Like most people these days, the very first thing I do when I wake up is roll over and … CHECK SOCIAL MEDIA. Okay, maybe there’s a quick toot1 first, but my second natural reflex is to reach over and grab my phone from the nightstand. When I see my screen all fresh and fully charged, I smile and stretch my arms to the heavens like Sleeping Beauty awakening from her long slumber. I ask you: Does anything give you more of a sense of readiness than a phone at 100 percent? It’s a feeling of being capable of handling business. But it is bittersweet, because we know it’s fleeting. I think the scientist who figures out how to build a phone battery that lasts a week on one charge will be at the top of the list of Nobel candidates.
I start my morning-media routine thusly:
First, I check my @ mentions on Twitter because I like to see the comments. I’ll reply to people who are funny because that’s the reason I go on Twitter—I want to be amused. Nothing makes me crazier than the people on Twitter who are like, “Follow me! It would make my life if you followed me!” Well, your life is really sad, and you need to get off the computer and make real-life friends. Or the ones who say, “Can you tell so-and-so I love her?” I am not so-and-so’s message service. Or even worse, people who ask me where they should go for dinner or what they should do that night. I am not the cruise director of your life. Does it say concierge somewhere in my profile?
Second, I check my notifications on Facebook. I rarely ever look at my feed. Truth be told, I only keep my Facebook account out of respect for the platform … aaaand in the hopes that my former crushes find my page and see the cute pics of myself that I’ve posted. It’s flawed but it’s honest.
Third comes Snapchat. At first, I was against Snapchat. I didn’t get it. But once my friend Brian Mahoney (li’l shout-out for @mahone_alone) taught me how to work it, I was hooked. It’s where I document my coffee making and #NoPants life. It’s like my own reality show produced by me! I also enjoy receiving Snaps from like-minded people. The #NoPants principle runs deep.
THE NO-PANTS LIFE
And, lastly, for a while it was important I check Instagram. Not just to see posts that I missed, but to check the number of followers I had. I could see that I was constantly getting followers but the number of followers on my account wouldn’t change. There was no uptick. It started making me crazy. Why hadn’t my numbers gone up? And more important, when did I become a numbers whore? I had my publicist get in contact with the powers that be, the technical team, and they finally rectified the situation. I’ve since chilled a little. But here’s an Instagram question for you: Who are these people that feel the need to comment “first”? What are you doing with your life other than refreshing your feed to see who else you can impress with your “first” comment? Half the time there are more than three people who have commented “first” and it gives me such satisfaction to delete their comments. I know it’s stupid and serves zero purpose cuz no one is looking at your “first” comment going, “Wow, that CouchJockey929 has really got his shit together and is at the top of his game,” but it provides the smallest amount of gratification for me.
It is a wicked pleasure. Picture me snickering conspiratorially, with no one … then dropping my phone on my face. Karma. THAT’S what that is. I’ve gotten to that place where I have a bit of animosity toward social media2 because I’ve dropped my phone on my face while lying in bed more times than I care to admit. It’s like being salty with Grand Theft Auto cuz you developed carpal tunnel from playing it too much. Bitch, when you start getting injured by your phone you need to take a step back and think about what it is you are doing with your life. Put. The. Phone. Down.
Sheeeeee-it. Y’all know that ain’t gon’ happen, right?
A few busted lips aren’t gonna make me quit social media. I’ll just put some ice on that bitch and keep awn typin’.
As we’ve seen, I have an addictive personality so I’m a prime target to become one of the 10 percent clinically addicted to their phones, aka a “smartphone abuser,” which, by the way, is a little aggressive. I prefer the term “FOMOphobia.”
