I Think Part Of What Makes The McElroys So Lovable For Millennials And Gen Z Is That They’re A REAL

I think part of what makes the McElroys so lovable for millennials and gen z is that they’re a REAL underdog success story. All the ones about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs starting Apple and Microsoft from sheds and Jeff Bezos starting Amazon from a shed are wrong. They all came from well-off backgrounds with upper-class privilege coming out their goddamn ears, but the brothers didn’t.

They really were just three ordinary boys from West Virginia, and if you listen to Griffin’s Florida State lecture (the whole thing’s on youtube) he talks about how rough things were for them when they started their podcast. He mentions how they were in mourning over their mother, fighting all the time, and ready to separate forever, but held on and decided not to abandon each other in the thick of it. And things were still rough, because their father had to work stupid hours at the radio station to support himself, and the brothers were trying to make it in game journalism.

And then they started MBMBaM, a goofy bad advice podcast full of improvised bits and comedy segments, and it blew up. They started TAZ, a fun D&D podcast where they played with their dad, and were able to bond together and let him retire comfortably on the revenue it generated, and now Clint oversees the TAZ graphic novel series that’s still releasing issues and spends boatloads of quality time with his three sons. Monster Factory is just a funny game stream where Justin and Griffin try to destroy character creators as much as possible, but it’s one of their biggest IPs. Their TV show was short-lived but explosively popular among their fanbase.

They sell out entire stadiums and Lin-Manuel Miranda plays them We Didn’t Start the Fire parodies as they walk on and people lose their collective minds. Tom Holland fanboys over them at SDCC. People come from all over the place to hear them perform, and that performance never got less authentic. It’s just three brothers and their dad being goofy together and trying to make each other laugh. And the laughter and love they carried for each other was so contagious that it made an entire world of people love them, too.

Maybe they’re a bit weird, and their jokes don’t always land, but they’re not always supposed to, because it really is just a tight-knit family living in the moment. And in this world where our two generations may be close to each other but horribly disadvantaged socio-economically, the idea that these three boys carved out a way for themselves through the sheer force of their own happiness out of such a dark place is more hopeful than any “millennials are killing the mayo industry” article ever written.

More Posts from Icannotspelldefinnnately and Others

icannotspelldefinnnately

2 years ago

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icannotspelldefinnnately

5 years ago

i basically assume that people don’t like me unless they explicitly tell me they like me and then periodically remind me

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icannotspelldefinnnately

6 years ago

Hey American followers!

I know you don’t tend to reblog any politics of countries other than your own… but the Canadian Federal Election is going to be this year in October!

In Canada we don’t replace 1/3 of the government every couple of years, we replace every single seat. EVERYONE has to run for a seat all at the same time, through the whole nation. Party that gets the most votes? Their leader usually becomes the Prime Minister.

We need your help (And you can help by reblogging this too!)

Not enough information on Canadian politics and issues is circulated on tumblr. Despite there being a lot of Canadians, somehow most of us can go a whole year without seeing a post about Canada, even when we make a point about following Canadians.

The US election will be ramping up in the early primaries when Canada’s entire election happens (We don’t campaign very long and we have a LOT of rules about campaigning too).

Trudeau has failed us. Entirely. He is doing nothing about climate change, he’s chummy with Trump, he violates land treaties, he pushes pipelines through unceeded territory, he’s having our native peoples arrested for protesting this, he has not investigated the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, he’s been a HUGE fan of The Glass Cliff while calling himself a feminist, he has repeatedly broken promises including electoral reform (our system is actually not great! Maybe not as rigged as yours, but it badly favours the Liberal and Conservative parties!), and been over-all pretty bad for us. It’s especially infuriating that we see all of this and also you guys reblogging photo-op pieces of him going on about how great he is for going to pride and being cute (That’s actually not an indicator here when only one party leader hasn’t gone in like, 20 years).

We need the NDP or the Greens this year. We need them to have a loud voice at the very least. We need your help to do this. We need you to blog this time, for once, about an election that isn’t american. Our politics affect you too. We affect you as much as you affect us, we are neighbours and unless y’all invade us again some time soon, it’s not likely to change. Help us get someone better into office. Please, reblog posts about the Canadian Election when they start appearing in September/October.

Americans Can And Should Reblog This Post Please.

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icannotspelldefinnnately

5 years ago

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but this feels vaguely relevant…

Read the full text of It Can’t Happen Here on Project Gutenberg: X

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icannotspelldefinnnately

4 years ago

not be like “ugh the Youths” but i think kids nowadays have gotten Too Comfortable on the internet.

like i see these tweets on twitter like “hey im 14 and i just got kicked out pls rt so i can find somewhere to stay im in x state/city” and like HOLY SHIT i cannot emphasize enough how incredibly dangerous this is. you’re broadcasting to EVERYONE that you are young, vulnerable, and desperate AND information on how to find you!!!! like i know you meant for that to be just for your friends on twitter but that’s a public tweet!!! ANYONE could see it!!! like I saw it and i have no idea who you are you are not in my circle and yet!!! so like WHO ELSE has seen it!!!

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icannotspelldefinnnately

6 years ago

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icannotspelldefinnnately

6 years ago

so when virginia woolf writes paragraph long sentences it’s “revolutionary” and “starts a literary movement” but when I do it I’m “grammatically incorrect” and “need to revise this paper”

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icannotspelldefinnnately

5 years ago

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icannotspelldefinnnately

5 years ago

Electronic Frontier Foundation

The EARN IT Bill Is the Government’s Plan to Scan Every Message Online

Imagine an Internet where the law required every message sent to be read by government-approved scanning software. Companies that handle suc

With all of the COVID-19 news and panic going on, the U.S. Government has been sneakily trying to pass the so called EARN IT Bill which would remove end-to-end encryption on messages and calls, and allow a scanning software to read all of them. Websites that don’t comply will lose protections.

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