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Significance of Kendrick Lamar's Superbowl performance. Here's what I've learned so far, would love to hear everything others find!

The Drake Stuff

• As the lights in the audience at the end said, this is Kendrick's "Game Over" in his ever-increasing beef with Drake. They teased the song "Not Like Us," in which Kendrik calls Drake a pedophile, nodding to the immense talk over whether he would perform the song there. When they did do that song, they added insult to injury by panning the camera over a cameo of Drake's ex, Serena Williams, dancing.

Black Culture

• Every human in the entire halftime show was black, including the prime old-school representative of the USA, Uncle Sam, portrayed by Samuel Jackson.
• When the dancers were in the american flag formation made only of men, there was a potent dance move of them all simultaneously did the Black Power fist.
• One youtuber referenced the significance of the colors, when Kendrick was wearing mostly blue and the only other color on stage was dancers wearing red, that it was a powerful reference to last year's "Pop Out" concert in LA which was a groundbreaking moment in music creating unity because the stage was filled with members of both the Bloods and the Crips, two gangs that have had decades of violence between them, going so far as to gather for a group photo at the end of the concert. During the photo, Kendrick said "This is unity at its finest... this shit makes me prouder than a motherfucker..."
• The choreography was jam packed with black culture, all the way to one of the most successful tennis players in history Crip Walking.
• Black culture is also celebrated with the souped up Grand National car, streetlights, and clothing styles.

Things I want to know more about:

• There had to have been a lot of commentaries on America with how blatant that theme was. I'd love to learn what all people find, beyond what I've heard about the boldness of doing that while Trump was also there.
• Symbolism, including the colors and all other things I missed.
• Significance throughout the lyrics and phrases that were added in during transitions, etc.

WeightWatchers. I feel sad about this:

The body positivity movement, + ozempic (and other GLP-1 weight loss drugs) + the pandemic (WeightWatchers apparently was built on in-person support groups) meant that WeightWatchers went from $1.5 billion in revenue in 2018 to $770 million for this year.

As a result, they’re trying to pivot to being a telehealth company, which (primarily?) sells the weight-loss drugs.

On their walls it used to say it’s choice, not chance. and now CEO Sistani’s quoted saying that’s wrong. Also from Sistani We live in this clickbait world now where everything needs to try to come across in 15 to 30 seconds, which is whjy our marketing is so difficult.

I don’t have any personal connection to WeightWatchers, but one thing I’m projecting on them is that they used to stand for empowerment through choice, diligence, restraint, and doing the difficult work of changing long-standing habits. And now it seems like they don’t stand for anything. It looks like they’re just at the whim of market forces and trying to fit in and still make money. Why do I care? I don’t know—but I feel sad, I think that they’re augmenting and accelerating a change which seems to not address deeper features; which seems to perpetuate unconsciousness and the grey. Aspects of the body positivity movement seem right to me: our beauty standards were ridiculous. Aspects felt like it went to far: there are physical and mental health issues that can be overlooked by focusing only on self-acceptance. I think it was an attempt to move towards more consciousness, and I respect and appreciate that.

I like to play the game if it were me, what would I do? not because I think I could actually do it—I know nothing about the weight-loss market, the customers, the business model, etc!—but because I hate to criticize something without thinking up some alternative, even if it’s loco. But in this case my solution is predictable: I’d try to pivot WeightWatchers into a full suite integrally-informed consciousness raising program. Level Up for weight-watchers—Keep what’s been working in terms of lower right systems with counting points, include upper right drugs as necessary (but don’t try to promote them), enhancing the Lower Left cultural support with facilitators helping the groups in person and online look for deeper causes, add 1-1 and group coaching to the clinic offering in lieu of only UR drugs, build custom technology to support groups supporting each other throughout the day on mobile, build out curriculum from the world’s best and most famous therapists and psychologists about what’s underneath weight gain and loss cycles, and acquire / partner with up-and-coming health-ish supplement companies like LMNT, Mudwater, HelloFresh so the WeightWatchers program feels way cooler and you benefit from each other’s marketing.

idk, just thought this might generate some interesting thoughts here.