Consider the college football hype video.
Designed to get crowds pumped up for a big home game, and released weeks in advance of said game in order to maximize the potential for Internet virality, it is often short, crisply shot, with a soul-stirring soundtrack.
In August, the University of Georgia released a preseason hype video that preyed mercilessly on our innate human desire for connection, warmth and love, and we ate it all up with novelty cutlery: The Georgia Football Bulldogs were going to win it all this season, we proclaimed, and the proof was in the slickly produced pudding.
But the video failed to warn us that a mediocre fifth-year quarterback and horrific rush defense were liabilities as far as that sort of thing goes, and tragedy soon came in the form of a four-game suspension to the team’s best player and crushing losses to two unranked division rivals.
All hope was lost.
We shunned the hype video forever, mistrustful of its hyperbole, hyper-aware of its cruel and blatant emotional manipulation.
But then, yesterday:
Simple and subtle, devastating and life-affirming, “We Return” is the pinnacle, the zenith, the summit, the ever-shining star of the hype-video era.
Press play. Let it wash over you like a gentle breeze, and feel the forbidden thoughts bubbling up boldly inside once again:
OH MY GOD. WE’RE GOING TO WIN A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP, AREN’T WE.
…
(At the very least, maybe we’ll get some free waffles out of the deal?)
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