You Think You Get It. YOU DONT YOU DONT YOU DONT!!!!!!!
May 12, 2014 7:03 AM   Subscribe

The baffling tweets of Jaden Smith make a surprising amount of sense when repurposed into Garfield comics.
posted by Faint of Butt (72 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is so stupid that it's brilliant. Or so brilliant it's stupid. I'm not sure which.
posted by capricorn at 7:11 AM on May 12, 2014 [6 favorites]


I dunno; kid is 15. Shouldn't he get a pass?

Maybe he loves it, but it feels strangely down-punchy (given his wealth and media access) to me.
posted by allthinky at 7:18 AM on May 12, 2014 [7 favorites]


I'm not sure that those tweets are "baffling" when you remember that they are composed by a teenage boy who's in his "wow, I'm old enough to be thinking deep thoughts, man" phase.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:18 AM on May 12, 2014 [27 favorites]


I don't think those tweets are especially nonsensical - they seem precisely like what a smart kid with smart parents would tweet if he lived a life of great economic privilege but was not from a right-wing/one-percenter background. I think they're pretty cute, actually. That whole family seems like they're doing things just about as right as you can if you're in such a weird cultural position.

Almost anything is amusing if it's slotted into Garfield.
posted by Frowner at 7:19 AM on May 12, 2014 [9 favorites]


Totally unfair.

There might be a tiny minority of teenagers who don't tweet/spout moronic crap but assuming he must be one because he's the child of two actors is not reasonable.
posted by From Bklyn at 7:22 AM on May 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


#fallow made this perfect.
posted by emelenjr at 7:22 AM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


...thank god I grew up before, you know, the internet because I would hate for any of my teenage pensées to be out there in the wild...
posted by From Bklyn at 7:24 AM on May 12, 2014 [26 favorites]


It's...

"an ingenious, perceptive, brilliant, a very clever move
Because the Jayden, combined with the Garfield
on the inter-nets entices laughter to flow.
posted by symbioid at 7:24 AM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Did Jayden hire the horse_ebooks guys as his PR staff?
posted by schmod at 7:26 AM on May 12, 2014 [6 favorites]


Besides, "You think you get it but you don't, you don't, you don't" is something I think all the time - sometimes directed at others with chagrin, sometimes directed at myself with chagrin and/or astonishment. "You think you get it but you don't" is a good thing to keep in mind in many aspects of life.
posted by Frowner at 7:26 AM on May 12, 2014 [7 favorites]


Mostly I'm impressed by the vast Garfield knowledge of whoever is putting these together. There has to be literally thousands upon thousands of strips to choose from, which seems overwhelming to me in trying to narrow down which to pick to include here, but so many of these are just perfectly spot on appropriate in matching the drawing to the writing (even though I generally agree that holding up a teenager's writing as "look how faux deep and silly this is" does seem a little mean).
posted by The Gooch at 7:30 AM on May 12, 2014 [11 favorites]


I dunno; kid is 15. Shouldn't he get a pass?

To a point but claiming our eyes aren't real and there's no difference between getting water or alcohol in them is quite deranged. That's not deep thinking. That's lemon-juice-on-my-face-will-make-me-invisible thinking.
posted by codswallop at 7:34 AM on May 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


Uh, yeah! It's called "Invisible Ink" DUH!
posted by symbioid at 7:39 AM on May 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


The one about relationships and percentages actually seems to be right on.
posted by kewb at 7:41 AM on May 12, 2014 [5 favorites]


If these were interspersed between more mundane tweets I'd say he was just tripping balls when he tweeted them. That, or he is only tweeting while tripping balls. And he's 15. I've had dumber conversations with smarter people.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:45 AM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Won't Someone Think of My Feelings #bullying
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:56 AM on May 12, 2014


I dunno; kid is 15. Shouldn't he get a pass?

This is all on his parents, for giving him this platform. No 15-year-old should have an Official Twitter Account.
posted by Etrigan at 7:59 AM on May 12, 2014 [8 favorites]


Most tweets by most other people are utter rubbish and even worse than this; at least his spelling is better than most. You could randomly follow pretty much any other 15-ish kids' tweets and get similar, if not even worse, results.
posted by Old'n'Busted at 7:59 AM on May 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


I dunno; kid is 15. Shouldn't he get a pass?

