Chiefs’s hate, Taylor Swift booed, Kendrick Lamar’s victory rap: Why the Super Bowl was a big game of disses

In the span of three plays in the second quarter of the most-watched event on television, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes was sacked multiple times before launching the football soaring through midair—only for it to be intercepted and returned for a touchdown by his team’s opponent, the Philadelphia Eagles. And as that series of unfortunate events unfolded for the Chiefs at Super Bowl LIX, it seemed America rejoiced.

As one X user wrote before the big game: “The amount of people I know who will be rooting for the Eagles simply because they don’t want the Chiefs to win is a beautiful thing. Hate conquers all.”

Hate conquering all certainly seemed to be the storyline of Sunday’s spectacle. The Eagles handily destroyed the Chiefs, a team whose successful season has been muddied by overexposure and controversy. And during the halftime show, Kendrick Lamar publicly embarrassed his rapping peer Drake, an artist who much of the country has turned against. From the game itself to the diss-filled halftime show, people who love to hate enjoyed their evening as “schadenfreude” defined much of the night.

The word schadenfreude has its roots in German—schaden meaning harm, freude meaning joy, and schadenfreude then meaning happiness found in the misfortune of others. And Americans have certainly embraced this act in recent years: Schadenfreude’s popularity has grown exponentially since the start of the millennium, according to Google’s word-use tracker.

The Super Bowl was no exception.

A three-peat denied

The Chiefs might have been “the most hated team in the NFL” when the Super Bowl aired. It seemed much of America wasn’t necessarily rooting for the Eagles to win, but rather against any happiness for Kansas City. After Philadelphia’s victory, one X user celebrated with: “THE GREAT EVIL HAS BEEN DEFEATED.”

The dynasty-in-progress had won the past two Super Bowls, and this year they became the first team in NFL history to make a third consecutive Super Bowl after winning the first two. Had they won Sunday’s game, they would have been the first team in NFL history to “three-peat” (win three times in a row) in the league’s Super Bowl era. But many viewers didn’t want to see that happen.

The Chiefs’s unpopularity is in part due to perceived referee favoring. Many of the Chiefs’s victories this season have been decided by questionable, game-changing referee calls. And although the NFL commissioner vehemently denied any “rigging” allegations, that didn’t stop fans from making them. After one questionable playoff win, even rapper Lil Wayne declared to his 34 million X followers that he hates “the cheating azz Chiefs.”

The cheating allegations may not have any merit, as data shows that the Chiefs don’t receive nearly as much help from referees as many assume. But haters have found other reasons to dislike the team; New York Magazine columnist Jake Nevins wrote that although the Chiefs may not be cheaters, they are “boring and swagless, smug and exasperating.”

As Super Bowl LIX progressed and the Chiefs struggled to put anything together offensively, delight at that struggle only grew. Statistically, Mahomes had one of the worst quarterback games in Super Bowl history. Fans in Philadelphia responded by gleefully burning a puppet of Kermit the Frog—a character many have said sounds exactly like Mahomes—in a bizarre sort of effigy.

Ultimately, the Chiefs lost in an even-more-embarrassing manner than the final 40–22 score suggests. And broadcasters knew that would make many viewers very happy. Nick Wright, a talk-show host known for his obsession with the Chiefs, posted Monday morning that his eventual broadcast about the loss would be “undoubtedly delightful for everyone but me.” And the joyfully hateful comments followed: One user responded, “can’t wait to hear you cry today,” and another said, “you deserve it.”

Pop star Taylor Swift, too, had her turn in the haters’ spotlight: The Super Bowl stadium erupted into raucous boos after she popped up on the jumbotron. Since the singer began dating Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce in late 2023, the NFL has faced criticism for featuring too much footage of Swift during its game broadcasts. (But, maybe Swift shouldn’t feel too bad: Eagles fans have also famously booed Santa Claus.)

A winning diss track

CNN claimed that “Drake lost worse than the Chiefs” at Super Bowl LIX. And based on Kendrick Lamar’s spite-fueled halftime show, that may be true.

When the NFL announced that Lamar would be headlining this year’s halftime show, many immediately knew the centerpiece of the performance would be the critically beloved (and now Grammy-winning) diss track of Drake: “Not Like Us.”

The feud between the two rappers has been ongoing since 2013. And on the largest stage of all, with millions of eyes and ears on him, Lamar took the opportunity to spotlight rumors that his rapping rival has a tendency to date younger women.

During the show, Lamar rapped: “Say, Drake, I hear you like ‘em young” and told viewers, “hide your little sister from him.” His diss track also includes a lyric calling Drake a “pedophile,” and while Lamar didn’t say the word out loud during his performance, the audience gladly did it for him, yelling and cheering.

The world noticed this joyous hate on full display. As one X user put it: “A whole stadium calling you a pedophile during the Super Bowl has to be rock bottom, right?”

And the diss wasn’t limited to the lyrics. Lamar also brought out tennis star Serena Williams as a guest for the halftime show, who performed a “crip walk” dance during “Not Like Us.” Williams and Drake were rumored to have briefly dated in 2011 and 2015, and Drake has publicly dissed the athlete in two of his songs. The audience—and social media—went wild.

But as the “hater-bowl” concluded, there were many victories to celebrate genuinely, not spitefully. Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts overcame the odds to win his first Super Bowl after losing to Patrick Mahomes two years ago. Philadelphia’s running back Saquon Barkley also won his first Super Bowl after a tumultuous departure from the New York Giants. And before the game even started, the broadcast began with a moving tribute to victims of the New Year’s Day terrorist attack in New Orleans, with two survivors taking the field as honorary captains.