there is controversy afoot regarding the Walton Goggins Goggle Glasses

I don't know what to believe anymore

It is my position that nothing good has ever happened on LinkedIn. Every once in a while someone will pipe up with an explanation of why this is incorrect, actually, but I have not wavered. And it doesn’t look like I will be wavering any time soon because that godforsaken website might have just taken away one of the only good and pure things we have in this world.

I am speaking, of course, about the Walton Goggins Goggle Glasses.

You remember these things, yes? I hope so. I wrote a breathless blog about them back when they debuted last fall but here are the major takeaways as a refresher:

• Walton Goggins started a line of snowboarder-style sunglasses with an elastic goggle strap on the back so they would not slip and slide on your face as you moved around

• He started wearing them to fancy red carpet events

• You can, if you desire, sing “Walton Goggins Goggle Glasses” to the tune of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles song

There is also a website. It’s incredible.

Anyway, this brings us to the potential problem. This week, over on LinkedIn, a creative studio posted a video that reveals the Goggle Glasses are being used as part of a Super Bowl commercial for GoDaddy. You are welcome to click here and see for yourself if you are the type of person who enjoys seeing dozens of people say things like “great work, team, wow” in LinkedIn comments.

This caused me some anxiety. Were… were these just a backdoor Super Bowl ad all along? Were we… was I… so caught up in the excitement of Walton Goggins operating a side hustle eyewear company whose selling point is equal parts functionality and pun that I was duped by a marketing ploy? I won’t lie, I was a little skeptical when these first debuted, only because the entire rollout appeared to be almost too silly and fun. I brushed that aside in the moment, though. One of my other long-held positions, in addition to the LinkedIn thing, is that I’d rather get excited about things and be played for a rube every now and then than spend my whole life pointing out that everything is fake and dumb. People like that do not seem happy. I’d rather look stupid once in a while.

So, I did some research, by which I mean I googled “Walton Goggins Goggle Glasses Super Bowl,” and I found this announcement on People dot com. And I learned that, yes, the glasses and Goggins will be involved in a Super Bowl ad for GoDaddy. Sayeth Goggins:

"It revolves around the small business experience, and it provides these entrepreneurs with the tools that they need to get their company off the ground."

He adds, "It was absolutely instrumental in my process, and will be instrumental to so many starting small businesses."

Hmm. Let’s read on.

He says the brand has been a success since its launch.

"I wear them a lot now, and people on the street stop me, like, what is going on here? Where did you get those? What are those? And how can I get a pair?" he adds, "They make people happy. They're happy glasses."

Okay, as far as I can tell, one of about three things is happening here and they’re all based on the timing of it all…

ONE: This was a Super Bowl commercial from the beginning and the whole idea was created by marketing dorks in an office for the express purpose of promoting GoDaddy and/or ruining my day

TWO: This was created for wholesome reasons and GoDaddy came to him later and said “Yo, let’s help each other out here”

THREE: This was created for relatively wholesome reasons but when it came time to build the website a bunch of marketing dorks got together and said “What if GoDaddy partners up to build a high-end website and if it goes viral we can turn it into a Super Bowl commercial?”

I don’t know, man. I still want to believe. The quotes he’s giving about it remain so pure. But this is all getting a little slick for my liking. I’ll close with three more bullet points…

• The good news here is that, even if it is the cynical worst-case scenario from a purity standpoint, it still means I get Walton Goggins on my TV during the Super Bowl instead of a commercial where like Hulk Hogan tries to sell me an AI toothbrush

• I support most endeavors that result in Walton Goggins earning money and/or fame, my issue here is with the hypothetical okie-doke on the original rollout

• It is really funny that every article about this uses a different credit from his IMDb page in the headline, including Fallout and The Righteous Gemstones and Justified and The White Lotus

In conclusion, I have decided to blame LinkedIn for causing me all of this consternation. I know I’m basically just shooting the messenger here, but I feel like Boyd Crowder would approve of that.

STUFF I TYPED

— my Severance blog for Vulture on the new season’s second episode, in which I typed the words “mustache” and “motorcycle” too many times

— my Friday newsletter, which opens with a section about Robert Pattinson’s chaotic press tour and also includes a bit about the global champagne market, because I am a man of many stupid interests

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— lol of course Mike Ryan was in the middle of interviewing Questlove when news broke that David Lynch died

— Paul Thomas Anderson’s next movie is a big old ambitious take on Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland

— Aaron Pierre seems cool

— I love the buzzer-beater siblings

— Dan McQuade wrote about Eagles fans, who are currently filled with equal parts bravado and dread over our beloved team playing in the Super Bowl

— Go Birds tho

— the sequel to The Accountant is debuting at SXSW, which still does not feel real to me

— Ryan Gosling is making a Star Wars movie

— Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson movie has to reshoot its entire third act because some lawyers did not read the paperwork very closely

— million-dollar sunglasses heist

— “Thieves Blow Up a Dutch Museum Door to Steal a Golden Helmet”

— a corgi police dog lost his year-end bonus for sleeping on the job

— “Pope Francis warns that excessive scrolling causes 'brain rot'“

— “Elephants are not people, rules Colorado Supreme Court”

— those mysterious goo balls that washed up on the shores of Australia were actually poo balls

— speaking of hazardous poo

— Patti LuPone out here breaking entertainment news

— yeah, screw it, here’s all of the NFL Primetime music, which I will be listening to while driving from now until the Super Bowl

Okay, that’s it for this week. Please subscribe and/or upgrade and do not make me look like a goddamn rube on the internet.