More than just a pass. Who gives a fuck? "Fifteen-year-old writes a bunch of tweets." That's this story. There is zero significance to the fact that he's Jaden Smith. He isn't some brilliantly talented actor, and he's young enough that his roles in Karate Kid and After Earth and whatever else are clearly his parents' fault. (Do you blame Tiffany Brissette for Small Wonder? Besides, all of Smith's movies have sucked for reasons far and beyond wooden acting.) So the only reason to talk about him is, "He's Will Smith's kid," which isn't really a reason for adults to talk about a child they don't know.

If you want to critique his parents' childrearing decisions, it seems there's a fair amount of fodder there. But the kid? He's fifteen. Whatever, go be fifteen.
posted by cribcage at 8:03 AM on May 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


This isn't a critique it's a bunch of funny comics. Come on y'all.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:06 AM on May 12, 2014 [5 favorites]


Why Do Nerds Find No Joy In The Distinctive Style Of A Teenager Tweeting His Dumb Thoughts
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:06 AM on May 12, 2014 [9 favorites]


Do you blame Tiffany Brissette for Small Wonder?

The re-education camp roster says YES.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:15 AM on May 12, 2014 [5 favorites]


This isn't a critique it's a bunch of funny comics. Come on y'all.

It's mocking this kid for writing the kind of stupid "deep" stuff all teens try to write. It does come across as a little mean. Most of us said or wrote some pretty silly stuff when we were teens, but most of us aren't children of movie stars so it didn't make the news.

I'd like to see some site that somehow automatically generates these comics by capturing the real time Twitter update feed and slotting the posts into random blank Garfield comics. I wonder if you'd get some weirdly good cut-up technique type stuff out of it.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:19 AM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


#4. The water and alcohol one. Look at Garfield in the first frame. What the hell is up with him? What's with that smirking expression?? Why does he have fingers on his stomach???
posted by JHarris at 8:23 AM on May 12, 2014


Ask Metafilter, 1985:

"Who can I blame for Small Wonder?"
"Tiffany Brissette" [marked as best answer]
posted by roger ackroyd at 8:25 AM on May 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


It's mocking this kid for writing the kind of stupid "deep" stuff all teens try to write. It does come across as a little mean.

There's ten thousand kids just like him on Twitter. There is only one reason why they're making fun of him and not the others, and that's visibility.
posted by JHarris at 8:33 AM on May 12, 2014


It's a pretty mean-spirited link. For all we know, this fifteen-year-old boy's agent/publicist/parents are hounding him to make sure that weekly Tweet number is within the previously agreed-upon range.
posted by kimberussell at 8:36 AM on May 12, 2014


This would be just as good with any other 15 year old's tweets. That's not a weird backhand way of saying "This isn't good, because it's not special, he's just famous", it's a straightforward way of saying "This is funny. And even if it were some average unknown 15 year old kid, it would be equally funny."

I kinda don't get why people can laugh at dumb things babies, toddlers, and small children say, and then at dumb things adults say, but laughing at dumb things adolescents say is horrible.
posted by Bugbread at 8:38 AM on May 12, 2014


I kinda don't get why people can laugh at dumb things babies, toddlers, and small children say, and then at dumb things adults say, but laughing at dumb things adolescents say is horrible.

Babies, toddlers and small children don't have the same sense of shame that adolescents have -- little kids just don't get that people are laughing at them.
posted by Etrigan at 8:56 AM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Mostly I'm impressed by the vast Garfield knowledge of whoever is putting these together.

Mostly I'm marveling at the idea of a job where "assemble mock-Garfield cartoons out of Jaden Smith's tweets" is a morning task.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:02 AM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


EmpressCallipygos, you have a good point.

