corporations you want to bash are actually comprised of thousands of real people who have kiddos themselves, are working hard to do a good job with integrity, and would also like to help out those folks that are less fortunate.

I’m not sure why people are jumping on this question/er. Even if there’s a whiny aspect to the wording (which I don’t see), the question is still legitimate and points to an arguable problem in American life.

Seems fine to me to ask why/whether the Superbowl is/n’t disgusting in some sense or another. (And I would have to agree that it is, since for the most part it’s just a big empty orgy of commercial entertainment and entertaining commercials. And I think disgusting is the perfect word for the colossal illusion of participation that is, yes, any sports broadcast, but especially the Superbowl. The spectacle and all that; Nation of Watchers (Voyeurs); et cetera, et cetera.)

@robmandu – Kenny G used to play me to sleep when I was a kid, during the Christmas season. You’re digging at his banality, I know, but the Black Eyed Peas are going to inherit that someday. And whether you like the Black Eyed Peas or not, it’s difficult to deny what a terrible performance that was.

The poor quality of the halftime show was surreal to me. Hearing will.i.am say ‘The one and only Slaaaash’ was surreal. Watching Slash play stiffly while Fergie attempted to ‘dance’ beside/on top of him was surreal.

It was like watching a high school talent show (cf), awkward and embarrassing and even almost sad because it showed in this unedited way (via Fergie’s terrible voice) how childish we all really are when we sit down to stare at a pretty piece of furniture in our homes expecting to be entertained for three to four hours (and not just entertained by the entertainment but by the self-aware insidious commercial apparatus sponsoring said entertainment, which apparatus is on any other day expected to be running more or less in the background and secondary to said sponsored entertainment).

I’m not saying anyone else felt this way, or that anyone else should have, but I felt especially after the halftime show like a child again, but not in a good way. Like, in the incredibly guiltily irresponsible way.

Alright, I guess it’s time to get serious about this.

@robmandu you make some good points. While I appreciate your time and careful dissection of my question I’m sure that somewhere along the way a few people have encouraged you to be nice, as hard as it is. Let us not forget that. My intention was not to question your superiority as a human being.

My question was thick with sarcasm and I regret that as I had no clue the nerve it would strike with the fluther masses. I thought that the tragic hilarity in all of the hoopla surrounding this game was obvious and I was wrong. Don’t mess with football, duly noted.

I’ll step back and tell you how things look from my “ignorant” window on the world. I have worked in the corporate sector and am now in the public sector as a teacher. My intention is not to bash corporations, I’m a consumer, and I have nothing but respect for those that operate with integrity and honesty. GM does not operate with integrity and honesty, plain and simple. They create jobs for honest hardworking people, true. And if I have a choice to opt out of their manipulation, fine. But when I’m being forced to contribute, I see a problem.

Advertising is an art, I have a few friends in the business and they’re brilliant. And it does work, that’s true. Although, I’ll tell you (again, from my window) who those GM advertisements are working on. They are working on parents who drop their kids off for government funded breakfast in a super sweet ride that they are in deep debt to maintain. They are working on the kids in my classroom who believe that if they aren’t beautiful or texting on the right phone or listening to the Black Eyed Peas they are subhuman. They steal to maintain this lifestyle. They kill people to maintain this lifestyle. Now I’m not saying that the actions of others are your responsibility or mine or anyone else’s. Ultimately each person is responsible for their own. But I believe that this acceptable form of dishonesty and manipulation only breeds dishonesty and manipulation. It goes on and on and on. I think it could be cleaned up quite a bit, call me crazy.

@chyna agreed, there are much larger offenses being made. But for me, the Super Bowl experience gave me that good old fashioned WTF moment.

@robmandu I do a lot about the problems I see but if you have a good idea on how I might regain confidence in the corporate world I’ll honestly consider it.

@hopscotchy

The Superbowl has always been about relentless excess. Surely this isn’t news to you. But it’s only excessive by a matter of degree over every other day of the year on television and in much of America.

No, not all of television is so over-the-top, nor is all of America despite what some say here and elsewhere. But for those who like it, it’s a blowout celebration of a uniquely American sport. Hell, even most of the regular season of professional football is a gaudy and hyperbolic burlesque of a very interesting and challenging sport that’s played all over the country. But this is one thing that America does: we turn “a hamburger stand” into McDonald’s. We turn “political activism” into the Obama Administration. We turn “a commercial spot for a compact car” into an epic journey across space and time and fantasy.

It’s what we do. People seem to like it, for the most part, judging by the ratings. Maybe it’s because the television tells them that they should, and they don’t have any sense to think or do anything else. But most people who are “disgusted” by it wouldn’t be watching it, as well as the halftime show. So why didn’t you just read a book instead?

And @robmandu made excellent points, despite any personal affront that you took from his responses. The Superbowl is the most-watched event in most television years. It would be absurd for a commercial enterprise to decide “we don’t want to advertise there because it’s so tacky and… yechh… ‘popular’ and all.” But it doesn’t mean that you had to watch it.

@WasCy

So why didn’t you just read a book instead?

As I said before, I really like football. I enjoyed the game. I’m not claiming to be above any of this. Just quite disturbed by it all, and apparently a bit naive.

@WasCy I had to watch the Super Bowl. The batteries are dead in my remote and I can’t change the channel. ; )