I tried.
I tried to stay away from writing something this week on Super Bowl mania and I thought I had a few good ideas. Like, how I’ve noticed Mashable is no longer a tech blog, and some of its content lately, quite frankly, sucks (something I will definitely write about soon though).
Or how I noticed someone from my Facebook feed ranting about Apple (yes it really happened). They were ranting about how Apple keeps sending him reminder emails to buy his loved one an Apple product for Valentine’s Day. I found it absurd and funny and truth be told, uncharacteristic for a cool, trendy company.
But I can’t stay away from the Super Bowl. There’s too much to mention, especially the part about how my favorite team, the one I’ve followed obsessively my whole life, the New York Giants, won the Super Bowl against the Patriots. Again.
I get a warm, fuzzy feeling from writing that, in case you were wondering.
But beyond my personal joy from this game, there was some other cool stuff I thought worth mentioning. Mostly about how our culture and our obession with technology continue to merge, and have completely taken over the largest sporting event of the year:
1- Social Media Wins
Just like the Giants, social media won….again. Records were broken in just about every category– tweets per second, total social media comments for one event, and so forth, in addition to breaking the previously held Super Bowl broadcast records. I’m sure you’ve already heard the exact numbers, but here’s a link to the details of them.
2- A Clever Knock Against Apple
Finally, someone made fun of Apple. Successfully too–I mean, I honestly laughed when the commercial aired.
Samsung started off their ad showing cool, hip people gathering in line outside what looks like your typical Apple store. There’s a big white billboard in the background that says something to the effect of “coming soon.” The setting was dead on and just brilliant, because when you think about it, when’s the last time you remember someone even trying to knock Apple at its own game?
It’s not like Samsung was malicious, either. The jab was subtle but effective and as a result, Twitter exploded on my stream afterwards, which proved it a success.
I don’t remember the rest of the ad, but it doesn’t matter. I enjoyed it, and that is all. Sorry Apply fanboys and fangirls.
3-Really Dumb People Use Social Media
This is harsh, but it’s true: a lot of people who watch big sporting events or anything that gets a lot of ratings or attention from the media are uninformed. And they seem to be uninformed about everything when it comes to really big events. This is my place to rant, but I think that when gossip columnists watch the Super Bowl, they should keep their tweets about the actual game to themselves and save more intelligent ones to what they thought of Madonna’s half time performance. Because when you’ve never watched football before and all you have to tweet about is how ugly the Giants’ uniforms are, how much you hate that everyone is obsessing over the game and blowing up your feed over it, or when you try to be emotionally invested in critical plays, then you don’t belong.
Stick to what you know, people.
Go Giants! Super Bowl XLVI Champs! #allin
