This is an open letter to everyone but my subscribers,
You’re fucking stupid.
(My subscribers are not stupid. They are smart and sexy people.)
Let me tell you about how stupid you are. Let me regale you with the tale of a tweet that went viral this last week.
“One time at a party I paid a drug addict $50 to let me hunt him with a paintball gun. It was a fun and funny thing everyone enjoyed, but if you take it out of context and talk about it on a podcast nowadays people wouldn’t see the humor lol”
This tweet came in a thread where I was defending Arnold Schwartzeneger. He was being yelled at because he apparently farted on some actress on one of his movies and the headlines treated it like he was a monster. My defense of him was simple and obvious. He lives in Sun Valley. Everyone in this town has a story about his weird sense of humor. But if you describe things in the worst way, they will set of a mob. So I described my own anecdote in the worst way and set off a mob.
People lost their shit.
Here is the deal: 1) this did happen. It was the autumn of 2004. 2) the “drug addict” was a friend of mine who was staying at my house while on break from law school. 2004 is also the year I dropped out of senior year of high school because of my own drug problem. I went to rehab in 2005. 3) the person was a paintball player. They knew what it was like to get shot with a paintball gun.
The point of the tweet is that if you describe something in the worst terms, lots of things sound terrible!
Now, why did I say “drug addict” instead of friend? Well, because I knew that people would read “drug addict” in a misleading way! They would think homeless person on the rocks. They wouldn’t think “well to do white law student in idaho.” But well to do white law students in idaho are drug addicts too!
That is the entire point of the tweet,.
I have such contempt here for people who got upset because I actually walked you through it. I explained IN THE FUCKING TWEET that it sounded different out of context.
There are many ways of telling any story. The teller makes choices. If I had described him as a friend I could have told this as a fun story. But to prove the point that wording and framing matters in a world where stupid people don’t give other people the benefit of the doubt, I gave them a technically accurate description I knew their own biases would affect.
Oh how dare I reveal your own fucking assumptions about people!
Let me tell you something and this is real: you are fucking stupid. You are fucking made stupid by your own inability to think for two seconds beyond your initial reaction.
You are fucking clowns.
(again my subscribers are beautiful and wonderful and smart)
I thought it was so obvious that it was a friend and not some rando homeless person and didn't even realize at first why people were so mad. Honestly, it sounded like a fun time for both of you. You are right, people are fucking stupid and on Twitter, they look for anything to be outraged about.
If it wasn't for 5 percent of the total population of hairless bipeds who have ever lived, the other 95% would still be hairy and sniffing each other's butts when they weren't snarfing bananas up in the trees.
Soshall meedeeya makes people even dumber than they usually are.