We Need to Talk About: NFL teams battling on Twitter

Hey, you're a human in the world, enjoying your day as much as you can, (presumably) not bothering anyone. Well here's something that might ruin your day.

There's a troubling phenomenon taking place on the internet that threatens the very essence of what it means to be alive.

We're, of course, talking about official NFL teams' Twitter accounts engaging in (cute?) "battles" that are obviously performative, yet are choreographed to seem organic and spontaneous. These exchanges have all the charm of two obnoxious friends loudly discussing their "theories" on public transit.

What the heck is this?

On Thursday, the Carolina Panthers and Chicago Bears engaged in an excruciatingly long, cringe-worthy, exchange of insipid tweets that could be the final straw. The genesis of this public conversation is unimportant, but it had everything certain internet people believe the internet loves. Animal GIFs. Reaction GIFs. And of course, references to pizza. You can view the entire thread here, if that's your kind of thing.

Some lowlights:

Set aside the troubling realization that our culture has become an infantilized whir of colorful, fun, disposable content that's decreasing in value and ask yourself three questions:

1. Who is this for?
2. Why does this exist?
3. Why is this not resoundingly mocked?

Of course Thursday's incident is not the first or last. This a trend that's been going on for who knows how long before we became acutely aware of it.

On Earth Day - or #EarthDay - the geniuses behind the Panthers' and Jacksonville Jaguars' social media accounts were at it and on Wednesday some of the NFL's avian teams provided another tweetstream of fun-for-the-whole-family content rainbow.

Again, you can view the entire thread here, if you're into that kind of thing, but all you need to know is the Atlanta Falcons and Baltimore Ravens eventually got involved (birds, LOL), bringing the whole thing to a sad, pun-filled, tone-deaf climax:

Looking beyond the obvious fact that these exchanges are dumb and of no value to any NFL fan, the question begs itself: Are team employees being encouraged to engage in this asinine behavior? If it's not being encouraged, the social media departments of certain teams definitely aren't discouraging it. There's also a very good chance these scenes are actually planned out months in advance.

NFL teams trying to win internet points with the coveted 18-25 marketing demo certainly isn't the worst thing in the world, but on the other hand - it's enough. Knock it off.