HomeStoriesFrance vs USA Signaled The Beginning Of The War Against The Machines

France vs USA Signaled The Beginning Of The War Against The Machines

January 21, 2019

Les Bleues‘ 3-1 victory over the USWNT was troubling… but not for the reason you think.

Soccer fans had plenty of reason to tune into the USWNT’s friendly against France on Saturday. Two of the world’s best teams, the favorites and hosts respectively at the 2019 World Cup getting the year started by squaring off? Lindsey Horan and Amandine Henry duking it out in the midfield, Alex Morgan trying to solve Wendie Renard…sounds delightful! What could go wrong?

It turns out: everything.

Oh sure, we can explain this remote-controlled car as a bit of clever #brand #activation. A brief respite from the normal pre-game rigamarole brought to you by a multinational corporation that happens to have a sponsorship deal with both US Soccer and the Fédération Française de Football.

It’s a lark! Look at that, the car brought the ball out!

That’s the easy way out, but it means putting your head in the sand. It’s time we can stare this menace in the face and realize that this is the machines making their move. First, they come for something small, like the match ball in a friendly. Next up, it’ll be obliged neural implants, and before long we’re all hooked up to eye-tracking software making sure we’re tuning in for this week’s BaseWars games.

Did you notice the car give a fake to the referee, sending her the wrong way briefly before relinquishing control of the ball? Did you see it?!

This was the first sortie, just a little test from the machines. Will the humans notice? Will they mind when we transgress against their norms? Apparently the answer is no, not really. We’re amused, it’s fine, there’s definitely not a robot ready to take over your life. The bots are beginning Phase 2 and all we can talk about is how slow of thought the USWNT looked.

Are we losing our readiness? Back in the day we were kept aware of the threat of robots, who as we all know steal medicine from the elderly. Now we just chuckle as some mechanical miscreant tries to ruin our friendlies. What’s next? Goal-line technology that intentionally misleads us? One day we’re going to see a player celebrate a goal by taking their shirt off, and instead of the sports bra holding in a GPS tracker, we’ll just see that familiar shape between the shoulder blades horrifyingly bulging from under the skin.

Do I have to tell you that Skynet already came online in 1997 2004 2017? We’re living on borrowed time, and this cute little car is just the beginning. Wake up, sheeple!


Jason Anderson is a writer from Maryland. He is a managing editor at Black and Red United whose work has appeared on SB Nation, and he’s partially responsible for the NWSL Most Online Player award. Follow him on Twitter.

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