Football's irredeemable barbarism, glorification of war, and (now conscious) habit of putting big strong men into early graves makes the whole thing thoroughly unwatchable for me. I don't like violent video games for similar reasons. So, it came as a big, huge, giant shock that I enjoyed this Conan O'Brien Show clip of Marshawn Lynch of the Seattle Seahawks and Rob Gronkowski of the New England Patriots playing the yet-to-be-released Mortal Kombat X. And I wasn't the only one, (there are currently over 6,700,000 views on YouTube).
I was fully on board with this cutesy coming-together of the NFL's biggest rivals. Lynch is comedic genius, and O'Brien had his moments too. For a moment I totally copped to the Superbowl hype, "maybe I'll watch this thing tonight," I thought to myself. But then that swell of genuine fervor blew away like a candle in the wind.
The female player controlled by Lynch stabbed/punched Gronkowski's female player in the vagina with a sword. Like really hard. Like so hard that everyone gasped and Lynch let out a big "what the fuck was that?" O'Brien yelped back: "You can't do that!" Yes you can, and it's super fucking rapey and violent.
I'm not generally a kill joy but who the fuck thinks one huge professional athlete stabbing another professional athlete in the twat on a video game is funny?
Lest I remind everyone that domestic violence spikes on Super Bowl Sunday?