I try to keep up with what’s on social media. It’s not like I’m checking what’s trending every hour, but I do like to know what folks are posting about. When I hear news that I wanna know the deets on, the first place I check is Twitter. When there’s a rumor that someone famous has died, I go to Twitter to see if reputable accounts like CNN or Newsweek are posting about it. I try my best to keep up with internet slang and shorthand. There’s always some new shortcut or acronym on social media that prevents me from understanding a post: BAE, F2F, TBT, FBF, FOMO, FTW, HMU, ICYMI, IDK. It was all too much to keep up with. The first time I saw “seriously” written as “SRSLY,” I thought, Seriously? Then, of course, I found myself using that shortcut because in the age of 140 characters, those few letters allow for a myriad of words. I’m trying to be accepting of this new “web-speak.” It’s taken me a minute. It took a while to come to terms with people calling me “MOM.” I couldn’t understand why so many people were leaving “MOM” comments on my posts. I started to get my feelings hurt. I thought they were calling me old. I finally had to google the internet meaning and found that it was an “expression of adulation,” as in, you’re so cool, I wish you were my mom. If it were small children saying it, it might not bother me. Although if it were small children saying it they’d likely be under parental supervision, in which case I’d feel supes uncomfortable, too. But it’s “kids” old enough to have social media accounts … and apartments, so it just made me feel old.
I have my own style and techniques when it comes to social media-ing. For example, I like to capitalize the first letter of every word in a hashtag because I find it’s easier to read. I don’t wanna spend fifteen extra seconds trying to decipher #thisisjustcompleteandutternonsense.3 I don’t have that kind of time. I also tend to add spaces in my tweet. I don’t know if it’s more for ease of reading or to know I have a specific style. I DO know that some people don’t appreciate it. Somebody once commented, “If you type your tweets like this, it takes up a bigger amount of space! You’re a jerk!” It gave me pause, but I’m not exactly losing sleep.
It’s scary how quickly people can turn on you, though. A few years ago I was watching Mad Men on my DVR when I tweeted this joke:
Vegans make me uncomfortable same way non-drinkers do. When I order, I feel judged by & sorry 4 U @ the same time. #sorry #stillorderingit
The response from the Twittersphere was swift and mighty. I got into a major BEEF (rimshot!) with an army of vegans who piled on me after their dear leader @VeganNotFeelingRetta4 retweeted it or just made it known how she felt about it.
@VeganNotFeelingRetta: @unfoRETTAble is a perfect example of why so many vegans are cranky. Sad, and sick.
@unfoRETTAble: You know I’m a comedian, right?
@VeganNotFeelingRetta: Don’t feel sorry for vegans; feel sorry for the animals, the planet, your own temple for the damage done by said choices.
I made it known to her that I was a comedian and was tweeting a joke. Then her herbivore circle of friends @RettaMustBeTrippin and @Leaves4Life got in on the action:
Targeting vegans right now is the same as a comedian complaining about airplane food in the 90s—you’re better than that @unfoRETTAble
@unfoRETTAble your joke on vegans was so fuckin funny #welovejudgingmeateaters #fuckouttaherewithyourlameexcuseofbeinga comedian
Okay, first off, the tweet got a hundred retweets so it was kinda funny, right?5 Secondly, I get her point. She was fighting for what she stood for … but so was I, my online comedy, so I announced I was pausing Mad Men to deal with the hangry mob. My followers at the time were like, “Oh shit, Retta’s pausing Mad Men, shit’s about to go down! She’s about to read some motherfuckers!” Okay, maybe that’s how I interpreted their response, but whatever the case, I was amped.
How ’bout you get the fuck off my page.
#BLOCKED
Though the vegans came at me—making snide comments about my body and my comedy career—my loyal followers had my back with some decent one-liners:
They make me want to punch a hamburger in the face!
You know they miss bacon!
Fuck vegans!
