November 18, 2021

"I don’t know if it’s going to be funny—it might be really shitty. We’re still going to put it up, because I don’t care! It’s literally throwing spaghetti at the wall. That’s the only thing that’s brought me any sort of success."

Says Petey, quoted in "Petey’s Earnest Songs and Absurd TikToks/He has become famous online for silly and sweet comedy videos. Now fans are discovering his music" (The New Yorker). 

Petey is a TikTok star, one that I've had served up to me many times as I scroll, mesmerized, on TikTok. I like a lot of people on TikTok, often more than I like Petey, so I was interested to see that — according to The New Yorker — Petey is extra special. 

Watch all the Petey you want at TikTok, here. And I'll just embed a few of his things in YouTube form so you who won't look at TikTok know what we're talking about:

 

A sample of the material The New Yorker is giving us as it meets the seeming requirement to keep its readers apprised of what's going on in social media:

Like most online creators, Petey and [his roommate and video director Will] Crane regard their chosen network with a mixture of gratitude and wariness, as if praying to an unpredictable God. Crane, for instance, never uploads from his laptop, because he has come to believe that TikTok prioritizes videos that are sent directly from phones, to reward genuinely user-made content. A few months ago, Petey jeopardized his livelihood by posting a video about grizzled detectives who are horrified by footage of a man wearing shoes and socks and a shirt, but no pants. (The images, of course, were censored, but apparently the characters overused the term “shirt-cocking,” which is associated with the Burning Man festival, where this kind of self-presentation is vigorously discouraged.) TikTok is known as an unusually cheerful online destination, and it maintains that reputation through strict censorship; administrators took the video down, and for a few anxious days Petey worried that he might be thrown off the platform altogether. “I was really anxious for, like, a week,” he says. “I was walking on eggshells—like, ‘Holy shit! This thing is fragile.’ ”

13 comments:

TML said...

That's young Dan Fogelberg

tim maguire said...

Previously, I've only seen his God inventing the octopus one (I forget what he calls it, marshmallow dog or something like that). Now I've seen 2 Petey videos and Jesus appears in both. I enjoyed both, but they don't encourage me to go looking for more.

mikee said...

I once tied my shoe in my workplace, only to look up and find a coworker staring intently at me. She said, "Do you sail?" I replied, nonplussed, "What?" "Do you sail, like on boats with sails?" Again the best I could do was, "What?"

She explained, "I wondered if you sailed, because you know how to tie a correct knot for your shoe. The only other people I see do that are sailors, who know knots. Most people tie what is essentially a slip knot that loosens up over time. You tied your shoe the only right way."

My father, deceased 20 years earlier, and a Merchant Marine sailor in WW II, who taught me to tie my shoes as a wee bairn, would have been delighted to hear this exchange. "Thank you," I said to my coworker, and let it go at that.

rcocean said...

I found it funny. Low integrity knot. haha.

Maybe SNL can hire him so they can have a comedy writer on staff.

madAsHell said...

I don’t know if it’s going to be funny—it might be really shitty.

......and that explains my commenting at Althouse!!!!

Sorry!!

BUMBLE BEE said...

Definitive? Try here... https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ This will be on The Final.

typingtalker said...

Ok. I watched it. I will now return to my regularly scheduled program.

mgarbowski said...

1. I experimented with an alternative method to tie shoes that was promoted as the right way that would not come undone as often. I did not keep records, but after a few months I definitely noticed no reduction in the need to retie on occasion. So I'm on the team of the Petey version who held to the common way.

2. Nothing in that made me rethink my decision to delete TikTok from my phone more than a year ago, and I'm a pretty heavy social app user for my age.

Sprezzatura said...

This blog is a place for folks that hate/dislike/don’t get the fun of Tik Tok.

This is where Althouse tells folks that that SNL and Howard Stern don’t know how to do funny.

This place is cool.

Carry on.

The Crack Emcee said...

The problem with America is people like Ann Althouse would rather you be "informed" of bullshit, like this, than how the NewAge Movement is destroying our culture.

The woman is totally focussed on what's important.

Saint Croix said...

"It's a low integrity knot" is funny.

I never untie my shoes. I'm leather flip-flopping it for most of the year, and when it's cold I slip on my already tied shoes. My knots hold up for weeks, man.

mikee said...

With a simple twist of the shoelace around one's pinky, a high integrity knot with three, rather than two, loops can be accomplished. I do so regularly, and absolutely zero people have ever mentioned it to me. I can do five loops as well, but the bulkiness of the knot requires really long laces to work.

I did a seven loop shoelace knot once, but was worried the universe might take offense, and quickly reverted to two loops for a while, until the anxiety passed.

PM said...

Atop the literary Everest is Clifford Ashley's Book of Knots.