Last week, Kanye West released a collaboration with Paul McCartney, "Only One," at the turn of the new year. The team-up was as touching as it was rife for joke material on Twitter, and a tweet from 140-character funnyguy, podcast hero, and FADER-approved Cool Person Desus Nice pretty much took the cake:
Kanye has a great ear for talent. This Paul McCartney guy gonna be huge.
— Desus Nice (@desusnice) January 1, 2015
You laughed, I fav'd (true story), and life went on as usual—right? Not quite: Desus' tweet has taken on a strange second half-life in the key of whoisboniver.tumblr.com (which has, strangely, become a shill-portal for boxed healthy snacks). That is, people are taking the root of the joke—that songwriting genius and mega-megastar Paul McCartney is a fresh new musical talent discovered by Kanye West—as a sincere statement. (The hubbub resembles Twitter user Michael Hale's Neil deGrasse Tyson "dumbass nerd" tweet being widely misinterpreted by science aficionados and internet dweebs alike.) Take ABC morning show Good Morning America, for example:
@desusnice that time good morning america took your tweet v seriously pic.twitter.com/PYQpdbBDBF
— kalkutta (@djkalkutta) January 5, 2015
It doesn't get any better, though, than the below Vine of newscasters singling out (and misquoting!) Desus' tweet:
"Poor folks, they just don't know any better," the newscaster says at the end. Uh, you can say that again. FADER reached out to Desus with some Q's regarding the whole affair:
Is this the most attention a single tweet of yours has gotten? Surprisingly this isn't my most controversial tweet. I mean I've had a number of previous Anti-Beatles tweets that earned me a bunch of responses but the most replies I ever got was from my "Does Poland even have Beaches?" tweet during the 2012 London Olympics. Apparently they showed my tweet on television under some segment about "Ignorant Americans". I received angry tweets in broken english for the whole weekend, including several telling me to take my "overweight American self back to the trailer park".
Have you received any death threats for this tweet? I haven't received any death threats but this is 2015 and we now have the "Meet me in Temecula" law regarding internet disagreements so if anyone feels strongly about Paul McCartney hit me up cuz I GOT TIME NOW CUZ.
What's your favorite Beatles song? My favorite Beatles song is "Hey Jude" because its an anthem of Caucasity that right now some first year guitar student is playing on the Quad of their local university. It's one of those terrible, terrible songs where anyone within earshot feels the need to sing along with a huge goofy smile on their face. UGH.
What do you predict is next for the career of the young, breakout talent that is Paul McCartney? I think this Paul McCartney chap (with some leadership from Kanye) might have a future in this music game. He just has to keep his head on straight and avoid making songs which feature a ukulele.
