What Andrew WK's Twitter Taught Me About Life

Do you remember Andrew WK? He was the perpetually sweaty, hard-rocking lunatic from the early 2000s who was famous for writing songs like "Party Hard" and those other songs about partying.

He still tours, and records albums, and I'm pretty sure he hosted a show on VH1 for a while, but I'm not positive, because what could it possibly have been about? He seems like a nice enough guy, despite long-standing rumors that he may be fictional, there's nothing too remarkable about him. Except, perhaps, for the fact that he is the only person worth following on Twitter.

If you don't follow him already, you really need to start. Let me tell you a little about what I've learned from Andrew WK based on his tweeting.

It's possible that you are a parent with amazing kids. Every moment that they're alive, they amaze you in uniquely incredible ways, with their brilliance, their natural kindness, and their smiles. They're soft and sweet and uncorrupted and, somehow, they're yours. You look at your bright, beautiful children every day and think How did something so perfect, pure and innocent come from me? How did I do something so right? When they laugh, you melt, and the world makes sense.

Or maybe you've found someone who makes your life complete. A special man or woman who fills in all of the gaps of your personality. Separately, you're just two lost, imperfect parts, wandering around in this waking life, desperately yet listlessly searching for meaning. Together, you're a whole, a fully realized person. Someone who calms you down, someone who makes you feel young and strong and fearless. When you married her, it made up for every bad decision you'd ever made in your entire life. When you wake up next to her in the morning, the only thing you know you couldn't face is not seeing her again. Everything else --losing your job, getting into a car accident, death, Hell-- is just a minor annoyance in comparison to being without her for just one day.

One or both of those things may be true, but no matter how much you love your kids or wife or husband, it changes nothing: You will never love anything as much as Andrew WK loves partying.

Andrew WK tweets about partying with a seemingly impossible consistency. It's all he does. Literally, every second of every day is spent either partying or tweeting about partying. I can't imagine how he has a career out of doing this or, hell, how he even has time to eat nachos what with all of the time he dedicates to tweeting about nachos, but he does.

On and on, with the partying. Here's an unedited string of consecutive Andrew WK tweets:

No matter how great your kid is, you'll have moments where you just want some peace and privacy, some separation. Andrew WK isn't like that with partying. He started partying in a sweat marsh of some kind sometime around 2000 when the most daring record executive on the planet decided to give him a contract and a backing band and he hasn't stopped since. The parties that he describes are so raw they don't even seem real. It's like he's channeling a child's understanding of parties, like he's cobbled together this image of a party based on old college movies and overheard conversations.

His parties all seem to sound like 80s movie party montages.

I love that he separates and highlights "#PartyHardHandShake," as if that particular hashtag will catch on, as if it was actually applicable to any situation other than an Andrew WK tweet. He creates a separate hashtag for it, but being Andrew WK is literally the only reasonable excuse to use #PartyHardHandShake.

Early on, in my cynical, miserable, consumed-by-the-internet brain, I scoffed at Andrew WK's frequent Party Tips. What a goon, I thought. What a foolish waste of twitter, I added, before returning to my practice of posting thoughtful, deep, challenging and inspired tweets. I laughed at how goofy he was, and especially how committed he was to tweeting about partying. No one is that into partying. And I loved that, for the most part, his PARTY TIPS aren't even technically helpful. "PARTY TIP: Drink plenty of water so you don't get dehydrated." That would be a solid Party Tip. Instead, we get:

One time he tweeted "NEW YORK CITY is just another name for HUMAN-SEXUAL-INTERCOURSE." That's not a tip at all, it barely even qualifies as a thought. How does that work, do you go up to someone and say "Hey, I'm interested in your butt and would like to engage in some New York City with you" and assume they know that you mean HUMAN-SEXUAL-INTERCOURSE? Also, I don't know why adding "human" makes it sound creepier, but it really does, somehow.

But then I started thinking about Andrew WK. Like, really thinking about him, as I urge you all to do on a somewhat regular basis. Because I live in a jaded, terrible world where everyone -be it a TV personality, coworker, stranger on the bus, etc- is always selfishly trying to forward their own personal agenda, I assumed WK was doing the same. I've been let down by politicians and teachers to know that everyone is always lying, everyone is working an angle, and no one is really looking out for anyone. It was natural for me to conclude that WK was pushing his own agenda, but I reconsidered. What agenda could that be? It's not like he's doing this to make money or anything. Partying isn't a corporation, it's not something you can buy stock in, he's not benefiting financially if more people party. And certainly no one asked Andrew WK to tweet about partying nonstop. "Who benefits," I kept screaming to the mountaintops. "Whoever parties hardest." The answer seemed to materialize out of nothing, as if the spirit of the earth had tweeted it.

Because simple, mindless partying is WK's entire mission. He's not trying to have partying lead to anarchy, or anything. He tweets about this vague idea of a loud, food-filled, never-ending party because he has a pure and unadulterated almost childlike appreciation of the act of partying. He loves it, and he thinks you'll love it, too.

I mocked his excitement, his consistency, his openness. I mocked these things but, really, I was jealous, and I didn't even know it. Jealous, because Andrew WK is one of the most pure beings that has ever existed and will ever exist. I've never been that shamelessly supportive about anything. No one commits as fully as WK, no one. He is singularly focused: He doesn't hate your music. He doesn't think you dress funny. He's not urging you to vote this November. He's neither fighting nor supporting The Man. He isn't saying we should really worry about our fuel consumption, or our treatment of animals, or illegal immigration, and he doesn't give a shit about Darfur. He just wants you to have a good time. Always. Just party. Hard. Everyone is invited.

And I know what you're thinking. "Surely I can't just live like that. There are taxes. Laws. My favorite show is on. My sports team is playing this weekend. I have to go to the dentist. I haven't been to the gym in days. I don't have health insurance. I have a blind date to go on. I should really start saving for Christmas presents. Everyone is unemployed. Surely life isn't as simple as 'party hard all the time.'"

But what if it is?

Daniel O'Brien is going to be the party.