So, yesterday my daughter (9) was hungry and I was doing a jigsaw puzzle so I said over my shoulder “make some baked beans.” She said, “How?” like all kids do when they want YOU to do it, so I said, “Open a can and put it in pot.” She brought me the can and said “Open it how?”
— john roderick (@johnroderick) January 2, 2021
Have you seen Bean Dad trending on Twitter today?
John Roderick is a musician (The Long Winters, Harvey Danger), and podcaster (Roderick On The Line, Road Work, Omnibus, and Friendly Fire). He's also the father to a nine-year-old daughter, and yesterday on Twitter, he decided to share what I'm assuming he thought was a hilarious anecdote about what an amazing father he is.
His daughter was hungry, so he told her to make a can of baked beans. She did not know how to open the can, and he realized that he'd never shown her how to use a can opener. Fair enough! They can be fiddly buggers. But instead of telling her how they work, or showing her how they work, he gave her this "Apocalypse Dad" speech:
I said, “The little device is designed to do one thing: open cans. Study the parts, study the can, figure out what the can-opener inventor was thinking when they tried to solve this problem.” (The can opener is also a bottle opener, but I explained that part wasn’t relevant.)
— john roderick (@johnroderick) January 2, 2021
So his daughter sat, and struggled. He kept working on his jigsaw puzzle, of course. After he continued to refuse to help her, she said fuck baked beans, and gave up. He told her unless she opened the can, nobody was eating anything today. Oddly enough, my parents also tried to pull this with me once. I hated baked beans, and refused to eat them. My parents told me I couldn't leave the kitchen table until I ate them. I sat there for three hours before they gave in, and to this day, I don't like them (the beans and my parents).
At this point she said, “I don’t want baked beans” and marched off. Apocalypse Dad went into full ‘The Road’ Mode! “Sweetheart, neither of us will eat another bite today until we get into this can of beans.” She screamed “AUGH!” like Lucy Van Pelt. She read a book for awhile.
— john roderick (@johnroderick) January 2, 2021
Fearing she would never eat again, or more likely just trying to get her father to stop bothering her, she goes back to work on the can. So how long did this go on for? How long would you sit and talk about can openers with your obviously frustrated child? At one point do you just say, clearly they don't get it, I should help, so that next time, she knows?
Eventually she had it all figured out. She had the placement of the tool, she could turn the handle and the can would spin (we were down on the floor by this point), but the “kachunk” of puncturing the lid still eluded us. We’d been at it for SIX HOURS on and off. We were hungry.
— john roderick (@johnroderick) January 2, 2021
Did he ever actually help her? No. Is he proud of himself? Of course.
I’m proud of her too. I know I’m infuriating. I know this is parenting theater in some ways. I suffer from a lack of perseverance myself, and like all parents throughout history I’m trying to correct my own mistakes in the way I educate my child. She sees through this.
— john roderick (@johnroderick) January 2, 2021
Does he think that he's right and you're all wrong? You betcha.
Maybe not surprisingly, none of the people who hate my can opener story follow me on twitter, and as far as I can tell none of the people who follow me hate the story. Two different worlds. Sometimes a portal opens up between the worlds and you get a glimpse of the void.
— john roderick (@johnroderick) January 3, 2021
UPDATE: "Bean Dad" is actually too nice of a name for a guy who describes himself as a "student of H*tler" and casually uses the N-word and many other slurs as seen in the screenshots here.
UPDATE AGAIN: He deleted his Twitter and MBMBaM have announced that they're no longer using the theme song he wrote for them.
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
← Ctrl ← Alt
Ctrl → Alt →
← Ctrl ← Alt
Ctrl → Alt →