They
say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Similarly,
parody can be the most loving form of it. Things are not worth
parodying unless there is some sort of love there. There’s a line
between vitriol and sharp satire. Look at This Is Spinal Tap. At
times, it’s a brutal and relentless lambasting of heavy metal and music culture
but it’s also done with affection. There’s a reason the songs of the
movie became minor heavy metal classics in their own right—there is little
doubt that deep down, the men behind the movie enjoy heavy metal (though
obviously a part of them, possibly a larger part, finds it idiotic).
This
Is Spinal Tap is the zenith of brilliant parody. Twitter is the low
point.
Now,
there is such a thing as a good parody account. The
ideal parody account will take an existing person or entity, identify a few
major characteristics, and exaggerate those characteristics for effect. One
of the best parody accounts for me is @FakeDanMcLaughl. For those of
you who are not St. Louis Cardinals fans, this is a parody of Dan McLaughlin,
an announcer most easily identified by being an enormous homer (not only for
the baseball team he covers, but for St. Louis fans and everything about St.
Louis culture) and having two DUIs. Now, an actual Dan McLaughlin
Twitter account (there isn’t one) would likely be fairly boring—generally
professional observations about the Cardinals or about his life and
family. But Fake Dan prospers by defining a few characteristics and
running with them. He ridicules Dan’s upward-trending speech
patterns by using phraseology such as “of carse” and “gaddammit”. He
unleashes tweet frenzies during Cardinals games in which he writes in all
capitals letters with excitement about how great the beloved “Cairdnals”
are. He tweets about his love of Mic Ultras. We don’t
even know that the real Dan McLaughlin likes Michelob Ultra, but it doesn’t
matter, because Fake Dan became an entity unto himself. The comedy
is relentless, lacking anything resembling subtlety, but that’s not the
point. The point is humor, which Fake Dan accomplishes (for me, and
it seems most people who like the Cardinals).
The
next class of acceptable parodies include two of my favorites, two accounts I
retweet an absurd amount because I find their niche to be brilliant—Old Hoss
Radbourn and Tripping Olney. Old Hoss (@OldHossRadbourn) works
defiantly because the real man has been dead since before Babe Ruth was
born. We don’t know what Old Hoss would tweet like it. All
we really know about Old Hoss is that he won 59 games in 1884. Theoretically,
Old Hoss, whose tweets are old-timey observations about contemporary baseball
(thinking something along the lines of “Bah! In my day D. Johnson wouldn’t shut
down S. Strasburg unless he had conquered 50 wins or 50 harlots.”), could be
any pre-World Series baseball player. It could have been Pud Galvin
and likely wouldn’t have skipped a beat. But the combo of the
nickname, being the most old-timey looking person in history, and always being
able to reference the most statistically insane season in the history of
baseball makes Old Hoss Radbourn work. Tripping Olney is also, to
put it lightly, a very loose parody of somebody, but this time it’s somebody we
know (hell, it’s somebody who has Twitter and use to actually follow
@TrippingOlney). But he creates a distinctive personality. Unlike,
say, Faux John Madden, which is more or less a regurgitation of fairly obvious
sports jokes (while maintaining absolutely no connection to the actual John
Madden—too few references to the Madden Cruiser and too many references to Kim
Kardashian’s appetite for black men), Tripping Olney has a style. Besides
all caps, he has a series of hashtags that I (and others) have co-opted. Tweets
like (and these are just imitations of his style) “DANIEL DESCALSO GRAND SLAM.
#TRIPPING”, “NOT GIVING UP A BUNCH OF RUNS TO IMPROVE YOUR TEAM’S CHANCES AT
THE PLAYOFFS IS TOO MAINSTREAM #HIPSTERCJWILSON”, or “MICHAEL BOURN COMES UP
LIMPING SLIDING INTO SECOND, JOE MAUER TO GO ON DL. #JOEMAUERINJURIES” are his
trademark. They aren’t Buster Olney’s personality, but they are the
parody account’s personality. He generates his own memes rather than
trying to piggyback off something fashionable. Anyone could make a
joke about being obsessed with Albert Pujols or Roy Halladay or
something. Tripping Olney obsesses with Bruce Chen.
