Stop doing Superb Owl jokes: the Super Bowl gag that's boring now
We get it. Sports are silly and you don’t like them and it’s just oh-so-much-fun to make the same overused joke about the Super Bowl! Enough, already.
The Super Bowl is once again upon us and with it come the rash of Superb Owl jokes, memes and references, spreading across social media, websites, newsletters and anywhere anyone thinks it might still be original... AS staff writer Jennifer Bubel has a few words for anyone thinking about going down the Superb Owl route in the hope of getting a laugh...
When I was working in the film industry in Dallas, a lot of those artsy types weren’t into sports. I was (obviously), and some of my coworkers thought it was hilarious to refer to football (and baseball, and hockey…) as “sports ball”. The joke never got old to them. Every time they’d say it, they’d get that side-eye dorky smile like they were telling the funniest, most clever joke of all time. Were they, though? You tell me.
Well, it’s kind of the same with the Superb Owl joke. Look, I love owls as much as the next guy. They’re cute! They’re crazy. They’re fascinating creatures. But the joke itself has become pretty overused.
Superb Owl memes - on the internet for at least 10 years, likely more
I’m not sure exactly how it started. Maybe it was a just a typing error, but obviously we can see that moving the ‘b’ over to the left changes “Super Bowl” to “Superb Owl” and someone thought, why not make a bunch of memes and hashtags and posts of owls? Not just any owls, though…superb owls.
In 2011, a Redditor known as bennybuckethead started a subreddit called /r/superbowl and the rules stated that all posts, photos and text, must contain OWL content. I have nothing against this rule. Owls are amazing. However, when you hear/see someone actually use the joke as a gag, it makes you roll your eyes in a way that you might when you walk back inside after forgetting your phone and someone says “that was fast!” Har, har, har. Original AND hilarious!
It was, probably (original and hilarious), at one point. That Reddit though, for example, was from 11 years ago. That’s so many years ago that the AP Stylebook says I have to type it out in number-form instead of word-form. It's old. If you don't like sports, just don't watch them, but let those of us who do, enjoy them.
What a hoot.
You care a little bit, Jeff, or you wouldn't have posted at all.
So, when you think about posting that joke to social media this year, maybe just don’t?
Plus, there are no bird teams in the Super Bowl, so the joke just doesn’t belong in 2022. Get over it.
Owls are cute, though.