4 Recent Controversies Even Dumber Than You Can Imagine

4 An NFL Running Back Stars In A Carl's Jr. Commercial Full Of Burger Lies

An NFL player can make as much, if not more, from endorsements as he does playing the game itself. So when Los Angeles Rams running back Todd Gurley landed a spot in a Carl's Jr. commercial coming off his impressive rookie year, he must have been ecstatic. Too bad the commercial was eventually released. See if you can figure out the problem people have with it:

If you haven't figured it out, here's a bunch of YouTube commenters spelling it out for you:

When the commenters on the video weren't asking for the name of the sexy blonde in the ad, they were wondering why Gurley bit into a picture of a burger and not a real burger. It's not often that YouTube commenters are 100-percent right. That burger is about as real as the chances of a professional athlete eating a fast food burger before their retirement.

For one, it's supposed to cave at the end being bitten, and all the fillings should get blown out the ass-end, especially with that weak burger grip Gurley's got there. His fingers are behind the burger. He's holding it by the lettuce. If he can hold a burger by the lettuce and not have that thing fall apart in a floppy grease disaster, then he's not a running back, he's a wizard.

There was a whole Reddit thread bemoaning the laziness of the post-production work, and Adweek speculated (hopefully in jest) that Gurley's refusal to actually bite into a burger in a burger commercial means he might be a vegetarian. Meanwhile, tech site Petapixel did some investigating. They theorize that a still image taken from a few seconds before Gurley takes a bite was duplicated and plopped over his hand in place of the negative space he was biting into.

Meanwhile, Carl's Jr. tried to defuse the situation by providing this picture, which clearly shows Gurley still not eating one of their burgers.

The picture didn't do the trick, so later that day, Carl's Jr. coughed up what will go down in history as the Zapruder film of football players eating burgers in commercials. It's raw footage of Gurley taking no fewer than three real bites from actual, physical, non-copy-and-pasted burgers, on set, with the cameras rolling and everything.

It undeniably proves that Gurley ate a burger, and it also proves that Carl's Jr. can't film a commercial unless it features a half-naked woman trying to get impregnated by a cheeseburger.

3 Ticketmaster Is Giving Away Free Tickets! (To Terrible Concerts)

In 2003, two guys bought tickets for Wilco and Bruce Springsteen concerts. They were so upset about having to pay the fees Ticketmaster tacks onto every sale that they slapped the company with a class-action lawsuit ... and won. Thirteen years later, the settlement kicked in: free (or lightly discounted) concert tickets for anyone who had purchased a ticket between October 21, 1999 and February 27, 2013. Sounds great! But this is Ticketmaster, so you know there's a hidden catch that's going to ruin the whole thing.

Some of the concerts to choose from included big names, like Bob Dylan, Snoop Dogg, The Cure, Weezer, Alabama Shakes, and Def Leppard. But most didn't. Soon after the program began, all that was left were bands no cared about. The free tickets to all the good shows disappeared faster than a millennial can say "Who the hell is Steely Dan?" Then, another issue arose: Not only were the remaining bands terrible, but the shows were hundreds of miles away from most buyers. This deadly combo of irrelevance and inconvenience led to tweets like these:

Glitches in Ticketmaster's system prevented a lot of people from getting tickets at all, which is probably for the best for folks who wanted to see Pitbull perform at a burning chemical factory on the moon.

So if you wanted to see a good band for free, then sorry, you're shit out of luck. Ticketmaster gave away three times as many free tickets as they were legally obligated to, so they've shut the program down. All that's left are the minuscule discounts on tickets. But if you own all 1,457 Kidz Bop albums dating back to 1944, when an Irish children's choir covered the Bing Crosby classic "Swingin' On A Star," you can save $2.50 on tickets to Kidz Bop Tour 2016, which you'll need to buy plane tickets to catch. That's a pretty sweet deal.

2 Broomgate: The Controversy Tearing Apart The Sport Of Curling

In the magical land where curling is the most popular sport in the world, headlines throughout the 2015-2016 professional curling season were dominated by the icePad, a new kind of broom brush that's left curlers all over worried about the future of their silly sport.