After an hour of insults back and forth, it started to get annoying, so it was time to take the figurative meat off the flame. I waved the white flag and offered a conciliatory message in a series of tweets:
As I am not getting a response, I am going to say this. I am not looking to take on Vegans. Some of my best friends are vegan. I made a joke and I’m not fucking apologizing for it. If you have an issue with that, go with God. You coming at me with my Twitter handle to make your meat hater point shall fall on deaf ears b/c as I mentioned ur only making the joke a reality. Now Ima gon’ ahead and finish #MadMen because that’s what makes me happy … and you can werrk your Kale salad and do a fruit dance if that’s what makes you happy and we shall all enjoy our evening. @kevinrfree has requested that I not engage but clearly it’s too late for that so I bid thee farewell. Again #VegansDoYou Ima do me and, not gonna lie, prolly some chicken strips. #PleaseRecycle
Back to our regularly scheduled program:
#MadMen
My clash with the vegans was mostly funny; it didn’t go to that dark, fucked-up place that’s all too common online these days. When Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones was targeted with the most vile, racist tweets, just for starring in a movie, I cried. For her, for me, for humanity. People can be fucking disgusting, heartless monsters. I’ve been there. Recently I did a digital ad, in the form of a GIF, for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, where they built a toaster that lasered my morning refrain “Dark Maaagic”6 on a piece of toast. Personally, I was helluh impressed, but a couple of ladies (I hesitate to call them that) didn’t get it or particularly appreciate it and called me a “monkey.” A. Monkey. Why? Because a piece of toast had some words on it? It’s not that serious, Nancy, it’s just a little thing called “paying my mortgage.” Fuckin’ relax.
I’ve been called racist names plenty of times but it hasn’t escalated to the level of hatred Leslie experienced. I usually look at the account to see if this is just the kind of thing they spew all the time (read: troll) and I either just block ’em or suggest they tell it to their twelve followers and then block ’em. There was a time, though, it very easily could have spiraled out of control. So here’s the sitch. Anyone who knows me knows I’m big into live-tweeting. If I love a show, I’m gonna put my very important thoughts and reactions into 140 characters and unleash them into the Twitterverse. It all started when I was working on Parks. There’s a lot of downtime when filming a show or movie. So I bought the DVDs for Breaking Bad to watch while in my trailer. And if you’ve watched the show, you know it’s intense, thus it gave me a great deal of anxiety. So I started tweeting because it made me feel like I wasn’t alone. My Twitter followers would often respond with, “It’s okay! Don’t worry! Stay with it, it’ll be worth it!” It was comforting to know that others had been through the same stress and made it through to the other side.
Soon they started warning about things to come. “Wait till the next episode! You won’t believe how Walter gets out of this one! Have you seen when…” At a certain point, I was like, Stop tipping me off as to what’s to come! But people loooooove to be the first person to tell you something. I’m like, I haven’t watched it yet, and now you just ruined it by telling me that whatchumacallit gets killed! Thanks, Mr. Overly Helpful. As much as I hated spoilers, I loved interacting with people while I was watching. Next thing I knew I was live-tweeting all my favorite shows, like The Good Wife, Game of Thrones, Vampire Diaries, Scandal, and series revisits like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gilmore Girls. I tweeted about so many shows, I kind of got a rep for being a good TV commentator (as I pop my collar). So I was to appear on The Walking Dead’s Talking Dead. Say that ten times fast.
Not everyone loved me or my opinions, like this dude from Fresno who complained about my tweets that AMC’s The Walking Dead account had been retweeting. He replied all, just to make sure I’d see his comment:
Stop retweeting loud mouth black people!
Well, that’s odd, I thought. How can you tell I’m loud? It’s not like I’m typing in all caps. And who in the fuck are you, exactly? I retweeted what he said, blocked his ass, and went to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I was bombarded with notifications. My followers had gone in deep on this guy, going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth all night. People were still using my handle in their tweets, so I could see what had gone down. My fans were ripping this guy a new one. They were also sending me screenshots of his account, which showed him using the word “nigger” like he was born to do it; a post of a black guy eating watermelon with his comment, “Figures”; and a picture he said was of him and his girlfriend in gorilla costumes, saying they went as Barack and Michelle Obama for Halloween. This guy was something special.
