Andy Hutchins: madeupmemories: wiitns: ...

Jul 13, 2012
518 notes

madeupmemories:

wiitns:

cosmopolitan-fascist:

blain0:

harlemshakeatyawake:

the-pyrex-god:

crewneckshawty:

iknew he played ball what school though

He wore #23 and played for Bama State

Why is a Ted parody account tweeting this though?

This twitter account that’s pretending to be a cartoon character from a mildly successful recent major motion picture is right, guys.
We should have never counted 2 Chainz out. Who would have known a successful person would continue to be successful later in life?

I am forever gonna judge 2 Chainz for doing shitty rap verses on generic pop songs sung by white twats. He is like the go-to for that these days.

Source or it didn’t happen.
Also, Even if 2 Chainz graduated from MIT with a degree in theoretical physics summa cum laude it still wouldn’t make him a good rapper.

I talked to 2 Chainz about this yesterday and - obviously - it’s not true. The source is Wikipedia.

I have a lot to say here.
“This twitter account” is a person. Never forget that even the parody Twitter accounts (and I have friends who author good, funny parody accounts) have people behind them.
This person is pretending to be Ted from Ted because there’s likely a fair bit of money in doing so.
There’s likely a fair bit of money in doing so because Ted is not “mildly” successful; it is wildly successful. It opened to $54 million, the best opening for an original R-rated comedy ever … and still about $30 million shy of The Hangover Part II, which is far and away the best opening for an R-rated comedy ever. Ted has also already entered the top 10 for highest-grossing R-rated comedies ever, at least, with $133M in domestic gross. That’s far and away more money than any of Judd Apatow’s movies except Wedding Crashers and Knocked Up, both of which a) came after previous Apatow flicks and b) had some serious hand-wringing media buzz attached; Ted banked on Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy fan base, many ads sold during the NBA playoffs, and maybe the star power of Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis. Now, it is riding on good word-of-mouth (note the CinemaScore), and thanks to the over-representation of MacFarlane’s overgrown adolescent jackass demo in every facet of American life and especially the Internet, it seems likely that it will continue making a lot of money. (I shudder to think of what the Family Guy movie will make.
There is a real Ted Twitter account, @WhatTedSaid, and it is pretty bad at humor, did a “Q&A” that seems to have been pulling teeth and has not interacted with any other Twitter user since, and appears to be either authored by MacFarlane (who is also bad at humor on Twitter) or by a person doing a reasonably good imitation of him “in character” as Ted. There is also a real Ted Facebook page, which is phenomenally popular, and a truly horrific “blog” from “Ted” that is about 15% Photoshops of penises on the faces of figures from history. It is not popular.
I made sure these were real by going to the official movie website and checking for the links. There’s autoplay audio there, what I understand is the “Thunder Buddies” song from Ted. The lyrics, in its edited version: “When you hear the sound of thunder, don’t you get too scared / Just grab your thunder buddy, and say these magic words / (Thunder rattle) you, thunder, you can suck my (thunder rattle) / You can’t get me, thunder, ‘cause you’re just God’s farts / You can’t get me, thuuuuuuuunder…” I heard this about 15 times because I left that tab open while writing some of this, and so I resolved to make this post good to make that psychic pain worth it.
MacFarlane giving all of his racist, sexist, homophobic, and generally repugnant opinions to animated characters in television shows and movies that he sets out as The Worst is cowardly; MacFarlane being a millionaire many times over for doing that is evidence that we, by and large, lap that shit up.
Parody accounts, like the nine I found in about 30 seconds on Twitter using Ted in their handle or a picture of Ted with more than 100,000 followers each (there are probably more than that),depend on people lapping that shit up. It’s very easy to be “in character” if the character is a derivative font of banalities: A tweet that isn’t even worth tweeting gets hundreds of retweets once the foundation for that “character” is built, and there’s no penalty for not trying to write good jokes with them. In fact, because good jokes might interrupt the stream of “content,” they’re probably inadvisable.
The point of all that “content” is to eventually trick someone into clicking an ad in a sponsored tweet. (If people don’t click the ad? Tell them to.) Those sponsored tweets often have a base price for being tweeted plus some more money per click, not unlike many other ads on the Internet, and the prices for them for major accounts can be staggering.
