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If you took to Twitter in the first weekend of 2021, you were probably wondering why everyone was talking about beans.
The answer: “Bean Dad” has become Twitter’s first “main character“of the year, the person who has such a bad grip that people feel pressured to dive in.
On Saturday night, musician and podcaster John Roderick shared the story of his hungry 9-year-old daughter who wanted baked beans. Twenty-three tweets later, we’ve got the whole story.
So yesterday my daughter (9) was hungry and I was doing a puzzle so I said over my shoulder “bake beans”. She said, “How?” like all kids do when they want YOU to do it, so I said, “Open a box and put it in a jar.” She brought me the can and said “How do you open it?”
– john roderick (@johnroderick) January 2, 2021
So I said, “How do you think this works?” She studied it and applied it to the top of the box, to the side. She struggled for a moment and with a big dramatic sigh, “Will you please open the box?” Apocalypse Dad was delighted: a teaching moment has just fallen on my knees!
– john roderick (@johnroderick) January 2, 2021
Basically, the child wanted to eat the baked beans. Roderick saw it as a “teaching moment”. He wanted her to open the can herself. Her daughter didn’t understand how a can opener works because she is 9 years old. Roderick wanted her to understand how the can opener itself worked. Six hours later, the frustrated 9-year-old figured out how to open the can of beans with the can opener.
The story and the tone in which it was told infuriated Twitter. “She’s 9”, “Apocalypse Dad” and an exasperated all-caps “SIX HOURS” aired on Twitter all Sunday morning.
All I hear is “This time I told my dad I was hungry and he wouldn’t let me eat for another six hours for no good reason.”
Like … did you ever experience this when you were a kid? Hungry for too long and just feel sick and might pass out? No? So don’t do it to the child– Communist mermaid ☭ (@a_queer_ius) January 3, 2021
Just open the box and give your kid some beans that you’re psycho
– Ed Zitron (@edzitron) January 3, 2021
You are an asshole, man.
From one dad to another, this story is nothing to be proud of.
You have taught your daughter how little you care about her needs, and only your need to show how smarter you are than her.
FEED IT, THEN TEACH.
Then delete your account.– BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) January 3, 2021
People also had jokes.
Yesterday my daughter called me and told me that she had been abducted by kidnappers. She asked me if I could use my special skills, acquired over a very long career, to get myself back. “A-ha! I thought. “A good time for learning!” (1/278)
– Jason O. Gilbert (@gilbertjasono) January 3, 2021
Someday Bean Dad will need her help with tech or end-of-life care, and she will have her revenge.
– Franklin Leonard (@franklinleonard) January 3, 2021
Bean Dad’s speech was so important that people felt they had to participate.
The main feature of Discourse ™ ️ is to feel compelled to weigh in, even though you know you don’t have to and don’t even want to. That said, fucking bean daddy
– sarah jeong (@sarahjeong) January 3, 2021
Bean Dad obviously had to respond to negative responses.
The one thing people are trickier about than parenting is dog ownership.
– john roderick (@johnroderick) January 3, 2021
The best part about being reported by these parent trolls is that they keep talking about how much child abuse depriving my kid of baked beans for SIX HOURS is. Six hours is the time between meals. Lunch at noon, dinner at six. They literally say child abuse.
– john roderick (@johnroderick) January 3, 2021
Now, as a father of two (a 5 year old and a 1.5 year old) I can tell you that personally I wouldn’t spend my kids six hours trying to figure out how to open a box. of beans. I also try to avoid criticizing other parenting “styles”.
Roderick took 23 tweets to tell a story in the most condescending way possible. This is something you would do if you were trying to get readers to hate you.
And that’s what made me think this whole story was written on purpose just to get people up. A fan of Roderick’s podcast agrees.
Hey I’m gonna hold my neck: This is written in John’s voice on his Roderick on the Line podcast. He tells this story in a heightened way and in a tone that longtime listeners would recognize as both a joke and self-altering. There is a completely lost context.
– Tyler A. (@Sauce_) January 3, 2021
This follows, especially if you take into account that Ken Jennings of Danger! fame is his podcast co-host.
Extremely jealous and annoyed that my podcast co-host is a dictionary entry and I never will.
– Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) January 3, 2021
So what’s the moral of this story?
It’s not about parents, or beans, or joke writing. For me, the moral of the story was crafted perfectly by Twitter user @maplecocaine in 2019.
Every day on Twitter there is a main character. The goal is never to be
– maple cocaine (@maplecocaine) January 3, 2019
Every day a person’s opinion on Twitter is so hot that it triggers an avalanche of criticism, making that person the “main character” of the day.
Even though we’re in a whole new year, full of new hopes and dreams … some things stay the same.
UPDATE: January 3, 2021, 4:51 p.m. ET: One of the consequences of being the Twitter “main character” of the day is that people really start to look at your journey.
As old Roderick tweets come to light, it may be time for him to take after his podcast co-host Ken Jennings, who recently had to apologize for his own old, insensitive tweets.
UPDATE: January 3, 2021, 5:43 p.m. ET: The Twitter account for the “My Brother, My Brother and I” podcast announced that it will no longer use Roderick’s music on the show.
We appreciate that John lets us use one of his songs as the theme of MBMBaM for almost a decade, but his response to the current situation is emblematic of a pattern of behavior that is contrary to the energy we are trying to achieve. ‘bring to what we do, and so it’s time for us to move on.
– MBMBaM (@MBMBaM) January 3, 2021
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