The best part about Fresno’s account? The ignoramus posted about his job at at a large retail company, bragging about how he had just been promoted from an hourly gig to a straight salary. He was also one of those classy types who posted a bathroom selfie in a cheap suit to show off how fancy he was. One of my California followers offered to go to Fresno “to find this motherfucker.” I magnanimously chose to ignore the offer. My favorite alert that morning was from Fresno’s bosses. They had direct messaged me, saying, “We’re aware of the situation and it is being taken care of.” I unblocked Fresno to look at his account and all of the racist shit had been deleted. By the time I’d gotten through my @mentions, the whole account had been shut the F down. I suspect Fresno got fired. But I don’t really know. What I do know is that it wasn’t going to work out well for him. And listen, I’m not the type of person who wants people to lose their jobs. It’s hard out here for a pimp, but I gotta say the only thing I could think was, Bye Felicia.
Twitter can be used not only for evil but also for good. Once I was on a flight to New York City and live-tweeted the movie The Holiday. So many people tried watching it on Netflix that Netflix got overloaded and it wouldn’t load! Someone tweeted, “Oh my God, Retta, you crashed Netflix!” So maybe I wasn’t solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I thought if this is the only way I make my mark, I’ll take it. And, I’m not gonna lie, I loved the power. It was like an aphrodisiac. I assume this is what hackers experience or how trolls feel when they get strangers worked up over their nonsense.
I have taken advantage of the fact that at any given time I have an audience. Take the year NBC asked me to live-tweet the 66th Annual Emmy Awards. They’d given me a prime seat all the way up in the second row so I wouldn’t miss anything going down with host Seth Meyers and I’d be within spitting range of the likes of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Kevin Spacey, and Peter Dinklage. There’d been a seat-filler next to me at one point, but then this young guy came with a ticket during the second commercial break and the seat-filler got kicked out. So this guy sat next to me and I heard him on the phone like, “Where are you? I’m at our seats.” Whatever the situation was, I think his date was in a different place in the theater. He got off the phone and turned to me.
“I think you’re in my girlfriend’s seat,” he said.
“Uh, I don’t think so.” And P.S., guess who was here first, homie?
“Can I see your ticket?”
The fuq?
“No, you cannot see my ticket.”
He called the usher over. “I was supposed to be sitting with my girlfriend and I think this is her seat,” pointing to my seat.
I pulled out my ticket and I held it to my left to show the usher cuz the annoying guy was on my right. I showed it to her and she was like, “You’re in the right seat. I wouldn’t get up.” And I was like, “I’m not!”
I didn’t get up and the usher left. About five minutes later, I heard his gums flapping again.
“Can I see your ticket?”
“Dude, this is MY seat. My ticket is for THIS seat.”
To shut him up, I finally showed him my fucking ticket. It said “Orchestra.” His said “Mezzanine.”
“I think you’re in the wrong seat,” he said, “because it says ‘Orchestra.’”
“Excuse me, have you been to the theater before? Do you know where the orchestra is? The orchestra’s on the floor. Your seat is back there.”
Now he realized he was in the wrong seat. He realized he was so lucky to get by security and be up so close, and he quickly decided there was no way he’s givin’ up this cush locale, girlfriend be damned. He was taking pictures of everything and during commercial breaks tryna talk to me.
“So what do you do?”
Are you fucking kidding me right now? “I’m an actor.”
“Anything I’ve seen?”
“I don’t know what you watch, homie. I’m on Parks and Recreation.”
“Oh yeah, I was supposed to be an extra on that once. I never watched it, I hear it’s supposed to be good.”
At the next commercial break, he cornered me.
“Do you think you could get me work as an extra on your show? Once I was an extra and they bumped me up and I got a line.”
You just fucking showed up here late, claimed I was in your girlfriend’s seat, realized you’re in the wrong seat, won’t leave, and now you’re asking me for extra work?