On the other hand, Arnold Swayze.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:03 AM on May 12, 2014


Adults making fun of fifteen year olds is unacceptable. What are we, sixteen?
posted by oceanjesse at 9:05 AM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Mostly I'm appalled at the use of a generic comic-y font instead of actual Garfield lettering in the compositions. Show some fucking dedication to your craft.
posted by cortex at 9:08 AM on May 12, 2014 [12 favorites]




how are you folks arguing about this instead of still laughing at the "scoop life" comic
posted by invitapriore at 9:16 AM on May 12, 2014 [5 favorites]


Toddlers and small children absolutely know when people are laughing at something they didn't intend to be funny and it is the HARDEST PART OF MY DAY not to offend them that way. But I laugh a lot when they're not looking.

I found this hilarious. Really though what I'm learning is that every single person on the Internet doing weird things with Garfield is hilarious to me. Apparently I just really love Garfield.
posted by gerstle at 9:24 AM on May 12, 2014 [7 favorites]


Man, I'm glad I missed being a part of the generation-that-posts-all-the-things-online, not that it's their fault at all as it's just what they're exposed to and raised to do, because some of the 'deep' thoughts I would have been spouting... man, for those to be in the wild today... jesus...

How much did I miss this party by you ask? I either used a napkin or a microsoft word document then made the font really, really tiny (modesty, shame, concern, free-association typing, choose your poison as to why) and then saved it somewhere obscure where future me would find it later.

Where did I put that file.... huh... probably for the best... I do wish I could find that napkin though, I swear three friends and I solved the meaning of life on that thing during one epic night of drunkenness.
posted by RolandOfEld at 9:29 AM on May 12, 2014


I didn't read any mockery into this, but my context for it is that Garfield mashups are done to create or highlight surreal humor in Garfield itself, not to mock third parties.

I also didn't even notice at first that Jayden's tweets were interspersed. Scoop Life is hilarious by itself; it's funny because it's found text, not because it's Jayden's text specifically, so preceding it with a screenshot of Jayden's tweet does kind of dull the punchline and invite a more mean-spirited reading.

Garfield remixes are still apex internet, tho.
posted by postcommunism at 9:36 AM on May 12, 2014


For all we know, this fifteen-year-old boy's agent/publicist/parents are hounding him to make sure that weekly Tweet number is within the previously agreed-upon range.

Is this a real thing people do on the Twitters?
posted by Kevin Street at 9:41 AM on May 12, 2014


I bet the person tried this with Family Circus before finding it fit as Garfield.
posted by rhizome at 10:24 AM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


I dunno; kid is 15. Shouldn't he get a pass?

No. Because he's famous, and the famous, consciously or not, are always imposing themselves on us, doing their bit to define our reality. So it's absolutely fair game to impose/define back. In fact, I'd argue that it's kind of our duty. Welcome to the cultural war zone.

Babies, toddlers and small children don't have the same sense of shame that adolescents have -- little kids just don't get that people are laughing at them.

So then, maybe he should stop. As John Lydon so eloquently put it decades ago when grunge was on the rise and rise, and the likes of Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder were pontificating in public on the ravages of fame, "Fuck off! It's so easy NOT to be famous. Just don't be. Fame requires enormous and prolonged effort. So stop it! Fire your publicist, get a real job." (or words to that effect)

Or in Jaden's case, he could just step back from the spotlight, go back to normal school or whatever, be a normal, goofy kid.
posted by philip-random at 10:24 AM on May 12, 2014 [4 favorites]


Kevin Street: " Is this a real thing people do on the Twitters?"

Publicists who run social media accounts often have a set number of posts they need to make each week. Celeb managers may suggest/push/harangue their clients to post at a given frequency. At the corporate level, a certain amount of steady activity is expected from employees who handle social media.
posted by zarq at 10:26 AM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


philip-random: " Or in Jaden's case, he could just step back from the spotlight, go back to normal school or whatever, be a normal, goofy kid."

He can step back from the spotlight, sure. But considering his family, he's never going live a normal life. Celebrity will be imposed upon him whether he wants the spotlight or not.
posted by zarq at 10:30 AM on May 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


So poking people throughout the day with unsolicited texts can be a good thing? Modern life is so weird.
posted by Kevin Street at 10:31 AM on May 12, 2014


Posting to facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest, etc., isn't texting. And usually not directed at someone specific. Am I misunderstanding you?
posted by zarq at 10:40 AM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Nah, you're cool. I'm the one who doesn't understand modern life. I’m cold and there are wolves after me...

