Upbeat music? Slow montages of beautiful moments of fun? Casual sports? Leisurely days spent on floaties in pools? That thing where they sit next to each other on a cliff and hold a banner up behind them?
Yep, the Green Bay men’s swim team pretty much nailed it.
If you don’t spend much time on the internet, this video might not make much sense to you, but everyone’s least-favorite/favorite guilty-pleasure are the heavily-filtered, professionally-produced sorority recruitment videos that peaked some time around or shortly-after this Texas A&M Alpha Delta Pi video in 2016.
The videos are often swimming-adjacent as is, with sorority members commonly including scenes in pools, and more commonly including scenes shot in natural bodies of water with stunning cliffs and beautiful scenery. Whether they admit it or not, everyone who watches those videos secretly want to be a part of those groups – or at least the vision of them filtered through their high-end video production companies that make the final cut.
An investigation by Elle Magazine found that one University of Miami video cost between $200,000 and $400,000 to produce. We’re going to go out on a limb and say that Michael Klemm produced his video on a significantly-smaller budget than that, but in our eyes, its still special in its own way.
Did SwimSwam take this down or did Youtube? Looking at the ratio of the vast majority likes vs tiny portion of dislikes and in addition women coming forward with their support I was disappointed in the take down. I’m always hoping for a swimming community that supports each other, especially in creative works, rather than bring each other down. Jokes @ Frats/Sororities/general groups can be made in good fun like this video and people can enjoy it and laugh along as well. No bad blood or ill-intentions in this one.
The original YouTube video was taken down by the person who posted it.
It was do to the school finding offense with the video that the swimmers were forced to take it down.
Funny stuff. Takes some serious Speedos to put that out to the universe.
Ben and Max <3
This may have been “ok” in 2017, but incredibly offensive in 2018
At that rate, by next year it will be considered “hate speech.”
Off course it is offensive. It is always offensive when you are making fun of a part of population that is not considered/treated equal to you. And, women, are still not treated equally to men in American society. Imagine if they made fun of a black fraternity? Would you find it offensive?
As a woman who was in a sorority and swam on a Division I college swim team, I don’t find this hurtful at all. My own sorority joked about the ridiculousness of some of those videos. These guys are having fun and it’s not remotely offensive. If anything, I wish my team had thought of this first; it’s hilarious!
That killed me
With laughter
It’s sexist…it plays on stereotypes…they are having fun, but it is in poor taste. This kind of video can come back to haunt a program.
Is it sexist? Or is it sororityist? Not everything is sexist. They are making fun of sorority recruitment videos, not women in general. 99.999(99?)% of American women have never made a video like this in their lives. That’s a pretty small subset of women being parodied to call it ‘sexist.’
If you are offended by it because you were in a sorority – fine. But you don’t have to generalize your offense to make everyone feel like they should be offended by it. Not everything fun is offensive.
How on earth can anyone take offense to this? It is hysterical and pokes so much fun at the portrayal of HAVING fun that it becomes FUN. You find yourself wanting to be there and having a really good time without making fun of anyone or anything. Those boys nailed it. Well done!
As a former sorority member and D-1 swimmer, no offense taken. It’s hilarious. It’s a parody, it pokes fun in an entirely appropriate way. I laughed out loud.