“Let’s take a picture,” he said. He raised his phone for a selfie and I was stone-faced. “What’s your Instagram?”
“Dude, I’m not giving you my Instagram.”
“We should be friends.”
“I don’t know you.”
“You know me now, we’re sitting with each other at the Emmys!”
“Yeah, no, we’re good.”
He was so fucking annoying I got up to go to the bathroom and I told the ushers, “He’s in the wrong seat, he’s annoying me and he needs to fucking GO.” By the time I came back out of the bathroom, security was walking him out. Not sure where to. Probably to his actual seat.
Here’s the kicker, I was live-tweeting the entire time, of course. One of those sites like Popsugar or Jezebel had been following the encounter and by the time the awards were over had posted the whole story. Other sites started reporting on it. The next day, somebody must have been like, “Dude, they’re talking about you,” because he had posted our selfie. He then took to Twitter and started FAT-SHAMING me. Tweeting shit like “You took up two seats”—that kind of thing. “I only posted your picture so everybody could see how fucking fat and gross you are.” Really? Is that why you asked me to be your friend on Instagram? Anyway. I retweeted all of his nasty tweets because, clearly, he wanted to be heard.
The story got picked up by several major media sites like Huffington Post, E! Online, and BuzzFeed, all of which went after him like the real-life troll he was. The Los Angeles Times fucked up that day, though, mixing me up with Danielle Brooks from Orange Is the New Black, because, you know, we all look alike. I wasn’t about to let that shit go, so I tweeted the paper, “Ooohhhh @LATimes…” with a screen grab of their gaffe. They sent both me and Danielle flowers apologizing, so I posted a picture of the flowers with the message, “I accept your apology @NewYorkTimes.”
Now that would be a good ending to this story but it ain’t over yet. The guy found me on Instagram (it’s not that hard) and sent me a message. No, not “first,” though he seems like that type. He wrote, “Can I have your address I want to send you an apology, too.”
Here’s my reply: “Dude, if you don’t fucking stop stalking me I’m going to report you to the police. Get the fuck off my feed.” And I blocked him. Again, Bye Felicia. I was so pissed. It was entitlement at its best.
I’ve had some amusing adventures online as well. I had this whole thing with Joe Manganiello, which unfortunately was way less sexy than it sounds. I used to live-tweet True Blood and I loved Alcide—what’s not to love? He was a broody, sensitive werewolf, and his body was ridiculous. So I would tweet stuff about it and one time he responded, “You might be my favorite person on Twitter.”
I responded, “Hahaha. That’s awesome. Glad you like. P.S. this totes makes u my boyfriend & I intend to tell errybody I’m boning Alcide.”
We laughed. Or I guess we just Lol’d.
Then my friend Yvette Nicole Brown ran into him at Comic Con, took a picture, and tweeted it to me with the message, “Hey @unfoRETTAble! Found your boyfriend, @joemanganiello;) #JealousMUCH?”
I replied, “Nah, not really b/c Joey & I know what we have. And yeah ‘Joey’ ’cause that’s where WE’RE at. Nicknames.”
We continued with this foolishness which amused us BOTH until Octavia Spencer got in on the fun. She’d done a movie with him in the past and wanted to know why he was two-timing her. It escalated to where the media was writing articles about us “fighting” over Joe. Our back-and-forth had gotten to a point that when I cohosted the talk show Anderson Live with Anderson Cooper, the producers had made this giant pillow with a picture of Joe that I could hug to fall asleep. And Joe was playing along, at one point writing, “Ladies, ladies, there’s enough of me to go around!”
All harmless fun. But the moment I knew that people were really invested in this foolishness was when he started dating Modern Family star Sophia Vergara and US Weekly contacted me for comment. I was like, “Y’all know this was a joke, right??” They did but still wanted comment. I obliged.