Jayden could probably capture this feeling in a tweet.
posted by Kevin Street at 10:47 AM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Let's all sit back and enjoy the appropriateness of this thread's title.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:54 AM on May 12, 2014 [9 favorites]


In 1985, I was inspired by Bruce Springsteen to write the following song. I thank God that there was no internet at the time. I would have been crucified.

American children/They like to dream a lot
If you ask them why/Then they will tell you why not

I just don't know/About the American Dream
The kids are young, they laugh/But someday they'll scream

The American Dream is through
It never will come true
The American Dream is through
It don't work for me or you

Tommy wants to become/President of USA
But just like his dad/He'll spend his life with low pay

His dad once dreamed/Of being President, too
Now he works in a mine/And earns three-seventy-two

The American Dream is through
It never will come true
The American Dream is through
It don't work for me or you

Little Jenny/Wants to marry a rich man
She wants to have/As many kids as she can

Little Jenny/Go and put your dreams away
They won't come true/You know that there is just no way

The American Dream is through
It never will come true
The American Dream is through
It don't work for me or you


Ah, the subtlety and poetry of a fifteen year old...there is little that compares. Of course, I don't know that I could write any better in my advanced age -- I just know now not to set that crap down in writing in the first place.
posted by flarbuse at 11:05 AM on May 12, 2014 [4 favorites]


MeFi Music Challenge.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:06 AM on May 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


I rate it at least 8/10 Bruces.
posted by postcommunism at 11:08 AM on May 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ah, the subtlety and poetry of a fifteen year old...

young Arthur Rimbaud was doing pretty well
posted by philip-random at 11:15 AM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


You seem to all be assuming that this is a teenager being dumb-dumb instead of, y'know, self-aware dumb

Or, to put it into context:

Unawareness Is The Only Sin, And If You Were Aware You Would Know.
posted by naju at 11:28 AM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


#fallow
posted by naju at 11:32 AM on May 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


I remember writing my first song at 12 or 13. An aggressive indictment of suburban conformity and mainstream religion. It was called "Satan's Pig". Wish I still had that legal pad from my dad's office.
posted by kittensofthenight at 11:55 AM on May 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


Really though what I'm learning is that every single person on the Internet doing weird things with Garfield is hilarious to me. Apparently I just really love Garfield.

As much as Jane does?
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 11:56 AM on May 12, 2014


I can't imagine a more innocuous Twitter feed. It's about as harmless and goofy as a DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince track. I've never been a big fan of Will Smith Movie Star, but the man has been consistently decent for his entire time in the spot light, and it seems like his kid is a chip off the old block.

Almost anything is amusing if it's slotted into Garfield.

Garfield is Madlibs for poststructuralists. You've gotta hand it to Jim Davis. The art in those comics lends itself beautifully to absurdity.
posted by echocollate at 12:30 PM on May 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


...thank god I grew up before, you know, the internet because I would hate for any of my teenage pensées to be out there in the wild...

Well, I was only born with one, and I'm glad it didn't get out there either! Sexting just wasn't my thing.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:58 PM on May 12, 2014


No. Because he's famous, and the famous, consciously or not, are always imposing themselves on us, doing their bit to define our reality. So it's absolutely fair game to impose/define back. In fact, I'd argue that it's kind of our duty. Welcome to the cultural war zone.

Not only that but according to his father he totally won that role in that awful movie via auditions.

So he deserves to be mocked for participating in his father's sham auditions where they wasted the time and dreams of people who had zero chance.
posted by srboisvert at 1:00 PM on May 12, 2014


I think there's a shocking amount of projection going on here. Basically everyone who is against this in some way is slotting their 15 year old self into his place and seeing this as like, their whole school plus the whole universe pointing and laughing.

The thing is, none of us know his reaction. You're just taking what you imagine your own would be and slapping it into place and declaring this somehow an awful act of meanness and bile.

