People in certain professions are not allowed to try to be cool while working. A contractor should not divert attention from fixing a ruptured septic line to show off his kick flips; an oral surgeon should not be wearing shades while removing wisdom teeth—and, as the following clip shows, newscasters should not try to spice up their reporting by trying to talk “like the kids.”
As shared by Good Twitter Samaritan @G0NEGIRLLL, the above clip shows Toledo news channel WTOL 11 celebrating local schools’ testing week by speaking directly to the teens in the only language they understand: painfully forced slang.
“Good morning TPS students,” one anchor begins. “It is testing week and it’s time to slay all day.”
“Yeet! Stay woke, be on fleek, and get that Gucci breakfast,” her counterpart says, nodding the last line with the sort of practiced gravitas usually reserved for assuring viewers that the farmer’s market will, in fact, be open this weekend.
Somehow it only gets worse from there.
“Gooaaals!” the first anchor continues, a fixed smile complimenting her flat, alien speech. “Say ‘bye Felicia’ to that testing stress. Weather’s gonna be turnt, right Chris?”
“Yaaaas!” the weatherman hisses, waving his palms out in front of him like a plain-faced clown. “Toledo weather gonna be vee lit during testing week. A hundo-pee chance of success.”
Chris throws to traffic reporter Steve and the two begin trilling “okurrr” back and forth until Steve assures the kids, who now obviously know WTOL 11 is the coolest newscast on the planet, that clear roads mean “FOMO won’t be an issue. No traffic problems around any TPS schools to keep you from taking those tests.”
As embarrassing as this is—and it is extremely embarrassing—the lesson to take away isn’t that newscasts shouldn’t give it their all to mark special occasions (like, say, Halloween), only that, to preserve our sense of reality, they should cordon off their best ideas to specific holidays, when we’ve all had a chance to prepare for their bullshit.
[via Cleveland Scene]
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