It's not quite watching paint dry, but it's about as close to it as popular culture should get.
Starting at 1 p.m. today, thousands upon thousands of people began watching a massive block of ice melt very, very, excruciatingly slowly on Facebook as a part of a big reveal for the new season of "Game of Thrones." Fans were to type either "FIRE" or "DRACARYS " into the comments to shoot flamethrowers at the ice, and by the end, the premiere date for the new season was supposed to reveal itself. Or maybe it would be a message saying "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine."
Apparently, however, nobody at HBO tested to see how long this would take. As it turns out?
Ice ...
... melts ...
... very ...
... slowly.
In other words, this is the most boring, laborious, self-serious and just overall worst thing HBO has done since "True Detective" season two.
The process was even slower because of technical issues taking the stream offline for several minutes and splitting the broadcast between two different Facebook Live videos. But while watching ice barely melt may be terribly boring, watching people react on Twitter to people watching ice barely melt is tremendously entertaining.
I'm old enough to remember when melting a giant block of ice was how all information was disseminated. Then the Internet happened. — Scott Tobias (@scott_tobias) March 9, 2017
"Just kidding the show's canceled" and then it cuts to black — Richard Lawson (@rilaws) March 9, 2017
HBO rn: So people will watch anything EXCEPT for #Vinyl. Got it. — Jarett Wieselman (@JarettSays) March 9, 2017
The whole stunt was worth it for this comment alone: pic.twitter.com/Abmh4Mr038 — Scott Tobias (@scott_tobias) March 9, 2017
By the way, in case you had better things to do today than watch ice turn into water while over-dramatic music played, "Game of Thrones" will debut on July 16.
Catastrophic. But here's the #GOTs7 premiere date, after all that. pic.twitter.com/qdxX5f6vaz — Kate Aurthur (@KateAurthur) March 9, 2017
Meanwhile, I look forward to "The Walking Dead" now announcing its next season premiere by putting it in a dead corpse and live-streaming its natural, unhurried decomposition.
As much as it is a gigantic cliché to say that one has always had a passion for film, Matt Mueller has always had a passion for film. Whether it was bringing in the latest movie reviews for his first grade show-and-tell or writing film reviews for the St. Norbert College Times as a high school student, Matt is way too obsessed with movies for his own good.
When he's not writing about the latest blockbuster or talking much too glowingly about "Piranha 3D," Matt can probably be found watching literally any sport (minus cricket) or working at - get this - a local movie theater. Or watching a movie. Yeah, he's probably watching a movie.
