Shit My Dad Says Gets a TV Deal after 72 tweets

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/09/sometimes-twitter-accounts-about-sht-your-dad-says-get-you-tv-deals/

by vaksel • 17 years ago

83 54 17 years ago

Mongoose2• 17 years ago

Poor 1001 Rules for My Unborn Son. 406 updates and all I got was this lousy book deal. http://rulesformyunbornson.tumblr.com/

rick888• 17 years ago

Great site! I just checked it out and couldn't stop reading.

unalone12• 17 years ago

If you need to break the addiction, read a few pages looking for misogyny, bigotry, and casual discrimination against various sorts of people. Your habit'll break by sun-up.

ErrantX2• 17 years ago

It looked good until...

388. If you don't know what a knob does, don't fool with it.

I couldn't bring myself ever to give such bad advice to anyone :(

;)

MicahWedemeyer2• 17 years ago

Only 72, but they are hilarious as hell. Quality, not quantity.

unalone12• 17 years ago

Shitmydadsays has become one of the best parts of my weekly routine. It's not just how funny they are: There's a poetry to how he speaks that's as good as any one-liners I've ever read.

mynameishere2• 17 years ago

I looked through them all and found not the slightest bit of "quality". Not sure what you mean by "quality". Cheap, fake crap?

ED: Quit downmodding me and read the god damned things, people:

"When I used to live in Los Angeles, I used to step in human feces a lot."

It's absolute garbage. Raise your standards a bit. You only get one life and one brain.

unalone12• 17 years ago

The meter is beautiful, the phrasing is eloquent, and the concept is hilarious.

You don't know shit, and you're not shit. Don't take that the wrong way, that was meant to cheer you up.

Sometimes life leaves a hundred dollar bill on your dresser, and you don't realize until later that it's because it fucked you.

We didn't have a prom. Dancing wasn't allowed...What's Footloose?...That's the plot of the movie? That sounds like a pile of shit.

It's identifiable, it's beautiful, and it's poetic.

These are the sorts of phrasings that can only come out of an old and wise and hilarious person. The confidence in forming his thoughts that way; the lazy beat of the language. I spend an inordinate amount of time learning to write dialogue, and let me tell you: If Justin's writing that himself, he's got a career as a screenwriter ahead of him. That's some brilliance right there.

Hopefully the examples I've picked do justice without my having to say too much. If you'd like to press your luck, and feel like spreading your smug cockery online without warrant, then I'll go Communications major on your ass and comprehensively make you look stupid in front of people on a web forum that you won't ever know in real life, but I think that would be a waste of both our times.

adamhowell• 17 years ago

It's a great story -- especially since Shit My Dad Says is hilarious -- but this does more to prove how desperate the networks are for hits in the 18-34 demographic and how poor their judgement has become (see 'Cavemen') than it does to prove anything about Twitter talent shining through, etc.

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

This doesn't look especially "desperate" to me. They gave the guy "a deal". The article doesn't mention the price. It doesn't mention a pilot, let alone an order of six episodes. It says there's a writer, a co-writer, a producer, and a press release. That's all just paper, and precious little paper so far. The sunk cost of this for the network could literally range all the way down to: The cost of printing out that press release.

(Because, believe me, if you're an aspiring screenwriter and a studio calls and offers to read your spec script, put out a press release, introduce you to a producer whose name you've actually heard, and pay you as little as one nickel, you take that call. Because having a studio on the other end of a phone line may be all you need to get an agent, who will not only help you negotiate your way up to fifty whole bucks above union scale, but will also probably shop your next script or two around. Which is where the value is. Many aspiring screenwriters never get this far.)

ivankirigin4• 17 years ago

  "Son, it doesn't take a fucking genius to make up bullshit 
  people agree with, add 'fuck', then slap on an old-man icon." ~ Dad, saying shit

http://twitter.com/hotdogsladies/statuses/5427392585

unalone12• 17 years ago

Merlin bugs me when he gets cynical about stuff. He spends most of his career looking at how things are deeper and more meaningful than they seem, and then on occasion he dismisses something with a line or two that's got more to it. He does the same thing when he writes about the Beatles, because he always implies that a) the only reason they broke up was Yoko Ono, and b) Yoko was a stupid woman who couldn't write good music, and c) she seduced John.

It's annoying that somebody so smart is occasionally so willing to get snippy without contributing to the conversation.

ivankirigin4• 17 years ago

He had a follow up.