There’s pretty much no way that these accounts aren’t built with spam followers, or with the Twitter trick of switching from one parody to another, or with cross-promotion from a network of other Twitter accounts. Though the prices for ads can be staggering, making a decent living on these accounts would probably require being really, really good (and, chances are, if you’re really good and truly a must-follow, you won’t be this popular) or running a bunch of them.
Is all of that a cynical hustle? Certainly. But people who run these cynical accounts do a fantastic job of attending to the needs of people that have become desperate to have things to connect to and representations that mirror their imagined selves. This is part of why Girls, a stylized vision of being a woman in New York, is a hit, and why Sex and the City was; this is part of why Drake, who raps like a middle-class kid who decided rap was what he was good at and found out that money was good for having fun, even at his best, could very well end up as the voice of this generation; this is part of why LeBron James, freighted with the frustrations of fans who think that they would play the game much differently than he does, has drawn so much ire, and why Tim Tebow, who lives life as virtuously as many wish they could, is so popular as a role model. This is why @MensHumor has more than two million followers, and @WomensHumor slightly less than a million; this is why @iRespectFemales was as popular as it was (I disagree with many conclusions in this criticism, and, trigger warning, it’s a dude writing it, but you get the gist of the matter) until it kicked the bucket fairly recently. (You can see the same @iRespectFemales trick being pulled at the guy’s new Twitter account.)
If it’s anything in particular, the diminished monoculture that endures while multitudes hang lefts and rights off the main highway seems to me to be a counter-counter-culture, one that has settled for flattering itself into thinking it is as good as its average, because that is easier than acknowledging deficiencies and pushing for change or attempting to be more than average. (The enormity of our American deficiencies and the extraordinary difficulty of realizing gains for being more than average probably factor into that, too.) Retweeting something someone parodying a cartoon talking teddy bear says in place of having an original thought is sort of cowardly, though a more prosaic and less lucrative cowardice than MacFarlane’s, but I think I’m most dismayed by the practice, which extends to all sorts of fake accounts, themed accounts, and famous person accounts that tweet generic messages, because it’s lazy. Develop your own thoughts; don’t wait until Someecards slaps them on a picture as a caption. Add to conversations if you have something to add or a question to ask. Be more than “THIS.”
2 Chainz was kinda terrible at college basketball: He shot a respectable 45 percent from the field and a quite good 35 percent from three-point range, but made just 38.7 percent of his free throws. Prairie View A&M’s Ronald Wright, the worst free throw-shooter with more than 30 attempts on the worst free throw-shooting team in Division I in 2011-12, was the only player on the team worse at shooting free throws than Tauheed Epps was for Alabama State in 1996-97. The Hornets went 8-21 that season. That fact about his basketball playing and college graduation is on 2 Chainz’ Wikipedia page, and also on the Playaz Circle Wikipedia page, which lamentably does not mention “Look What I Got.”
2 Chainz’ basketball days have virtually nothing to do with his rap career. He likely wasn’t even Tity Boi then (Playaz Circle formed in 1997), outside of within his family. But the point about school not making one good at rapping is both partly true and misled: Being able to count bars and segment them really does help, and that’s math; knowing words helps a lot, and that’s everything else. (Will Smith allegedly 800-ing the SAT’s Verbal section always made a lot of sense to me.)
“Shitty rap verses on generic pop songs sung by white twats”: Going by the list of 2 Chainz features on singles and the extensive (and yet not exhaustive!) list of 2 Chainz guest spots on Wikipedia, it seems that the only rap verses on “pop songs” sung by “white twats” he’s done were for Justin Bieber and Dev, and the first one is quite good, while the second contains a malformed URL in a verse. The (very shitty) feature on Kreayshawn’s “Breakfast” is a feature on a rap song.
Thank you for asking 2 Chainz about the misinformation spread about him on the Internet (though not, as you just apprised me, via the fact that some guy operating a parody account for “Ted” from Ted was spreading it), Jeff.

wiitns:

cosmopolitan-fascist:

blain0:

harlemshakeatyawake:

the-pyrex-god:

crewneckshawty:

iknew he played ball what school though

He wore #23 and played for Bama State

Why is a Ted parody account tweeting this though?

