By Vivian Kane | Celebrity | May 8, 2014 |
By Vivian Kane | Celebrity | May 8, 2014 |
When most of us get bored, we drift around Facebook or watch YouTube videos of different species of animals becoming friends, right? When Patton Oswalt gets bored, he sets Twitter on fire. Earlier this afternoon, this tweet showed up on Patton’s page.
Oops. Just deleted my last Tweet. & would like to apologize to seniors & sufferers of Lyme disease. I was out of bounds.
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 7, 2014
Pretty soon, another apology came up.
Yikes. Had to delete another Tweet. I crossed a line on that one. Also, I thought 12 YEARS A SLAVE and THE BUTLER were brilliant.
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 7, 2014
And then they just started pouring out.
PLEASE disregard last Tweet. Already deleted. Transphobia is hurtful, and I'm a big fan of HEDWIG & THE ANGRY INCH.
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 7, 2014
Forgive me. Previous Tweet deleted. Sorry. Yes, we all know what "grape", "ape", "tape" & "cape" rhyme with. I'm an asshole.
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 7, 2014
Previous Tweet very hurtful. Already deleted. @KimKardashian & @JoeBiden are national treasures. As are our Native American friends.
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 7, 2014
Another Tweet deleted. I apologize. That one was just mean. Go ahead & block me, @AnthonyCumia & @thelindywest. #tolerance
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 7, 2014
The FUCK is wrong with me? Last Tweet deleted. The victims of the Holocaust deserve our highest respect, not penis limericks.
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 7, 2014
Gonna leave Twitter for a bit. Deleted my last Tweet. Just because "Don Sterling" rhymes with "Gone curling" doesn't make it funny.
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 7, 2014
Of course, as most of us who have a passing familiarity with Patton or humor in general probably surmised pretty quickly, there were no deleted tweets. Just apologies for things he never said. Still, that didn’t diminish the outrage hurled in his direction. And Oswalt had a grand time retweeting not just his fans:
Comedically, @pattonoswalt is possibly the bravest & uncompromisingly brilliant tweeter out there.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) May 7, 2014
But also the incensed. Some favorites include “the people behind you in your profile picture are being implicated in your profound ambigyny (sic). How does that make you feel?” and “fall into a fucking dumpster.” And to someone who called him out on his nonexistent rape joke, he responded with what seems to be the entire point of this tirade.
I didn’t make a rape joke.But YOU somehow heard one in your head. Hm.
Now I’m Team Patton for life, and I appreciate his willingness to have hate spewed at him, but I’ve never been able to get behind people who love to argue for arguing’s sake. Self-proclaimed devil’s advocates have always been my least favorite conversation companions. The shit-stirring, the poking the bear, the retweeting regular people (to your 1.7 million followers) who only suffer from the incurable malady of supreme idiocy, it all feels too much like bullying. Patton went on The Late Late Show tonight and talked to Craig Ferguson about what went down, but the clip cuts out just as he’s about to maybe explain why he wanted to do this, beyond mere boredom.
Maybe he just likes poking the bear.