Here's a weird idea. For ROC Live Life Loud, Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo worked with Shareability, which co-owns the speaker and headphone brand with him, to engage in an odd game, more or less based on the fatigue of fame: Tea vs. Photo.
The video's link-baity title is enough to instill pride in BuzzFeed: "CRISTIANO RONALDO was just going out for tea and this happened ..." It depicts Ronaldo sitting down at an outdoor café for tea—except between each sip, he's interrupted by a barrage of fans who want photos with him.
The fans start as a stream and grow in number when they observe his receptiveness. He manages each interruption with admirable patience (because by sip No. 2 it would have been reasonable, human even, to go all Naomi Campbell on everybody).
One either side of the screen, a leaderboard shows how many times he drinks his tea versus how many photos he takes. Before he ever gets to his fifth sip, well, check it out ...
A couple of minutes in, Ronaldo begins rubbing his face, looking visibly agitated. But besides tossing in a few moody—but still tolerant—comments (notably about the people actually working at the café, who join the fray), he poses for every last pic.
He even gets the chance to ask whether a woman who works at a nearby perfume store received his latest fragrance (to find out she hasn't). And through it all, a pair of ROC Live Life Loud headphones remains perched on his shoulders.
Probably the weirdest thing about the video is how willing people are to dive in for a shot—one guy even comes up from behind, startling Ronaldo slightly—before abruptly leaving, sometimes while he's still talking to them. Even before social media, there's always been something about proving you've been near someone—or something—famous that makes the proof more socially valuable than the person or thing itself.
Still, it's an interesting contrast to Ronaldo's viral Shareability video from last year, in which he's disguised and passes through Madrid utterly unnoticed, even as he skillfully kicks a soccer ball around. (He also did a holiday video with them.)
But the guy stays unmeltingly cool.
"It's good seeing that people admire my job, that people like the way I am … it's good, I feel good. It's good seeing that I'm a good player," he concludes with a smile.
