T-Mobile put on a pretty great performance for the Super Bowl, but their usual taunting of their fallen enemies after a big event on Twitter took a turn for the weird with Verizon. When Verizon fired back on Twitter, their reply was not exactly what one would expect, and T-Mobile CEO John Legere essentially decided to bail before things got too weird. Verizon, on the other hand, kept pushing. The first Tweet from Verizon about the matter confirmed that Big Red is into BSDM, with the acronym’s usual far-from-SFW meaning being traded in for “Bigger coverage map, Devastating Speed, and Massive capacity”. When Legere tried to de-escalate the encounter, Verizon stayed the course, saying that nobody would hear a “safe word” uttered on T-Mobile’s network. Legere ended up creating a “Jealousy Meter” to serve as a “talk to the hand” gesture on Twitter, which Verizon promptly broke.
For those who didn’t watch the Big Game, T-Mobile showed off multiple ads, but the one that set Verizon off was one featuring Kristen Schaal, wherein she had a fairly NSFW chat with their customer service. The conversation was not outright dirty, but the comparisons were unavoidable, especially with the commercial’s tagline being #NSFWireless. T-Mobile later posted a follow-up video on Twitter, where the Verizon employee from the commercial called Kristen back. On top of the direct riffing, T-Mobile managed to get the best overall network speed throughout the day during the Super Bowl, thus the aforementioned “Jealousy Meter” from Legere.
It is worth noting that Verizon did not lose the speed contest among the four carriers outright, with that honor instead going to AT&T. While this conversation between the two carriers is definitely one of the strangest, T-Mobile bickering with competitors on Twitter is certainly nothing new. T-Mobile executives, led by CEO John Legere, have long used Twitter as the premiere social platform to post company news, taunt foes, and engage with fans and customers. Indeed, T-Mobile spread the love out on Twitter in the wake of the Big Game, but Verizon was the only carrier so far that has decided to follow T-Mobile’s commercials directly and take things in a rather NSFW direction.