Saturday, January 23, 2010

There Is No STFU in Team

I first noticed a reference to 'Team Edward' a year or so ago. I learned it had something to do with the Twilight series but didn't catch much more because the voice of the person explaining it to me was drowned out by the alarm going off on my I-Don't-Give-A-Shit-O-Meter. What I did hear, though, was that in these books Team Emo Kid is versus Team Wolf Man. I don't know what that means. Perhaps they're baseball teams, or maybe they're sled dog teams. Like I said, I don't care. Those Twitards can do whatever they want, as long as they leave me alone. I thought, at the time, that I had just learned Yet Another Useless Bit of Trivia&trade.

But then I saw it again recently. This time it was in reference to the Leno slash O'Brien Tonight Show debacle. Team Jay versus Team Conan (or Team Coco, affectionately) were the supporters of their respective favorite late night hosts. At first I wondered what the connection between Twilight and the Tonight Show was. I mean, the Tonight Show airs almost exactly equidistant from either period of twilight.

Then I saw it yesterday in a blog post about Fox News: Team Sarah (Palin) versus Team Glenn (Beck), the two talk show darlings of that network. Letting alone my confusion over why the viewers of these two pundits would be opposed, I was struck again that something so totally disparate would be alluded to in terms of Twilight.

And then it dawned (get it?) on me: People are trying to make this a thing.

So, I'm here to nip this in the bud. We're not doing that, sorry. We're not going to apply Team Whatever and Team Other Thing to all of our public discourse. We're not going to refer to celebrity disputes as Team Brad vs Team Angelina. We're not going to call the 2012 election Team Obama vs Team Huckabee. We're not going to refer to the war in Afghanistan as Team America vs Team Al Queda. It's asinine, it's reductionist, and we're not making this a thing, okay?

Some things you can say instead of "I'm on Team X" include:

  • "I think X is completely relatable"
  • "I support X"
  • "I'm on X's side of the debate"
  • "I thing X is the best of all options"
  • or simply "X!"

I fear that I might be too late, though. This Team phenomenon has probably completely invaded popular culture already and I just haven't noticed until now. In which case, I would just like to say, I, for one, welcome our new Team Overlord.

Circa Now