Smash Mouth performing at Sturgis (and their callous disregard for a deadly pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands in the US and globally) aside, I will have a soft spot in my heart for them. Their borderline trutherism over the virus has cooled my admiration for them considerably, of course. But what they did at the outset of this decade was destroy cool, cynical detachment with aggressive earnestness.

I’m an internet old timer who was on Something Awful before the diaspora triggered by effective moderation scattered the neo-dadaist posters to the four corner of the web. As such, I have always maintained a familiarity and sometime friendship with various former members. This is all to say that I know of many of the members of the awkwardly anointed Weird Twitter. They’re a strange hodgepodge who invented shitposting before shitposting was shitposting, who tried to one up each other with gross out and bizarre imagery and copypastas and trolling.

I can tell you with no uncertain degree of confidence that many of them were dealing with some sort of pain. A lot of them dealt with mental illness, physical disabilities, intense loneliness, abuse, neglect, alcoholism, you name it. But it was very hard to grab a sincere moment from any of them because this was how they coped with the world. They indulged in the ego defense mechanism of simply not thinking about it to unhealthy extremes. It helped to soothe the self-loathing and self-pity.

It was out of this crucible of Schadenfreude that Weird Twitter and Something Awful contributor Jon Hedren (going by @fart on Twitter) came up with a joke. That joke was that he would pay the lead singer of Smash Mouth to eat 24 eggs. It was a comically small amount of money, $20.

But it’s not that simple, is it? Hedren didn’t pick someone he admired–in fact, I am loath to believe that Hedren really admires anyone. Smash Mouth, especially at the start of the 2010s, was a punchline. Even then, something of a lazy one. So in the public sphere of Twitter, Hedren thought it would be funny to target what he saw to be low-hanging fruit for a dumb, cheap joke. This joke was clearly meant to be ameliorative. After all, Hedren hadn’t written the hacky Shrek anthem “All Star”! People could laugh at this and he could make a quick article, and that’s that.

And this is why I admire Steve Harwell, even despite his recent idiocy.

Despite his best attempts to ignore it, a vocal contingent of Twitter folks kept reminding him about Hedren’s challenge until he ended up parlaying it into a charity event hosted by his friend, Guy Fieri, at the opening of his new restaurant.

Gamely, he attempted to eat 24 eggs and failed, but others helped. Money was raised for charity. Hedren, who showed up looking very uncomfortable hiding behind his iPhone, attempted to recast the event heroically on Vice. The video speaks for itself: Harwell is surrounded by friends and fans and admirers, raises money for charity, makes people laugh, and has a good day. Hedren skulks about nervously like he’s holding in hot panic diarrhea while a shark mascot dances around him.

Sincerity won the day.

Listen, I enjoy a good joke, I love a good rip on people, and cynicism is my fucking anthem. I don’t trust anything that anyone says is good and popular. I’m a bone-drenched iconoclast to the core. But I need to remember to pull my head out of my ass and not be like Hedren was that day. I gotta have fun and stop mainlining irony to dull my pain. Harwell had a really good day just being a real person engaging with people genuinely, even in the face of blistering contempt masquerading as offbeat humor.

I don’t wanna be like that. I wanted to be a real and genuine person too. That’s why I took off the slow deadly drip of irony. I realized I was just finding a way to isolate myself from the world so I didn’t get hurt by it. And it didn’t do a damn bit of good anyway.

Dose makes the poison. Be careful.

  • Neckbeard_Prime [they/them,he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    4 years ago

    Holy shit, thank you; I was getting worried that I was the only one who remembered the “SMASH MOUTH EAT THE EGGS” bit. I missed the denouement back when it happened, but I guess I’m not that surprised at how Hedren handled it. I think it’s less that he was irony-poisoned and more that internet comedy writers tend to be awkward dorks in-person, and Hedren was no exception. As an awkward dork myself, I really can’t fault him for that. Duder looks like a deer in the headlights when a dumb internet joke took on a life of its own and he managed to get himself dragged in front of a crowd with two celebrities.

    Live by the keyboard, die by the keyboard.

    • gayhobbes [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      1·
      4 years ago

      I think it’s less that he was irony-poisoned and more that internet comedy writers tend to be awkward dorks in-person

      I think these are the same thing. Hedren is clearly an awkward dork, so it’s how he copes. He looked like a racist nephew at a family reunion while everyone’s laughing and eating eggs and smiling and clapping. The key to this, to me, is the Vice article. I’d be willing to see him as simply a goober, but look how he paints himself a hero here:

      I’m not bragging. On the contrary, this is a confession. I, along with several thousand Internet people, forced his hand and made the otherwise nice-enough lead singer from Smash Mouth eat eggs until he either cried or was sweating so hard it looked like crying. I’d almost go as far as to call it extreme cyberbullying. Yeah, now that I think about it, I guess we cyberbullied the “All Star” guy.

      This whole humblebrag shit doesn’t fly with me. He’s trying to make it sound like all of this was an accident. I’m sure he didn’t intend for it to blow up like this, but you can still see from the video that everyone is having fun. His spin on events is very dark and depressing. I am guessing he doesn’t go to many parties since he just hangs out and takes video the whole time. I remember that the Something Awful forums actually made fun of him and gave the W to Harwell at the time.

  • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    4 years ago

    Stray observations:

    • Check the discography of Nana Grizol ( Ex1, Ex2 ) if you haven’t already.

    • I think there’s a needle to be thread here; irony, meta-irony, and post-irony can all be used for non-cynical effect. Vonnegut claimed he only knew the moral to one of his stories, Mother Night, with a moral of “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” That’s more typically taken to mean avoid putting on that sort of hard cynical shell or any other negative attributes because that’s essentially who you turn into. But the moral works both ways. Through the magic of absurdism, you can be ironically pleasant and optimistic even in the face of everything falling apart. It’s still a sort of coping, but decisively a less toxic one.

  • coomsockrates [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    4 years ago

    Very interesting philosophypost, I didn’t know Smash Mouth still existed as of 2020.

    I want to be a real and genuine person too.

    What are the characteristics of a “real” and “genuine” person to you OP? Asking in good faith, since you have clearly thought about it.

    • EugeneDebs [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      4 years ago

      …what passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human […] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naive and goo-prone and generally pathetic…

      • David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

      I really connect with this line, I think it’s really easy, and “cool” to be a cynic, but to be sincere, is to be vulnerable, and it’s really hard, but ultimately, is a more honest representation of the human condition.

  • TillieNeuen [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    4 years ago

    Reminds me of when people organized a mission to “exile” Pitbull to Alaska. It was supposed to be a joke on him, but he was really charming about it and the article I read at the time made it sound like he had a great time and everyone in the town loved it. I ended up loving him a little bit too, I have to admit.

    • gayhobbes [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      1·
      4 years ago

      Ah yeah, I totally forgot about that! And the Walmart was up in the fuckin Arctic circle so Pitbull was the biggest celebrity who’d ever come to visit by a clear mile. It was a bullying move that ended up being an unintended good thing.

      • TillieNeuen [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        1·
        4 years ago

        It’s a story I tend to bring up every so often. I can’t say I’m a big fan of his music, but I ended up being a bit of a fan of him just from reading that article. He just seemed so enthusiastic about going to such a different place than where he was used to, and open to having a great time regardless of why people wanted to send him there. Genuinely heartwarming stuff.