And
now on the other end…
I
mentioned Faux John Madden earlier and criticized him but I’ll at least give
him credit for often having funny jokes. Twitter is full of parody
accounts similar to this but with less humor. I refuse to give
specific handles for these clowns (and also because I don’t recall them because
I don’t follow them because I choose not to waste my attention on Twitter), but
here’s a few examples. There is a “parody” account of
Happy Gilmore which never mentions golf, never mentions Shooter McGavin (except
in its bio), and never mentions being a former hockey player. This
parody of a hockey player turned golfer with anger management issues mostly
posts NFL-related pictures on Lockerdome. In what way is that
parodying Happy Gilmore? Though to Happy’s credit, though he isn’t
funny, he’s sporadically original in the same way that John Madden is
original—jokes which are generic but not direct theft. For those,
look at the countless parodies of Ted (as in the Mark Wahlberg movie character)
which mostly just tweets jokes you can find literally all over the
internet. Though I guess there are some redeeming qualities
here—nobody is following Ted thinking “Oh shit, I can follow a talking teddy
bear.” Maybe they think Seth MacFarlane is running it or something
(in which case they might just want to follow the actual goddamned Seth
MacFarlane) but it’s obviously a joke.
The
worst kind of parody account is one in which literally the ONLY mark of the
celebrity namesake is the name itself. These accounts seem to be run
by the same people, making the same set of bad jokes over and over. The
most common seems to be Will Ferrell, tweeting unfunny and unclever jokes that
the real Will Ferrell wouldn’t do (he might come up with something original and
funny and then proceed to beat it into the ground over five movies but that’s a
different issue altogether). Also seen several of Daniel Tosh. Now,
Daniel Tosh has a VERY distinctive comedy style, whether you like it or
not. It’s very confrontational and politically incorrect—it’s not
THAT hard to parody. Yet the parody accounts have him telling the
kind of jokes you hear people make up in middle school. You remember
when Michael Richards went on that horrific, racist rant doing standup comedy
and then, shortly thereafter, when Jerry Seinfeld was on Letterman, Richards
gave a sincere, heartfelt apology? And the audience LAUGHED? This
is the way we as people are trained—to see what we identify as a comedian (Will
Ferrell, Daniel Tosh, Michael Richards) and laugh. It’s easier said
than done—you have to say genuinely funny things to build up that
rapport. Ferrell and Tosh did this on their own. Screw
the people who let them do the hard work and just repeat the benefits.
The
absolute low point of low points, though, are parody accounts which do
inspirational quotes. Now, if Michael Jordan had Twitter, let’s be
honest—he’d be whoring out for Nike. If he had fewer followers, he’d
be that celebrity who retweets anyone who asks for a retweet. Yet
apparently, in a “parody” of him, he just tweets quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt
and Mahatma Gandhi because THAT’S TOTALLY WHAT MICHAEL JORDAN TALKS ABOUT ON
TWITTER. Probably the most common I’ve seen is Will Smith. Like,
why is Will Smith the one giving advice about self-confidence and other
bullshit on Twitter? What specifically did he do to justify this
reverence where people are willing to just fucking accept him as some kind of
guidance counselor? Was it Men in Black 2? Did someone
see Men in Black 2 and think “The black guy should be a philosopher”?
But
I go on plenty of rants against Will Smith, who I have explained already I
think is a cowardly actor with absolutely no range who is clearly in it 100%
for the money and not at all for anything resembling artistic credibility (if
he decided he wanted to make an MLK biopic, they’d start filming it tomorrow,
but that would be way too “controversial” for Will). That’s not the
point. Whether you like him or not, most people like him. He
has a generally good reputation. Racist old people like Will
Smith. The people who parody him are piggybacking off of Will
Smith’s sterling reputation. The bio of one of these accounts, whose
title will be “The Will Smith” or something like that, will generally be something
along the lines of “Actor and rapper, star of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, film
actor, parody”. Like, parody is just thrown in. You’d be
a fool to not think many of the hundreds of thousands of people following
“parody” Will Smith accounts think they are actually following Will
Smith. And they’re following boring, run of the mill accounts
because they think they’re actually following Will Smith.
As
for me, I’m sure I’d get more followers if I changed my account to “Stan
Musial” and quoted a bunch of safe quotes of inspiration (or if I put
#TeamFollowBack in my bio). But what’s the point? Of my
170 some odd followers, some are legitimately entertained by my insane
ramblings (not most, but some). Some may legitimately be entertained
by the same moronic jokes said ad nauseum by people riding the goodwill of
established celebrities, and I’m sure they have more truly loyal fans (just by
the numbers game), but those people suck so who cares?
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