It may be that Jimmy Fallon, host of “The Tonight Show,” is in a state of decline.
COVID-19’s subvariant flavor of the month, XBB.1.5, is making waves as it accounts for a higher and higher percentage of cases identified in the United States, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Fallon apparently thought the Covid-19 Omicron variant offshoot would be good fodder for a song. Quite a few denizens of the internet disagreed.
The song, published to the show’s YouTube page Thursday, is mind-numbingly cringe-y.
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Fallon engaged in a ham-handed song approximately one minute long that one has to assume is intended to be derivative of the B-52s, a band known for songs like “Love Shack” and “Rock Lobster.”
It largely involves Fallon just singing “XBB.1.5” over and over again, although he does manage to include such cutting insights as “sounds more like Elon Musk’s kid’s name” and “sounds like the password of your parents’ Wi-Fi.”
People on Twitter were not amused, which is valid — this one’s not winning a Grammy any time soon.
Oh my hell. I’m old enough to remember when the tonight show was, you know, funny.
What happened?
— Buckley (@kylebuckley) January 7, 2023
“Oh my hell,” one user wrote. “I’m old enough to remember when the tonight show was, you know, funny. What happened?”
This is so ?cringe. Make it stop. Just lost a fan over this, not even ironically funny. So bad.
— (BK) (@M1PowerSports) January 8, 2023
“This is so … cringe. Make it stop. Just lost a fan over this, not even ironically funny. So bad,” another commented.
Even those not commenting seem to agree, at least implicitly. At the time this was written, the original tweet was viewed 4.3 million times but had only been liked 3,167 times.
There’s a valid question to ask, here: What’s the point?
Obviously, the attempt is to drive awareness to the XBB.1.5 subvariant that even White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said didn’t represent a major setback.
But who is this for? Is this at all respectful to anyone getting sick with this subvariant? Of course not.
It doesn’t matter how one feels about COVID-19, masks, vaccines, etc. It’s just out-of-touch vapidity.
This cringe video represents a minute that no one who has the misfortune to watch the clip will ever have back.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.