This twitter account that’s pretending to be a cartoon character from a mildly successful recent major motion picture is right, guys.

We should have never counted 2 Chainz out. Who would have known a successful person would continue to be successful later in life?

I am forever gonna judge 2 Chainz for doing shitty rap verses on generic pop songs sung by white twats. He is like the go-to for that these days.

Source or it didn’t happen.

Also, Even if 2 Chainz graduated from MIT with a degree in theoretical physics summa cum laude it still wouldn’t make him a good rapper.

I talked to 2 Chainz about this yesterday and - obviously - it’s not true. The source is Wikipedia.

I have a lot to say here.

“This twitter account” is a person. Never forget that even the parody Twitter accounts (and I have friends who author good, funny parody accounts) have people behind them.
This person is pretending to be Ted from Ted because there’s likely a fair bit of money in doing so.
There’s likely a fair bit of money in doing so because Ted is not “mildly” successful; it is wildly successful. It opened to $54 million, the best opening for an original R-rated comedy ever … and still about $30 million shy of The Hangover Part II, which is far and away the best opening for an R-rated comedy ever. Ted has also already entered the top 10 for highest-grossing R-rated comedies ever, at least, with $133M in domestic gross. That’s far and away more money than any of Judd Apatow’s movies except Wedding Crashers and Knocked Up, both of which a) came after previous Apatow flicks and b) had some serious hand-wringing media buzz attached; Ted banked on Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy fan base, many ads sold during the NBA playoffs, and maybe the star power of Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis. Now, it is riding on good word-of-mouth (note the CinemaScore), and thanks to the over-representation of MacFarlane’s overgrown adolescent jackass demo in every facet of American life and especially the Internet, it seems likely that it will continue making a lot of money. (I shudder to think of what the Family Guy movie will make.
There is a real Ted Twitter account, @WhatTedSaid, and it is pretty bad at humor, did a “Q&A” that seems to have been pulling teeth and has not interacted with any other Twitter user since, and appears to be either authored by MacFarlane (who is also bad at humor on Twitter) or by a person doing a reasonably good imitation of him “in character” as Ted. There is also a real Ted Facebook page, which is phenomenally popular, and a truly horrific “blog” from “Ted” that is about 15% Photoshops of penises on the faces of figures from history. It is not popular.
I made sure these were real by going to the official movie website and checking for the links. There’s autoplay audio there, what I understand is the “Thunder Buddies” song from Ted. The lyrics, in its edited version: “When you hear the sound of thunder, don’t you get too scared / Just grab your thunder buddy, and say these magic words / (Thunder rattle) you, thunder, you can suck my (thunder rattle) / You can’t get me, thunder, ‘cause you’re just God’s farts / You can’t get me, thuuuuuuuunder…” I heard this about 15 times because I left that tab open while writing some of this, and so I resolved to make this post good to make that psychic pain worth it.
MacFarlane giving all of his racist, sexist, homophobic, and generally repugnant opinions to animated characters in television shows and movies that he sets out as The Worst is cowardly; MacFarlane being a millionaire many times over for doing that is evidence that we, by and large, lap that shit up.
Parody accounts, like the nine I found in about 30 seconds on Twitter using Ted in their handle or a picture of Ted with more than 100,000 followers each (there are probably more than that),depend on people lapping that shit up. It’s very easy to be “in character” if the character is a derivative font of banalities: A tweet that isn’t even worth tweeting gets hundreds of retweets once the foundation for that “character” is built, and there’s no penalty for not trying to write good jokes with them. In fact, because good jokes might interrupt the stream of “content,” they’re probably inadvisable.
The point of all that “content” is to eventually trick someone into clicking an ad in a sponsored tweet. (If people don’t click the ad? Tell them to.) Those sponsored tweets often have a base price for being tweeted plus some more money per click, not unlike many other ads on the Internet, and the prices for them for major accounts can be staggering.