But before I get into Broomgate (the actual name of the controversy), here's the obligatory explanation of what curling even is:

Curling is when drunk Canadians slide a stone across ice onto a target. Two teammates armed with specialized brooms sweep the ice ahead of the stone to increase its speed or alter its path or make the stone feel fancy. Throwers are mostly responsible for where the stone ultimately ends up. But according to pissed-off Olympic gold medal curler Brad Gushue, the icePad has taken "a lot of the skill away from the throwers and put it in the hands of the sweepers and the person that was calling the sweep."

The icePad gives sweepers unprecedented control over the stone's speed and trajectory. A thrower could toss the stone terribly, and any idiot armed with the new high-tech brooms could curl it back on course for a curly (I'm guessing that's what they call points). Curlers hate the icePad. It's so good that it makes the game less competitive. Its inventors somehow found a way to make curling more boring.

This was a legitimate crisis in the curling world which required immediate action. The World Curling Federation called an emergency meeting that involved government scientists from Canada's National Research Council. Curling equipment manufacturers were there, and 11 of the world's best curlers were, too. And robots. They actually had curling robots. All to figure out what to do about the scary new broom pads of doom (doom pads). They called it Sweeping Summit 2016.

Over 50 different broom brushes were tested by curlers and curling robots, including the icePad. In their conclusion, the WCF subtweeted the icePad, saying that "regardless of technique," the fabric on some brands of broom brush were "far too effective." The makers of the icePad would have preferred a change in the rules rather than having their proprietary broom fabric banned, but they're Canadian, so they probably apologized for causing a big fuss.

1 A Chinese Theme Park Is Trolling Disney With Costumed Characters

China is in a theme park boom. Nearly 60 parks will break ground by 2020. Disney got in early. On June 16th, 2016, they opened the doors to Disney Shanghai. Disney owns a lot of beloved characters. Their movies are huge in China, from Frozen to Star Wars to all things Marvel. They wanted Chinese citizens to meet their favorite characters in person in their own backyard. But Disney isn't the only game in town.

A rival theme park / mall about 450 miles away opened two weeks before Shanghai Disney's grand opening. It's called the Wanda Cultural Tourism City. That has an authentic communist ring to it, doesn't it? Wang Jianlin is China's richest man. He's the chairman of the corporation that built the park, and he isn't fucking around. He thinks Disney is invading his turf. If it were up to him, he'd challenge Mickey Mouse to a knife fight, and the winner would leave China in a coffin.

"The frenzy of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and the era of blindly following them have passed. One tiger is no match for a pack of wolves -- Shanghai has one Disney, while Wanda, across the nation, will open 15 to 20 Wanda Cities."

No, that line wasn't stolen from the leader of a dystopian city in a Bioshock game. That's just how Wang Jianlin talks about Disney. He hates them. But there's not much he can do about their presence, outside of shit-talking. Or is there?

China is well known for blatant intellectual property theft. It's their thing. So if folks want Disney mascots, screw it -- give them Disney mascots. When the Wanda theme park opened, it was loaded with employees dressed like Disney characters. In proper Chinese knockoff tradition, they all looked terrible. Like dollar-store action figures. Why take a picture with Minnie Mouse when you can get one with Miniature Fancy Rat!

No Star Wars stormtroopers at Wanda, but they've got plenty of White Imperialist Dog Soldiers!

And who wouldn't want a picture with Corporal U.S.A. and Snow Bitch?

Disney's pissed. They've threatened to sue. Jianlin maintains that it's the individual shop owners in his theme park / shopping mall combo who are hiring the costumed characters, not him. Of the shitty mascots, Disney said, "Our characters and stories have delighted generations, these illegal and substandard imitations unfortunately disappoint all who expect more." This comes after they said some of Jianlin's previous comments were not "worthy of a response."

But Disney did respond. Disney, a mega-corporation, was goaded into responding to the threats of an underdog billionaire. Disney got trolled.

Luis is trying to get a picture with Snow Bitch. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and on Facebook.

For more from Luis, check out Amazon Thinks I'm Some Sort Of Serial Killer In Training and The Voice Acting In NBA 2K15 Is Catastrophically Beautiful.

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