As you might remember, a couple of months ago I posted a video of myself massacring a toaster oven. It was a parody of the disturbing and viral “Angry German Kid,” and it was made for “Talkshow with Spike Feresten,” though it did not make it onto the show. In case you missed it…
Terrifying original video:
Super-hilarious parody:
“They grow up so fast. Here’s that angry German kid, making toast. All grown up now, but apparently no wiser. With completely accurate translation.”
Somehow, this video has caught on, and now has more than 130,000 hits and 700+ comments. And here’s where it gets interesting. And not just as a document of the Fattest I’ve Ever Been (though it’s pretty instructive - I’ve dropped more than 20 lbs since then and still look like I might have swallowed that original German kid…). No, the real attraction is the Comments, some of which are so incredibly weird, angry, clueless, and semi-literate, that it makes me wonder why anyone would ever get involved in mass media if those are the masses that we’re trying to entertain.
Okay - that’s not fair. About half of the commenters got the joke and enjoyed themselves. The others, though, break down into two basic categories, and I’ll excerpt some choice comments here.
1) Outrage and Disdain at Fakeness of Video
These sleuths managed to somehow piece together the fact that this video is a “fake,” and they found it necessary to brag about their powers of deduction:
100% FAKE
that is so fake…
it has got to be 1000% fake because noone can break a toaster that fast and who would film themself makeing toast like seriously come on!
u most like paid the taster cuz i didnt want 2 be in ur gay fake vid and when it was don u raped the toaster so u could get the money back!
I think he isn’t a german, he pronounces the words really strange, i can’t understand him and i’m a german
FAKE FAKE FAKW111
ok either this is staged, or there is something wrong with german people
… and several dozen more like this, though not all so coherent. What’s interesting is that these people outraged about the fakeness of the video seem sharp compared to…
2) People Who Believe
An astounding number of people think that this IS a German guy genuinely getting angry at his toaster oven, and they had some pretty harsh things to say to him.
that guy iz like 30 years old and he’s stressin over a piece of toast wow..hes a dumbass.
yo dumbass! its because you broke it!!!!
omg why did he put a corn muffin in the toaster if he wanted toast…and what the hell is a corn muffin anyway?!?!?!?!? they are all gay retards!!!
How do people get these shots without the guy noticing and then killing the cameraman…?
A significant number of the second category also used their belief in the real-ness of the video as a springboard to bash the German people. For that, I apologize to Germany, even though some of those German-bashers were in fact German. There were also a surprising number of people who had never seen a toaster oven, and were very vocal about pointing out that I was smashing a microwave (lol! prooves its fake u n00b!).
So what have I learned? Absolutely nothing. And my hat is off to all the people who tried to patiently explain that this was a parody (or as one guy put it, a “paradie”). And for all I know, some of the above commenters might have been in on the joke all along, and I’m not getting the subtleties of their art.
When all is said and done, I did get to genuinely beat the tar out of a toaster oven. And for reasons that I can’t quite explain, that was very, very satisfying. rotflmao!
Fanny Roborat
22 comments
SeattleDan
July 11, 2007 at 1:29 pm
1Adam, do you know how long it took me to write 700+ comments? And each under a new guise? I guess I was just trying to bring a little love back into the world.
Boomer
July 11, 2007 at 2:44 pm
2I thought you should have head-butted the toaster and then I thought, nah, that would have been funny, but it would have left scars and you do have a budding TV career to consider. For good or ill. I bet it was at least cathartic.
Harold
July 11, 2007 at 3:32 pm
3U R TEH SO FN DUM 4 DOIN THAT!!!!!!!
Seriously. Was that toaster oven actually plugged in? God, I hope not.
I do think some of the comments in the second category are meta-humor - they get the joke, and are playing along. I like the one about “noticing and then killing the cameraman”.
I’ve been where that kid is, but usually it’s like “ALL I’M TRYING TO DO IS OPEN AN E-MAIL!!!!!! WHY ARE YOU CRASHING??????!!!!” Much better with the new computer, which lets me watch YouTube video, too.
Zee Man
July 11, 2007 at 6:57 pm
4Harriet Miers gets the hook from W just before she has a chance demonstrate why she never should have even been considered for the Supreme Court in the first place. She would have been Class A disaster for the Bush Administration, she would have cracked like an egg, and the White House knew it. She is never going to be allowed to testify and W will go to the mat to make sure she doesn’t. Oh, the things she would say!
cooper
July 11, 2007 at 7:20 pm
5True words, Zee Man. Let me take a moment to veer off target (imagine that!) and put in a good word for Doug Marlette, who was killed yesterday in an automobile accident in Mississippi. To the uninitiated, he was an extraordinary editorial cartoonist (Pulitzer Prize in 1988) and a fine human being. Some of you may have seen his comic strip “Kudzu” (gillian, do I have a witness?) or read his novels about living in the South, chocked full of the sort of eccentric characters that make life a joy. He had a great heart, an appreciation of the absurdities of life, and still had so much to tell to us. What a shame.
