My old high school debate teacher taught me that one of the keys to persuasion is making concessions. Without giving the opposition any validation you’ll only isolate your audience and make your point less relatable, thus failing to persuade.
For the creators of the “We are Mizzou” video, I give you some credit. At least you tried.
Unfortunately, effort and school spirit alone don’t make a good video. The lack of any other redeeming qualities is what made it not just awful, but Internet awful. I’m talking “Friday” awful or “Rick Roll” awful. “We are Mizzou” is enthusiastically lame, lyrically cringe-worthy and embarrassingly prominent. If this is the message our school is sending, we need to shoot the messenger.
If by sheer luck or an extreme case of living under a rock, you haven’t seen the video, it features three students professing their love for Mizzou and their hate for Kansas (among others) in an auto-tuned anthem. The accompanying visuals include shots from Mizzou Arena with a pack of groupies most likely brainwashed to eagerly participate in such a clusterfuck.
Their dance moves make Carlton Banks look like Michael Jackson. Their lyrics make Waka Flocka look like Bob Dylan. Here are a few of the gems:
“We’re beating top 20 teams by almost 40/ not cause they’re bad it’s just the real deal” manages to use stream of consciousness without even being remotely descriptive. If F. Scott Fitzgerald were alive, he’d drink himself to death once upon hearing his style being butchered like this.
“Ball up, throw down, Como is our hood” is the simple kind of white-boy rap we’ve all come to hate. Mac Miller probably liked it so much he’s going to steal it for his next project, “Worst Album Ever.”
The best part of the 3 1/2 minute spectacle is the part they didn’t write, the “Mizzou Rah!” chant. Still, they found a way to make that obnoxious.
Even worse than the piece itself has been their public defense of the video. They mirrored Rick Perry’s cowardly move of blocking all comments from his gay-bashing campaign ad. Not allowing comments in the Internet age is like walking into a debate, shouting your opinion and then walking out before your opponent can even respond. Luckily, people have other mediums to voice their displeasure.
“The negative feedback is from schools in the SEC and KU,” Tanner Brandell, one-third of the “We are Mizzou” group, said in a _Columbia Missourian_ article. “People who don’t like Mizzou or 40-year-old analysts and critics who wish they were in college pick it apart.”
In addition to being a naïve defense, this is also completely wrong. People who are currently in college here, and therefore like MU, have posted many critical comments about the video on Facebook. Among them are “I want 45 seconds of my life back,” “ahahahahaha worst video ever … and the sad thing is I think they thought it was a piece of art” and “kill me now … my friends are going to give me so much shit :(“
Even weaker is the cliché Brandell’s cohort Andrew Carter relayed from Michael Dixon, “Haters gonna hate.” Everybody has this absurd notion they have haters, from the tools wearing “I love my haters” shirts to all rappers addressing their critics. As the ever-wise Common put it, “If I don’t like it, I don’t like it. That don’t mean I’m hatin’.”
Thankfully, the unflattering display wasn’t enough to completely set our school back. The Tigers beat the Jayhawks on Saturday, showing what effort, school-spirit _and_ talent can accomplish.
