We here at Brew Hoop pride ourselves on not sticking to sports. We dutifully cover the sporting exploits of your Milwaukee Bucks, but we do not limit ourselves to such exploits. In fact, some of our most consistent coverage has emerged around a subject that likens itself less to a chilly night in Milwaukee than a warm summer’s day on Coney Island:
> BAN THE REVERSE CAM, I AM BEGGING YOU. For those of you who are unsure what this is, it’s one of the in-game bits during commercial breaks where they show fans on the Jumbotron REVERSE-EATING and it is the NASTIEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE. It never fails to send shivers down my spine. Heck, I don’t even watch it anymore and hearing the groan of the poor people who actually _are_ watching is enough to make me queasy. Ughhhhh. (Gabe Stoltz, 2019)
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> The Reverse Cam was brought back last night. This is not okay and should not happen. For those who don’t know what I’m referring to, basically, the Bucks will take footage of fans eating food and then reverse it. It’s as disgusting as it sounds. (Gabe Stoltz, 2021)
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> I’m glad I missed this during one of the stoppages in play. Y’all, I know it’s Valentine’s Day, but treat this like the Reverse Eating Cam and just…don’t. (Mitchell Maurer, 2022)
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> The reverb on the Hornets’ PA announcer might, over the course of the entire game, be worse than the Reverse-Eating Cam. (Morgan Quinn Ross, 2022)
Yes, even yours truly has piled onto today’s subject: the Reverse-Eating Cam. As eloquently explained above by Gabe, the Reverse-Eating Cam is exactly what it sounds like: camera footage of Bucks fans eating, in reverse. To the exalted names above, we can add Eric Nehm of the Athletic, who is known to give a thumbs down when appearing on the cam.
The Bucks are actually credited with coming up with this strange concoction. They debuted it in 2018, to apparently little fanfare. But Brew Hoop was on its case come 2019, alongside a viral post by the Athletic podcaster J.E. Skeets that earned it opprobrium from Barstool and more (as well as a [clever post](https://www.sbnation.com/nba/2019/11/4/20948168/milwaukee-bucks-fan-cam-reverse-eating-pls-why) from the Mothership with all its words and sentences in reverse). It clearly struck a nerve—perhaps in part because the Bucks had the largest screen in the Association at the time.
In a long line of atoning for my past wrongs, I would like to offer a defense of the Reverse-Eating Cam in two parts. First, it is not gross. Second, it speaks to the heart of the human experience.
Critics of the Reverse-Eating Cam—and even some of its few defenders—tend to label it as gross (see above). Food should go in, not out, they say. And food that goes out is chewed up at best and vomit at worst. Gross!
But: it’s not! It’s fully formed food: the same food that we put in there. Unlike other in-game entertainment that alters the camera stream—I’m looking at you, eyes and mouths being blown out of proportion cam—the Reverse-Eating Cam is au natural.
When food comes out, we assume that it is regurgitated (a favorite word in coverage of the Reverse-Eating Cam). That calls to mind the ground up fish that penguins serve their kiddos. In reality, the food isn’t digested at all. It’s hardly even masticated! It’s only gross because our lizard brains think it is. As System 2 thinkers, we can break the automatic association between “food out” and “gross.”
But the Reverse-Eating Cam is more than just not gross. In fact, I hold that it holds up a mirror to ourselves, one that demands us consider our humanity. Highfalutin language that means that it challenges our preconceptions of the world, specifically about (a) time and (b) food.
We perceive time as linear. Each second is the same number of caesium oscillations, one after the other. But science fiction (as well as plain ole science) pushes us to expand our notion of time. In _Slaughterhouse Five,_ the Tralfamadorians liken humans’ view of time to being strapped on train tracks and only looking forward. In _Arrival_ (based on Ted Chiang’s _Story of Your Life_), when Amy Adams learns the language of her alien friends she begins to see time like the Tralfamadorians: the past, the present, and the future, all at once.
What the Reverse-Eating Cam lacks in the complexity of Vonnegut and Villeneuve, it makes up for in simplicity. It doesn’t rely on science or fiction. By simply reversing a mundane activity, it asks us to consider time as nonlinear. It pushes us to experience beyond what we normally experience.
It also calls for reexamining our complex relationship with food. Food is nourishment, but it inextricably tied to societal norms about body image as well as myriad eating disorders. The Reverse-Eating Cam seems to capture anxieties around both by centering on _not_ eating.
But: the food _was_ eaten! The discomfortable discourse around not eating is challenged by the fact that reverse-eating necessitates eating. The Reverse-Eating Cam asks to consider eating and not-eating as natural sides of the same coin; both things that we do, all the time.
The Reverse-Eating Cam may just be eating in reverse. But it can be more than that. Not gross—natural. In fact, deeply human.
And so I welcome the Reverse-Eating Cam. I look it in the mouth and see myself.
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