"Why is Jason Derulo dancing with the robot dogs that are going to be hunting us..."

Dog Days

While Rihanna's jaw-dropping Super Bowl halftime performance — and baby bump reveal — invariably stole the night, a group of weird robot dogs during the pregame show left viewers with a bit more shock than awe.

As if the concept of an NFL "TikTok Tailgate" wasn't enough, the show put on by singer Jason Derulo featured, for some reason, a bunch of diminutive Boston Dynamics-esque dancing robodogs, whose uncanny choreography was timed to match the human dancers alongside them.

Unsurprisingly, second-screen Super Bowl watchers were wigged out by the robots, with one user likening them to the human-hunting doggos from the "Metalhead" episode of Netflix's "Black Mirror."

Dangerous Game

Some even wondered why Derulo was "dancing with the robot dogs that are going to be hunting us in 10 years."

"Not loving these robot dog backup dancers in the pregame show," one user posted. "What does [Derulo] think this is, the Puppy Bowl in 2055!?"

But Why

As of now, it's unclear who built the robodoggos — which, we gotta admit, are pretty adorable in a dystopian way — and if they were meant to be advertising anything other than a future of mass surveillance.

Given, however, that there were lots of other robotic aspects of Derulo's performance, including two huge robot lady torsos that look remarkably like the album art for Erykah Badu's excellent 2009 album "New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh," it's easy to surmise that the performance's half-baked theme was "robots."

If only his team had gone a step further and predicted that people might be a little freaked out by the sight of dancing robodogs.

More on creepy robots: Scientists Create Shape-Shifting Robot That Can Melt Through Prison Bars


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