The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
"This may be the defining feature of American culture in 2026. The Super Bowl still gathers the country, but it won’t tell the country who it is"
"The Super Bowl remains the largest shared media event in American life, but it now operates less as a football championship than as a national stage for culture, politics, and performance. Super Bowl LX is expected to draw more than 120 million viewers, yet much of the pregame attention has little to do with the matchup itself. Headlines are already dominated by Bad Bunny’s halftime show and by President Donald Trump’s decision to skip attending the game — figures who, for many viewers, matter more than the teams on the field.
"If news media is running pre-Super Bowl digital articles about political figures and anti-ICE controversies, those headlines are being consumed by some audience, and those clicks generate revenue for the media companies. There were also already several reports dissecting the biggest Super Bowl LX advertisements prior to the game, spoiling the surprise and revealing most marketing strategies. That imbalance says something important about where American culture is in 2026. The Super Bowl still gathers a massive audience, but the audience arrives carrying different expectations, loyalties, and media consumption habits. What once functioned as a shared civic ritual now plays out inside a fragmented ecosystem shaped by personalization, algorithms, and digital subcultures.
"For most of the Super Bowl’s history, its appeal to advertisers was straightforward: one night, one screen, one audience. Brands paid a premium to speak to the country all at once, trusting that viewers would absorb the same jokes, celebrities, and emotional beats together. Today’s dominant advertising model works in the opposite direction. Online, success comes from narrowly delivering tailored messages to specific demographics based on data, not shared experience.
"The Super Bowl remains one of the few media events where narrowcasting is impossible, and that cultural dissonance is visible everywhere.
"It explains creative choices like Instacart pairing Ben Stiller with pop singer Benson Boone. Stiller brings a familiar comedic presence recognizable across generations. Boone is supposed to represent Gen Z’s algorithm-driven pop culture, but the reality is that not everyone in Gen Z is experiencing the “Mystical Magical” “moonbeam ice cream” singer, unless they happened to scroll past a TikTok video mocking his viral 15-second song clip back in 2025." . . .More...
Super Bowl Will Be Delayed To Play National Anthems For All 165 Racial Groups In U.S. | Babylon Bee parody . . . "Critics condemned the NFL's decision and claimed that "The Star Spangled Banner" was supposed to be a unifying anthem for everyone. Goodell then responded to the critics by calling them racists. "To cure racism, we must segregate all people groups at all times," he said." . . .
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