We’re The Weather Channel and If You Don’t Subscribe to Our Premium Site We Will Start Sacrificing Oxen to Zeus
We at The Weather Channel have had a front row seat for how the accelerating climate crisis has made accurate meteorology more scattershot than Elon Musk’s methods for ruining companies he buys. Droughts are intensifying, once in a generation hurricanes are approaching, and—step aside, Frasier—this year’s most high profile return is El fucking Niño.
Some of you call us panic salesmen but still demand unfettered access to terror-inducing forecasts in 15-minute increments. All we know is that keeping up with the extreme weather flavor for the week can really mean the difference between life and death in this anthropogenic apocalyptic shitscape.
When we were bought out by IBM, we were so stoked to leverage the revolutionary meteorological modeling tools from IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence system. Well, that glorified appliance may have trounced Ken Jennings’ elfin ass on Jeopardy!, but its convoluted weather models got us nowhere fast in the face of last year’s record blizzards, heatwaves, and—bomb cyclones? Are you fucking kidding me? So now IBM’s scrapping Watson for parts and enforcing impossible revenue goals to recoup their losses.
Luckily, one of our ambitious interns crammed a bunch of data into ChatGPT and asked it what to do. The results were unintelligible until another intern added “Michael Bay movie written by Werner Herzog” to the prompt. ChatGPT then suggested “holding Earth’s insufferable humans hostage by threat of the combined wrath of the ancient gods.” You hear that, Watson? That’s the kind of winning idea we expected from your alleged industry leading real-world solutions package. If your AI doesn’t routinely suggest overthrowing mankind, can you even trust it?
Now we’re taking action by playing the one card we have left—coercing you into paying for the up-to-the-minute information you desperately need by seeking divine favor through ceremonial sacrifices to Zeus, Olympian ruler of the skies.
Oxen for Zeus seemed like the classic move to start with, and that’s only the tip of the rapidly disappearing iceberg. If you don’t upgrade to Weather Channel Premium and we miss our second quarter revenue targets, guess what? We’ve got Zeus’s perpetually pissed off brother Poseidon on deck for some furious ocean-wrecking havoc that’s sure to sink your Spring Break plans under a colossal tsunami. Bon voyage, White Lotus cosplayers! ChatGPT recommended bull and ram sacrifices to appease Poseidon (along with SpongeBob and Patrick, for some reason), so you can add those to the growing pile of animal carcasses if you don’t pony up. We’ll do whatever it takes to get IBM off our back and yours against the wall.
For $4.99 per month, you get the peace of mind that comes with 72-hour future radar, a 30-mile lightning map, and no oxen scorched to a heap of ashes on an altar atop Mount Lykaion, Zeus’s birthplace and site of thousands upon thousands of ritual animal slaughters.
Make the right choice. Don’t force us to pivot from weather forecasters to prophets of doom. Level up your battle against the elements so you can be prepared for whatever batshit atmospheric pandemonium we’re ravaged by next. Get forecasts at your fingertips—not ox blood on your hands. Go Premium today or face the almighty wrath of Zeus.
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Andy Spain is a video editor and motion graphics designer living in Durham, NC with his wife and 4 kids. Or is it 5? His humor writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Slackjaw, Points in Case, Robot Butt, and Little Old Lady. Find him on Twitter @citizenspain
