Watch it. Watch it again.
I know that many of those coming to this article are on a different page than me on this issue. Many of you may have chuckled at a screen-cap of a NDT tweet once or twice. I cannot say that I haven't enjoyed some of NDT's attempts at hipness and humor. I liked "Cosmos", for what it's worth. If you are a NDT fan, what you are about to read might upset you. But among readers of this article you are the most important of all-- the kind that need to be brought out of the darkness of ignorance and into the harsh, all-telling light. Please bear with me, even if the video you just viewed above genuinely entertained you.
To get right to the meat of this issue:
Neil Degrasse Tyson, you need to stop it. Knock it off.
You have been making clumsy attempts at mainstream appeal, tweeting snarky half-baked comments about pop culture's "ignorance" of science, and generally acting like a 50+ year old person who doesn't understand youth culture but spends an cringingly large amount of time trying to be hip.
All of which would be fine in my book, because I don't care. These things do not affect me, because I do not have to pay attention.
But then you went and fucked with our Pitchfork Over/Unders, and you crossed a line. Pitchfork Over/Unders are a fine, reputable, beloved institution of the pop-music-related clickbait-level youtube content scene, and you not only got on one despite not being a musician, but you turned in one of the shittiest episodes to date.
As far as my extensive research is concerned, Eric Andre is the only other non-musician that has been on an Over/Under, and that isn't a problem because Eric Andre is funny and entertaining. In fact, most Over/Unders are funny and entertaining, because being funny and entertaining in a Pitchfork Over/Under interview is easy as fuck. You just stay in your lane and give stupid answers, and don't try too hard. There's a staff of people at Pitchfork who are going to edit that shit up right and make you look as funny as they can. There's not gonna give you hardball questions. They're gonna ask you if you like peanut butter, and you say 'yeah peanut butter is the shit' or 'nah fam fuck peanut butter that shit kills people with peanut allergies' and that's it. Hilarious! If you really want to go for it, and are genuinely a funny person, you can go all out and maybe you'll turn in classic episode like Vince Staples or Neon Indian. But Over/Unders are at baseline moderately entertaining because the formula is simple and fun, and doesn't demand much of the artist themselves. Yet NDT managed to fuck it up. Some shit just cannot be salvaged by clever editing. A rundown of Neil Degrasse Tyson's Over/Under:
- When prompted by "Miss Universe", starts a cringy, hammy rant about how it should be "Miss Earth" instead of Miss Universe. He drops a "I study the universe" and also a "c'mon now" because apparently he's Jerry Seinfeld now.
- Drones on about his tie collection. Discusses how he is above wearing Star Trek ties.
- Does a riff about how small earth is relative to the universe because we didn't know that already.
- Discusses how heavy cream floats on skim milk because it is "lighter", which is literally incorrect and something we all learned not to say if we paid attention in high school physics. Heavy cream floats on skim milk because it's less dense you hack.
- Ends his incorrect explanation of buoyancy by slowly, ceremoniously opining "the physics.... will set you free", because apparently he's John 8:32 now.
- Discusses the work of GZA in a extremely vague, circumspect way. His odd, conceptual rambling implies that he has listened to the Wu-Tang Clan before, but in no way confirms that he has listened to the Wu-Tang Clan before.
- Rants about how Mars bars are called Mars bars. "I'm takin' the planet", he says. I'm taking the planet he says! Can you believe this guy???
- Continues to ham it up, fake-ranting about all the candy, gum, and other products that have stellar names because this is an urgent socio-political issue in his mind.
- Launches into extremely extended, poorly told story. Too much context is provided, stalling the whole thing before it begins. Makes sure to mention he was in "REALLY" good shape at the time. The story is about how he needed more money in grad school so his friend invited him to be a male stripper and he said no. It's a classically structured bad story, the kind that teases the listener with the prospect of something interesting happening, but then ends with the interesting thing not happening, and you realize there was never any possibility of the proposed interesting thing ever happening, and you feel cheated.
- Plugs his book.
- Says "we're stardust". Whoa dude. Claims that this is the most underrated fact in the universe, like a dumbass.
So that's it. I hope my opinion-drenched commentary on this video has effectively conveyed my opinion on this guy. The guy just tries too hard. He is old, and he has a PhD, and that fundamentally means he's not going to be a very hip person, but he tries anyway. Furthermore, his take on popular science can be such a shtick. His snarky, pointless whining about how society appropriates astronomical terms is very representative of the kind of stuff that he posts on twitter. I am a subscriber to a subreddit called r/iamverysmart, dedicated to posting screenshots of faux-intellectual internet posturing, and they had to ban posting his tweets because all anyone posted on there was his tweets.
I have no doubt that Neil Degrasse Tyson is extremely smart, and I like him as a guy who pops up in interviews in popular science documentaries. But it needs to be said: his forays into establishing himself as an likable, charismatic entertainer really, really suck. He is bad at being interesting and likable as a person when he is not talking about quasars.
As I said at the start, all of this would have been a non-issue, and beyond the scope of a Sad Moth rant-piece if he hadn't went and fucked around with the lovely, inimitable Pitchfork Over/Under youtube series.
But he did, and here were are.
Knock it off, Neil Degrasse Tyson.
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