Harold
July 11, 2007 at 7:36 pm
6Odd juxtaposition here. I am picturing an “accident” that eliminates the possiblility of Harriet Miers ever testifying, while W. sits at his desk in the Oval Office and howls and smashes things.
siobhan
July 11, 2007 at 8:52 pm
7Right before coming here I was watching a nice little German video. I’m taking the coincidence as a sign that I should share it with you. (good news, it’s in English so no squinting at subtitles.)
Something like Bob, Bobby, Bobaroo
July 11, 2007 at 8:52 pm
8That second video, the one with the guy yelling at the toaster, is clearly fake. The acting is about as good as you’d find in a junior high school version of Our Town. And a real microwave doesn’t break that easily. And besides, that person is clearly trying to effect a Dusseldorfian accent, but the Canadian undertones are unmistakable.
Amateur.
Dale
July 11, 2007 at 9:22 pm
9I was awesome in my junior high school production in Our Town. Seriously. (Stage Manager. Learned ALL the lines. Fell off the stage one night and didn´t miss a beat.)
another Matt
July 12, 2007 at 1:36 am
10Does anyone else find it disturbing that the german kid is not medicated to a better degree? Can we all get together, pool our Lithium prescriptions, and send the excess to him?
Kind of like Shoes for Industry!
Joe Beats
July 12, 2007 at 3:13 am
11Or maybe, Shoes for the Dead, Matt.
Interesting video, Siobhan, and not bad for a commercial about wind energy. It would never work here.
Good image, Harold. I figured it would be bizarre hunting accident of some sort, perhaps involving alcohol, and an aborted attempt at a cover-up.
Bobaroo, Canadian? Really? I was picking up just les petit somme of Jersey.
Dread Polack
July 12, 2007 at 6:07 am
12Is there a consensus as to whether the original German kid video is fake or not. This is the first time I’ve seen it, and I’m guessing it’s just a show as well. Is this obvious to everyone else?
Andreas
July 12, 2007 at 11:31 am
13Dude, can I have the remains of the toaster? I’d put it in my collection of Felberabilia since I’m your biggest fan!
signed: Andreas S., Munich, Germany (seriously!)
Andreas
July 12, 2007 at 11:33 am
14btw, angry german kid seems to be the genuine article. (how sad)
Jim (OJNTNJ)
July 12, 2007 at 11:35 am
15Since many of those comments seem as if they’re coming from middle school age children who are trying to hone their “snarking” skills, it appears that, for some at least, YouTube is merely the cyberspace equivalent of the hallways of Junior High USA.
Welcome to the N00B1111 club (I don’t even know what that means).
The rest of the comments are obviously from the
2826%ers.-laura
July 12, 2007 at 1:13 pm
16Adam, I laughed my guts out watching your toast-making video (again).
Geez…now that I think about it…I hope that’s not how I looked to the other drivers as I listened to w’s press conference on NPR this morning….I mean, can the man be serious when he says that we have to defeat the dark forces of evil? (is that what he said?) I think I was screaming at the radio at that point.
crap…how embarrassing.
David
July 12, 2007 at 1:14 pm
17cooper, say it ain’t so. The creator of Kudzu gone? Dammit…
I can relate to Adam’s pleasant sensation. Who can forget the scene from Blaze in which Earl Long dispatches the lawnmorer that won’t start? I once had an old gas range singe all the hair off my arm when I tried to light the oven. Took the sucker out in the yard and attacked it with an axe. It felt really, really good.
piglet
July 12, 2007 at 2:01 pm
18Adam, you can always tell people that you gained the weight for the part.
It’s called “acting.”
cooper
July 12, 2007 at 2:55 pm
19A follow up on a story from last week about piranhas in the Catawba River reports that the fish was actually a pacu, a member of the same family, but not as likely to regard a skinny-dipper as a smorgasbord. I know I certainly feel better.
http://www.charlotte.com/mobile/story/194085.html
Fran
July 12, 2007 at 9:10 pm
20Well, all I know is that none of MY keyboards ever worked after I smashed them like that.
I’m much better now.
Beth
July 13, 2007 at 9:24 am
21Oh, how I pity Little German Boy’s first girlfriend; but I pity Adam Felber’s neighbors more.
Murray
July 18, 2007 at 8:35 am
22Wow, that is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. I watched it twice and my stomach still hurts from laughing so hard.
Yes, I have great frustrations with my machines all of the time, but rather than just shoot them (up here that’s what people do when they get mad), I get back with a more passive aggressive tact. Let’s see how my TV feels in the morning when it wakes up to orange juice poured over its innards, and for the past several computers I just dispatch them with a well placed virus. As they die I let them know who did it.
BUT NOT BIKES! Any one who messes with bikes DOES get shot by me!