It’s Tuesday, so here’s a new stupid internet thing for you to enjoy, I guess.
As can be expected given recent events, there’s another big debate going on in the United States about gun control. Because America is (literally) constitutionally incapable of discussing gun laws without completely losing their minds, social media has been a blaring foghorn for the past several days.
But, among the tragedy and the raw emotion, this tweet in response to a mild call for assault weapons regulation from country artist Jason Isbell:
This is a powerful tweet which evokes commensurately powerful imagery. “30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 minutes while my small kids play,” is like a savage pen-stroke from Hemingway. Ponder it. 30 to 50 feral hogs. Within 3-5 minutes. Small kids playing. It’s an epic in under 280 characters.
Maybe it’s because emotions around the subject are somewhat heightened at the moment, but – for reasons which are still somewhat alien to me – everyone instantly lost their mind, chugging out an industrial quantity of memes faster than 30-50 feral hogs swarm a yard full of kids.
Hate when 30-50 feral hogs run into my yard as my kids play, forcing me to dual wield AR-15s as I mow them down https://t.co/NR1Pzi0TUx
— WEF Enjoyer (@lib_crusher) August 5, 2019
ME, SEEING 29 FERAL HOGS RUNNING INTO MY YARD: Careful now, kids.
ME, SEEING EXACTLY ONE ADDITIONAL HOG RUNNING INTO MY YARD: pic.twitter.com/6MTXSDK8qb
— Grant Brisbee (@GrantBrisbee) August 5, 2019
— bibo (@biboofficial) August 5, 2019
https://twitter.com/ATFulemin/status/1158455519855689730?s=20
It goes like this
the fourth the fifth
fifty hogs
surround my kids— Alan (@alan_maguire) August 5, 2019
https://twitter.com/DLPatsThoughts/status/1158517629080014848
https://twitter.com/iamTannenbaum/status/1158510330584211459
*sees 29 feral hogs enter my lawn* eh, what can you do
*the 30th feral hog enters my lawn* TIME TO LIGHT THESE PIGGIES UP
— AK Lingus (@aklingus) August 5, 2019
You still wake up sometimes, don’t you Clarice? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the 30-50 feral hogs
— lauren (@NotABigJerk) August 5, 2019
take me down to the paradise city
where the hogs are feral and there’s 30-50— dan (@nomiddlesliders) August 5, 2019
I could go on and on. I won’t, because searching ‘feral hogs’ on Twitter will provide you enough content to waste the rest of your day, and I’d rather you proceeded with that at your own volition.
What I will do instead is think aloud about what makes the phrase ’30-50 feral hogs’ so inherently funny. I think it’s the broad (but not too broad) range of hoggery being speculated on here. The difference between 30 and 50 ravenous feral hogs swarming your defenceless children as they innocently play in the yard – especially if you intend to blast them away with a semiautomatic rifle – is, I imagine, substantial.
Also funny is the notion of this immense volume of hogs descending on your unprotected yard within a timeframe as short as 3-5 minutes; a veritable tsunami of pigs which you surely wouldn’t be able to halt without raw military firepower.
For what it’s worth, the guy who posted the original tweet is steadfastly standing by his 30-50 feral hog question, battling the onslaught of chuckleheads having a laugh:
People have said I should eat my kids. That protective services should come and take them away from me.
Spend 5 mins looking thru the threads.
And I didn’t delete it.
— Willie McNabb 🐗 (@WillieMcNabb) August 5, 2019
I could not find evidence that anyone told him to ‘eat [his] kids’ but also I don’t entirely doubt it because there are odd units on the internet who would absolutely freak out when seeing a viral tweet and reply with something of that nature.
Let me leave you with this: 30-50 feral hogs. It’s not going to leave your mind today.
