Jim Carrey Quits Twitter With Bizarre, World-Saving Cartoon Send-Off
The chaotic state of global discourse has reached a head in recent months as Elon Musk takes his new toy Twitter in an… interesting new direction. Many longtime Twitter users may feel adrift in a sea of uncertainty, unsure of the path forward – fortunately, comedian and movie star Jim Carrey has stepped forward to be the guiding light to us all as he courageously quits Twitter with one final post that will likely place him on the short list for Nobel Peace Prize candidates.
Yesterday afternoon, the Canadian comedian who was recently banned from Russia said his goodbyes to Twitter and revealed his swan song – a minute-long animation he made with his friend, film director Jimmy Hayward, which shows a crazed, bearded, naked lighthouse keeper crying to the heavens and “Shining his lamp to guide us through a treacherous night.”
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It’s annoying whenever anyone devises some long-winded, self-congratulatory “goodbye post” before they take a break from social media. There’s always this contradiction in those posts – if the girl who lived on your dorm floor during your freshman year of college actually wanted to rid her life of the toxic influence of Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, she wouldn’t try to chase one last dopamine hit by watching the likes and supportive comments roll in during her last day on those platforms. Compare social media use to other addictions – the first step in the Alcoholics Anonymous program isn’t “Say goodbye to booze by having one last bender.”
This inherent hypocrisy is compounded by the sanctimony of an artist like Carrey apparently claiming some luminous moral highground over those left on Twitter after he has publicly campaigned against life-saving vaccines and had a relationship with a much younger married woman which was followed by her suicide amid ugly accusations against the comic. Making a moral statement about quitting Twitter betrays a shocking lack of self-awareness and introspection after Carrey has given the public so many reasons to doubt his moral compass.
The subtext of Carrey’s cartoon seems to be that he is either that lighthouse keeper crying to the heavens for salvation or the salvation itself, and neither feels apropos of a post that should have just been the sentence, “I’m quitting Twitter, if you need to get in touch, talk to my PR manager.” In addition, the other hidden message of the animation seems to be “I never saw The Lighthouse and no one on my media team wanted to tell me that this will draw comparisons and further confuse the message.”
The response to the post has been the same as those of most every over-the-top “I’m quitting Twitter” post – repliers have been repeating some variation of “Okay, fine. Quit Twitter.” As always, the memes have said everything worth saying on the topic.
