The NBC Olympics coverage is a total, commercial-filled nightmare

It was never going to be pretty: an Olympic opening ceremony with no GIFs, hours of commercials, a massive delay and overbearing anchors.

Welcome to NBC's 2016 Rio Olympic coverage. The network filled its primetime coverage of the opening ceremony on Friday night with thousands and thousands of commercials. Because when you pay $1.2 billion for the digital and broadcast rights, you wanna get that hard cold cash back somehow and the people will always tune in.

Here's a tip for Americans frustrated with NBC's coverage: Get a VPN and watch Australia's Channel 7 or the UK's BBC coverage live with your friends around the world. You'll also save yourself from dying in a filthy swamp of ads.

The viewers, rightfully so, were furious at NBC injecting endless commercials with the opening ceremony. Take another small break and read through the outrage:

The network also showed the ceremony on an hour tape delay, causing mass confusion on social media. There were two Twitter timelines: America and the rest of the world. It was like watching a terrible TV show on repeat.

The ban on GIFs by the International Olympic Committee also meant that no footage from the Olympics was available on social media. Hello, 1998. Twitter tried to get creative, but let's be real: it kinda killed the buzz. Think of all that wasted social media coverage, NBC.

And let's not even get started on the anchors.

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