“It is with a heavy heart that I learn of Joe Manganiello aka my wolfy Twitter boo is seeing one Ms. Sofia Vergara. As with any (pretend) conscious uncoupling there is still much love and my Mellow Nello (that was what I called my boo in my head) will always hold a special place in my Twitter heart.”
I’ve had some learning experiences on social media as well. Once while live-tweeting Orange Is the New Black, I called transgender actress Laverne Cox “he/she.” I know, I KNOW. I had NO IDEA she was a transgender actress. It was the episode where we learn her character’s backstory. I thought she was playing her pre-op self, which, after some research, I found was her actual brother. Someone tweeted, “Whoa, people are gonna come after you.” And boy did they come after me. Even though I was unaware of the actual circumstances, I was actually ignorant as to the struggle/feelings of transgender individuals. Twitter made this a teaching moment for me and I did indeed learn.
I also had a tiff with feminists, of which I consider myself one. I was coming home from work late one night and I was taking side streets to avoid Sunset Boulevard traffic. I was on a really dark street that basically had no lights. There was a girl jogging and I tweeted out something along the lines of, “What the fuck are you doing jogging on this street? It’s helluh dark out here. I don’t even want to drive on this street.”7 These feminists came at me saying she should be able to run wherever she wants. I get your point, feminists. We need to change rape culture rather than limit the freedoms of women. I think I should be able to run in the dark naked if I want to, but right now where we are in our society, I don’t think it’s a wise choice. If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t tell her to run where and when she wanted because it was her right. Not because I don’t think it is her right, but because it is more important to me that she stay safe.
It’s like when the police tell black folks to “put your hands up” when you know you didn’t do anything. I mean, black parents aren’t telling their children, “You have equal rights so if you feel like you’re being arrested for some shit you didn’t do, stand up for yourself.” You’re right, you shouldn’t be arrested for some shit just for being black but, by the way, I’m not trying to get shot, either. We’re not at that place yet. It’s not a safe world. For as much as we love our country and the freedoms that come with being here, we all know it’s not true for everybody.
My thing is if I feel like you’re right, I’m gonna say it. I’m not too smart to learn a lesson. I’m gonna be like, you’re right and my excuse is I didn’t know. I’d like to think that I’m pretty accepting and pretty liberal, but if someone calls me out on my shit I’m gonna take the time to hear and respond accordingly. You know what I mean?
I never talk politics because that is too often a lose-lose situation. I did a benefit show for Hillary Clinton and some Bernie zealots came for me. They were like, “I’m so disappointed in you. I thought you were better than that.” I was like, hold the fuck up. I am not your child and you don’t know me. I hold no role in your life other than I’m an entertainer that you perhaps enjoyed on a television show at one point. I hold no other position in your life. For you to have feelings of disappointment in me denotes a level of intimacy we do not and have never had. And P.S., we have differing political leanings. Disappointed in me? I’m not hiding children in my basement.
Another time I posted a picture of me wearing a T-shirt that Lena Dunham designed for Planned Parenthood. Good Lord, the comments. I was like, you guys, I don’t care how you feel about me, I think women have rights and I’m backing Planned Parenthood. All you have to do to show you disagree is hit unfollow, that’s it. “Unfollow” is your friend just as “block” is my muhfuhkuh. I’m not gonna get in an argument with you on MY timeline because you learned something in church that I disagree with. I just posted this pic cuz my hair and makeup were on point.
Bottom line is I really just want to have fun on my social media. I like to tell my little jokes and keep up with what my friends are up to. If I can watch Dr. Pimple Popper get at some sebaceous cysts and Paris Hilton go on and on about how much she loves Ibiza, I’m happy. I’ll post my coffee making, throw in a few jokes, and call it a day. That’s all I want. I’m not interested in going back and forth with you about whether or not Trump speaks the truth.
Can’t we all just get along? And if not, can we at least be civil human beings?
BTW, Trump is a demagogue only interested in self-aggrandizement.8