There’s pretty much no way that these accounts aren’t built with spam followers, or with the Twitter trick of switching from one parody to another, or with cross-promotion from a network of other Twitter accounts. Though the prices for ads can be staggering, making a decent living on these accounts would probably require being really, really good (and, chances are, if you’re really good and truly a must-follow, you won’t be this popular) or running a bunch of them.
Is all of that a cynical hustle? Certainly. But people who run these cynical accounts do a fantastic job of attending to the needs of people that have become desperate to have things to connect to and representations that mirror their imagined selves. This is part of why Girls, a stylized vision of being a woman in New York, is a hit, and why Sex and the City was; this is part of why Drake, who raps like a middle-class kid who decided rap was what he was good at and found out that money was good for having fun, even at his best, could very well end up as the voice of this generation; this is part of why LeBron James, freighted with the frustrations of fans who think that they would play the game much differently than he does, has drawn so much ire, and why Tim Tebow, who lives life as virtuously as many wish they could, is so popular as a role model. This is why @MensHumor has more than two million followers, and @WomensHumor slightly less than a million; this is why @iRespectFemales was as popular as it was (I disagree with many conclusions in this criticism, and, trigger warning, it’s a dude writing it, but you get the gist of the matter) until it kicked the bucket fairly recently. (You can see the same @iRespectFemales trick being pulled at the guy’s new Twitter account.)
If it’s anything in particular, the diminished monoculture that endures while multitudes hang lefts and rights off the main highway seems to me to be a counter-counter-culture, one that has settled for flattering itself into thinking it is as good as its average, because that is easier than acknowledging deficiencies and pushing for change or attempting to be more than average. (The enormity of our American deficiencies and the extraordinary difficulty of realizing gains for being more than average probably factor into that, too.) Retweeting something someone parodying a cartoon talking teddy bear says in place of having an original thought is sort of cowardly, though a more prosaic and less lucrative cowardice than MacFarlane’s, but I think I’m most dismayed by the practice, which extends to all sorts of fake accounts, themed accounts, and famous person accounts that tweet generic messages, because it’s lazy. Develop your own thoughts; don’t wait until Someecards slaps them on a picture as a caption. Add to conversations if you have something to add or a question to ask. Be more than “THIS.”
2 Chainz was kinda terrible at college basketball: He shot a respectable 45 percent from the field and a quite good 35 percent from three-point range, but made just 38.7 percent of his free throws. Prairie View A&M’s Ronald Wright, the worst free throw-shooter with more than 30 attempts on the worst free throw-shooting team in Division I in 2011-12, was the only player on the team worse at shooting free throws than Tauheed Epps was for Alabama State in 1996-97. The Hornets went 8-21 that season. That fact about his basketball playing and college graduation is on 2 Chainz’ Wikipedia page, and also on the Playaz Circle Wikipedia page, which lamentably does not mention “Look What I Got.”
2 Chainz’ basketball days have virtually nothing to do with his rap career. He likely wasn’t even Tity Boi then (Playaz Circle formed in 1997), outside of within his family. But the point about school not making one good at rapping is both partly true and misled: Being able to count bars and segment them really does help, and that’s math; knowing words helps a lot, and that’s everything else. (Will Smith allegedly 800-ing the SAT’s Verbal section always made a lot of sense to me.)
“Shitty rap verses on generic pop songs sung by white twats”: Going by the list of 2 Chainz features on singles and the extensive (and yet not exhaustive!) list of 2 Chainz guest spots on Wikipedia, it seems that the only rap verses on “pop songs” sung by “white twats” he’s done were for Justin Bieber and Dev, and the first one is quite good, while the second contains a malformed URL in a verse. The (very shitty) feature on Kreayshawn’s “Breakfast” is a feature on a rap song.
Thank you for asking 2 Chainz about the misinformation spread about him on the Internet (though not, as you just apprised me, via the fact that some guy operating a parody account for “Ted” from Ted was spreading it), Jeff.