Vuvuzelas: Still Suck

You'd think that after more than a week and after several hundred blasts of noise in my ear, I'd have gotten used to the vuvuzelas. You would be wrong. They're still spoiling the World Cup. The below diagram pretty much sums up the problem with vuvuzelas at the game:


In other words, no matter what happens, the reaction is the same. Cameroon scores: vuvuzelas. Denmark equalizes: vuvuzelas. Denmark takes the lead: vuvuzelas. The Danes in front of me tried to get inspirational chants and songs going; from 4 rows back I couldn't hear them. The damage to the atmosphere is perhaps less important than the damage to the games themselves; Thomas Sorensen of Denmark has said he needs to use sign language to communicate with his defenders, which might explain the first goal they gave away yesterday. We'll see about the damage to hearing as well.

I think the problem is that vuvuzelas are too democratic. You don't have to come up with clever chants, start catchy songs, or even know anything about the teams involved in order to control the atmosphere of the game. Everything is just one long continuous drone. I'll admit to feeling a fair bit of schadenfreude when South Africa were spanked 3-0 by Uruguay, just because every goal from the South Americans shut up the horn-blowers, at least temporarily.

This image Max sent me pretty much sums up what I'd like to do to people with vuvuzelas.

http://i.imgur.com/2lJE1.gif