  I kid 'em, but I truly am super-happy for "Shit My Dad Says." 
  Seems disingenuous to front like YOU wouldn't be thrilled by the same offer.

http://twitter.com/hotdogsladies/status/5590745881

I think he is correct that the tweets are somewhat fabricated, but also right that this is cool to see a twitterer get a tv deal.

ivankirigin4• 17 years ago

Merlin is actually correct about the Beatles. Yoko's behavior is identical to someone who wanted the band to break up. She was obsessed with Lennon for years before they hooked up. And, her art is shit.

Following his tumblr, I'd say he celebrates beatles awesomesauce at least as often as criticizing Yoko.

patio11• 17 years ago

Shit My Dad Says is now more profitable than Twitter, despite being a flash in the pan sustained mostly by transient hype.

iamelgringo• 17 years ago

Are you really concerned if Twitter is going to find out how to make money. I have no doubt that Ev will do just fine. :)

olefoo2• 17 years ago

Twitter gets payments from some telcos because it helps to drive text usage. It's not quite the furnace fed with hundred dollar bills that it's sometimes portrayed as.

MicahWedemeyer2• 17 years ago

Do you have any further info on this? It seems like a likely story, but I've never heard anything about it.

axod• 17 years ago

Wait... which one is a flash in the pan sustained mostly by transient hype?

joez• 17 years ago

I hope this guy turns out to be a smashing success and inspires more quality content on Twitter.

alttab• 17 years ago

Almost makes me wonder what we're doing busting our ass writing software. </sarcasm>

I'm a little surprised at this - are they turning the blog into the idea for a show? Those 72 one liners would be burned up in as little as half a season (not that I even know how long that is because I don't watch TV).

That said, a sit com that had cankerous old farts in it is nothing new. "There's Something about Raymond", "Seinfield", ... jeez the list goes on.

Ok, I used to watch a lot of TV.

davenaff• 17 years ago

A great outcome for a truly hilarious collection of tweets. I've always wondered whether the 'dad' was real, but I ultimately decided it didn't matter - the tweets are simply hilarious.

chrischen• 17 years ago

I'm guessing the guy got hired to be a TV writer because those tweets were written by him and the tv producers liked his writing, and not because they randomly chose some guy who tweeted what his dad said.

Scriptor• 17 years ago

It's probably more because the guy owns the rights to the tweets, so he added him being hired as part of the deal. He probably won't do much in the way of writing the actual show.

smanek• 17 years ago

http://canyoucopyrightatweet.com/

Lawyer Says: "I have read hundreds if not thousands of Tweets and have yet to read one I believe would be protectable, but the possibility exists."

akamaka• 17 years ago

More likely reason is that he has 700,000 followers to promote the show to. I'm guessing that his creative control will be almost nil.

BigDamnDeal• 17 years ago

And because Justin is already a successful writer who edits Maxim.com. He founded the comedy site Holy Taco (now owned by Break Media) and for the show he's getting the help of the co-creators of "Will and Grace."

"Shit My Dad Says" was just what turned him into a hot ticket and gave his creativity a specific character to explore.

bartl• 17 years ago

Here's an insightful interview with Justin before this happened: http://www.maxim.com/humor/stupid-fun/83977/interview-justin...

nonrecursive• 17 years ago

Good to know that he's actually a writer for Maxim. Makes the TV deal seem less bizarre.

loupgarou21• 17 years ago

I had a subscription to a magazine that went out of business. They sold the rest of my subscription to Maxim, and sent me a letter letting me know that I could get a check for the remainder of my money instead of getting Maxim. There were only a couple of issues left in the subscription anyway, so I figured it wasn't worth the trouble to get the check.

I read through the first issue of Maxim that showed up and realized that it was 1.) basically porn for kids too young to get actual porn and 2.) actually insulting to the reader. I'm not saying that the writing quality was so poor that it was an insult to the reader, I'm saying that the writers actually insult the reader by calling the reader a loser, telling the reader that his penis is tiny, and calling into question the reader's sexuality.

I don't know how they make any money by actually insulting the people that bother to buy the magazine. If I had to guess, I'd say that most of the people buying the magazine aren't doing it for the articles.

ivenkys• 17 years ago

So there is some use for Twitter after all, isn't this just the "old media" attempting to get cool and "with it" by jumping onto what is a bona-fide internet hit ?

Well good on you Justin.

Shit My Dad Says Gets a TV Deal after 72 tweets

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