Illinois Fighting Illini football and basketball have been somewhat depressing recently, but as always, most of the fans who still attend will never under any circumstances leave before halftime.

This is because they want to stick around to experience the incomparable Three In One! It starts with the band singing “Pride of the Illini” as a snare keeps time and the crowd claps along with the snare for roughly four bars before inventing 50,000 different tempos and the clapping resembles a bizarre applause.

The band comes in and many thousands of fans re-adjust their clapping, and then the second song begins. The thrilling drums behind “March of the Illini” work the crowd into a fervor before the stirring trio section brings everybody to that glorious A-flat major chord.

Arm in arm, we sing the Alma Mater.

“Hail to the Orange,

Hail to the Blue,

Hail Alma Mater,

Ever so true, so true,

We love no other

So let our motto be,

Victory!

IllinoiSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

STOP WHAT ARE YOU DOING OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU MAKING THAT SOUND IT HAS NEVER BEEN CUTE AND IT HAS NEVER BEEN FUNNY

Seriously. Give up on trying to make SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS a thing. Edgy kids too cool to take just these 30 seconds worth of song seriously at an event where absolutely nothing else really demands your attention have been trying to make this happen for as long as I can remember.

News flash: If you really were too cool to sing the Alma Mater, then you wouldn’t be in the stadium singing it, now would you?

You’re not cool, you’re not funny, you’re not cute. You’re irritating, immature even compared to other college students, unoriginal and eminently unlikable, and nobody but you and others like you appreciates you inserting your shitty forced meme into the one small window where we’re able to express pride in our school (because more often than not, that’s the only time during a football game that we can). Those bros you came with will all stop texting you back by the end of next semester. People screenshot conversations with you and post them on subreddits making fun of insecure, attention-seeking tools like you.

Stop it. For the love of God, stop it.

You don’t have to be like this.

It’s so easy to choose the path of not being a shithead.

You’ve nearly finished the whole song at this point! Everyone who would think you were lame if you took it halfway seriously ALREADY THINKS YOU’RE LAME.

Just don’t do it. Don’t let your friends do it. If they insist, maybe it’s time to think seriously about whether someone with the character to do something like this is worth being friends with.

Be the generation that ends this.

Epilogue: After I finished the initial draft, someone saw fit to insert the following into the text: SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Clearly, my colleagues do not think I have addressed the issue to the extent it deserves. Do you know what that sound is? That is a hiss, and though it’s fallen out of favor it remains the second-most favored sound by which an audience communicates displeasure or contempt for what they’re seeing — second only to the good old fashioned BOOOOOO.

Basically, if you do this, you might as well be booing the Alma Mater.

Save your gestures of contempt for when the officials rule that a defender can take the ball away from a receiver who has caught the ball and been ruled down and it qualifies as an interception.

This noise is also reminiscent of the sound beef makes when you put it on a hot grill. Since this beef was ordered well-done, my beef with this will not be done until that sound stops.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS