Superbowl == Holiday

by phil on Sunday Feb 8, 2004 6:10 PM
societal observations

The best quote I heard today was that the Superbowl has become a de facto holiday. It's amazing how such an intrinsically uninteresting day could evolve into that. Nobody famous died nor has any great event occured in history on Superbowl Sunday.

I bet the majority of participants who participate in this holiday do not even care about the football. Reasons that could make you sucked in to this fare: you're a "woman" and your "man" likes it, you like watching the ads, or you like watching the performance. Another big category of people are those that just feel the urge to participate in a human happening. It's such a big event and there's enough core ppl interested in the football to create enough nacho-eating congregations to compel you to imitate. And then once you start imitating, you further perpetuate the cycle again... positive feedback on top of positive feedback until 1 billion people on Earth are in sync.

And most holidays are like this, with a large mass of unwilling participants sucked in who then bob their heads simultaneously in rhythm with others. This is especially pertinent to Valentine's Day, which I find to be one of the most reviled holidays. Every year, the number of ppl claiming they hate Valentine's Day far exceeds those that claim they love it (have I even heard one person love it?).

Sigh, synchrony, what a double-edged sword.

Comments

Bob Ryskamp said on February 8, 2004 11:20 PM:

Like you, this article concludes that the point of it all is just that people are gathered--the focal point of the gathering is almost irrelevant--and references a quote that the Super Bowl has become "a sacred period of time in American lives":

http://www.v-2.org/displayArticle.php?article_num=646