What is going on with this anti-Cubs t-shirt?

The Cardinals are not in a good place right now. Losers of six of eight, and with those six losses running the gamut from blowouts to walk-offs, it has not been a good week in Birds-land. As a result, this is going to be one of those, "Hey, everyone look over there instead" posts.

So, editor-in-chief @cardinalsgifs brought this to our attention...While minding his own business in his Cardinals hat, of course, he saw a smiling man approaching in this Cubs t-shirt.

(I don't think it was this exact man but he didn't specify.)

Bumping into a Cubs fan is not abnormal, per se. Gifs lives in a land where a lot of Cubs fans go to spend their golden years, and Cubs fans are everywhere anyway. Still, the Cubs had just taken the Cardinals to the cleaners at Busch and interacting with a Cubs fan in the aftermath might not be at the top of everyone's list when given the choice. But take a closer look at this particular shirt.

It is not a Cubs t-shirt at all, or at least not a pro-Cubs t-shirt. It is one of those zany anti-Cubs t-shirts. A "haha, you jerks aren't my champs" shirt. An understandable state of mind, to be sure. There's only one problem though: The WORLD CHAMPS font utilizing the Cubs logo is quite large; the "not my" part is not. For all intents and purposes this is a Cubs shirt unless you happen to be standing within two feet of the person who is wearing it.

That's a pretty big design flaw. (And even if you are close enough to take in this punch line, is it really that satisfying?) Unless, the flaw is the point. Unless it was designed by a Cubs fan for the purpose of a bunch of Cardinals fans forking over $20 and then walking around looking like idiots. An attempt to secretly own the people who buy it.

This has been done before. In 1987, infamous football player Brian Bosworth spent the week leading up to a Seahawks-Broncos game by trolling the Broncos fan base with all sorts of trash talk about late hits on John Elway and so forth. Then, Bosworth's own company sold 10,000 anti-Bosworth shirts to the same fans for the game in Denver. Pretty solid scheme and all of the money reportedly went to charity, too.

I don't know if that's what's happening with the "not my champs" shirt above. Probably not. But the genre is alluring and so here are a few shirts designed by Gifs if we were to ever join this game.

Design #1

Design #2

Design #3 (easily my favorite)

Thoughts?

These shirts are not real and are therefore not for sale. However, Birds on the Black does have a team store. So if you want to pay tribute to the team we are all currently mad at, you can find some fun stuff here.