Super Bowl XLVIII will go down in history; but not for the reason it should. According to the NFL, “Super Bowl LVIII is the most-watched program ever, averaging 123.4 million viewers across all platforms, up +7% compared to last year’s Super Bowl which was the previous record (115.1 million).” This was undeniably due to the presence of one guest, Taylor Swift, who is currently dating Chiefs player Travis Kelce. Rumor had it that Taylor Swift would be at the Super Bowl, and all of America tuned in to see it. Social media’s newest power couple has dominated every internet platform for months now, making it impossible to have been anywhere on the internet not seen the pair. The world is hyperfixated on Swift and Kelce, analyzing, filming, and posting their every move.
While at the game, Swift was shown on the CBS broadcast 12 times, for a total of just 55 seconds in all. That accounts for less than 1% of the program. Yet, after the game was over, the internet was taken by storm, hurtling insults Swift’s way. Users attacked her character, career, motives, and integrity, all for simply watching her boyfriend do his job. Users claimed that she ruined the Super Bowl, distracted from the game and even that she rigged the whole thing for the Chiefs to win. (The not-so-subtle undertones of misogyny are deafening here, but that’s a whole different article – queue The Man by Taylor Swift.)
If you open any NFL, ESPN, or football related social media account right now, the pinned posts will undoubtedly be about Swift’s attendance at Super Bowl XLVIII, more specifically an ultra zoomed in photo or video of her sharing an intimate moment with boyfriend Kelce. Even today, weeks after the Super Bowl, these accounts continue to milk this content, attempting to squeeze out every possible bit of clickbait they can.
Meanwhile, at the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade, a dispute occurred between two men, leading to multiple guns being drawn, open fire, the death of one innocent bystander, and the injury of twenty two others.
The charging documents state: “Four males approached Lyndell Mays and one of the males asked Lyndell Mays what he was looking at, because they didn’t know him.” Then, according to Detective Grant Spiking, “They began arguing about why they were staring at each other.”
A juvenile argument over whether or not a stranger was looking at another stranger permanently altered countless innocent lives that day because they were legally able to own and carry firearms, but America’s gaze remains fixated on Taylor Swift. Instead of provoking outrage for America’s gun policy, the events of February 14th were swept under the rug and forgotten like countless shootings before it.
Our country’s priorities are so deeply broken that we are more concerned with the cyberbullying of a woman who did nothing but sit in a chair, rather than bringing justice to the victims of tragedies caused by our own lack of legislation.
So yes, I believe Super Bowl XLVIII should go down in history, but not for the reasons that it will. Super Bowl XLVIII should be remembered as a day of great sorrow and embarrassment for how we failed to protect our own. It should be a reminder that we need to do better. It is a wake-up call that we need to create change.