What if he doesn't give a fuck? What if he's like "yea, people on the Internet fucking love me so much they took the time to make this fanart stuff out of my tweets. I'm famous!"

There's no way to know unless he actually, you know, responds to this.

Why get all het up on someone else's behalf with no evidence. Just laugh at it, it's fairly brilliant.
posted by emptythought at 1:04 PM on May 12, 2014


I Just Hate The Stupid Formatting Of All His Otherwise Unremarkable Tweets
posted by elizardbits at 1:13 PM on May 12, 2014 [4 favorites]


flarbuse, while The Boss may not have lost any sleep over your lyrical efforts challenging his, uh, bossness, it's actually pretty good for a fifteen-year-old; it shows a lot more empathy than I had when I was that age, anyway. And it's better than "American Woman", so there's that.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:30 PM on May 12, 2014


I dunno; kid is 15. Shouldn't he get a pass?

posted by allthinky at 3:18 PM on May 1


Fifteen-year-old boys are the very last people who should get a pass.
posted by Decani at 1:59 PM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Jaden Smith is the legitimate version of Horse_ebooks. He is a 15-year-old saying stuff that 15-year-olds would say, and the result is pretty amusing.

I bet if I were 15 and had Twitter, I would be pumping all kinds of deranged nonsense into the ether.
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:01 PM on May 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


I Just Hate The Stupid Formatting Of All His Otherwise Unremarkable Tweets

here, have, this, book
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:02 PM on May 12, 2014 [4 favorites]


"You think you get it but you don't"

I dunno. When it's directed at others it sounds like a Hot Topic T-shirt slogan. Or one of those Facebook text-images.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 3:25 PM on May 12, 2014


Mostly I'm appalled at the use of a generic comic-y font instead of actual Garfield lettering in the compositions. Show some fucking dedication to your craft.

So I followed that link in cortex's post, which lead me to this:

Garfield is a comic strip by Jim Davis, who seems like a pretty good guy.

Which lead me to this:

A blogger at the Web site www.haibane.info liked a strip from May 16 in which Jon is shown from above his bed, gradually waking up and freaking out for no apparent reason, calling it “a true masterpiece, in how the presence of Garfield was subtle to begin with, and how the omission truly changes the meaning of the strip in a profound way.

Which included, in the most recent blog post on political correctness and the Hugo Awards, this:

Past SFWA president, Hugo winner, and all-around good guy on the Internet, John Scalzi definitively refutes the idea that Heinlein would not have won a Hugo and does so with genuine insight and understanding of who Heinlein was, what he wrote, and how Heinlein himself promoted SF as a literary genre.

Which leads to the Metafilter thread I commented in last week.

Metafilter: A flat circle.
posted by echocollate at 3:53 PM on May 12, 2014 [6 favorites]


Experience life, rules are made by people no smarter than you, commit to love not to people... Am I missing all the dumb stuff? Are we just assuming that because he's 15 he's not really saying anything wise, he just thinks he is? He's 15 and not one of his tweets appear to be about tits - I think I'm ok about accepting he's actually quite smart. Weird capitals aside.
posted by billiebee at 4:56 PM on May 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


Is there some place other than Twitter that I'm supposed to know this guy from?
posted by thelonius at 5:13 PM on May 12, 2014


Yes. Google knows and I don't think it's a secret.
posted by jessamyn at 5:14 PM on May 12, 2014 [12 favorites]


Using Twitter for your pronouncements is about as public a forum as you can get, so you're kinda fair game. And it's not like these comics are nasty or hateful or anything. "If Newborn Babies Could Speak They Would Be The Most Intelligent Beings On Earth". Fair game.
posted by Brocktoon at 7:02 PM on May 12, 2014


I wish I could find the parody strip where Garfield turns up in the oven, baked into a lasagne.
The artist did a really good job capturing Davis's style. I guess not everything is available on the web.
posted by Pudhoho at 7:35 PM on May 12, 2014


i'm really late to this, but I couldn't resist...

Metafilter: amusing if it's slotted into Garfield.
posted by sodium lights the horizon at 10:44 PM on May 12, 2014


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