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After Betty White’s success hosting last week’s Saturday Night Live–an opportunity that has largely been credited to a grassroots (yeah RIGHT) Facebook movement–another Facebook Group has taken shape (KILL ME), insisting that Betty White, a 999999-year-old woman host the Academy Awards. Obviously, this is ridiculous and has gone too far, and yet, AND YET, that Facebook group, which has been around for less than a week, already has nearly 100 THOUSAND members. Honestly, if I was Mark Zuckerberg, this would be enough to shut Facebook down. I’d do it. He’s already got ALL THE MONEY THAT THERE IS. Just shut it down. It would be a funny goof, much like this fucking Betty White thing.
Of course, it (and by “it,” I mean “Betty White”) wouldn’t truly be an authentic Internet phenomenon if it didn’t pass into absurdist ironic parody (well, pass further into absurdist ironic parody, because the one thing that Betty White Facebook apologists will never admit is that it was absurdist and ironic to BEGIN WITH) and so there are also Facebook groups demanding that Betty White host an alien parasite, and that Betty White be used to plug up the gulf coast oil leak. And so, I give up. I AM ONLY ONE MAN. I AM ONLY SO STRONG. Let’s make our own fucking Betty White Facebook Group.
But what should we have her do? A few ideas for what our Betty White Facebook group could aim to achieve after the jump:
WE ARE NOT STARTING OUR OWN BETTY WHITE FACEBOOK GROUP. SHUT UP, INTERNET.
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“I still use myspace”
~ Gabe
He uses the Domesday Book to keep track of what’s going on in his neighborhood.
I would like to put on my Captain Buzzkill hat for a second and point out that MySpace is not the ghost town everyone (read: middle-to-upper-class white people) think it is. I don’t use it, but it is extremely popular with working-class ethnic minorities, especially youth.
It’s just strange how the Myspace jokes reveal a huge cultural disconnect.
If you allow me a second to deconstruct my own joke, thereby ruining it, I feel that what I was in fact trying to put across in this particular comment is that it is now widespreadly considered that Myspace is linked with the “old generation” of Internet social networking users. I tried to slyly insinuate, as Videogum commenters are known to do, that Gabe is old by associating him with what is known as an old medium. I am in no doubt that Myspace is used by many, but it is nonetheless regarded as an out-dated way of social networking, simply because it was the founding father.
Consider the frog dissected
TJ Walker would be proud.
I wanted to make her write a Worst Movie Ever…
How about a group to have Betty White’s home computer host Facebook?
What home computer?
It’s a cardboard box that she wrote internet on in sharpie
Sometimes she switches out the screen for one that reads “FACEBOOK”, sighs loudly, and says, “What won’t they make me host?”
Betty White to host a Lake Placid viewing party? Ironic hipsters everywhere would rejoice.
Let’s Make Betty White Pose for Pictures with Clown Coffee!
Clever girl.
She’s going through your pockets
This is a game changer, folks!
Well I’m glad that was all a big joke. Monsters only have a certain amount of ironic love to give to B list former television actors, and it’s all being used on Topher Grace.
Just FYI, and I hope this isn’t too creepy, but you’re probably my favorite monster in part because you are clever without being mean but mostly because of the whole Cash Cab thing.
YESSSSSS
It’s Coming Back!!!
I CAN’T BELIEVE I FORGOT ABOUT THE CASHCAB THING!
shellbomber, you are my famous friend.
WAIT, what about CASH CAB?!
Yeah. SB, were you in the Cash Cab?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c22CmiIr4c4
Posted here because there is no reply button below. HOLY CRAP THAT WAS ONE OF THE MOST AWESOME THINGS I’VE SEEN IN MY LIFE!! (Belated) CONGRATULATIONS!!!
A friend of mine recently moved to NY and is DYING to get on that show…
My dad sent this picture to me the other day. I’m pretty sure that signals the death of a meme when a parent is aware of it.
I had this exact same feeling when I got my “I’m Rich Bitch” meme’s from my Dad in 2006. :\
gabe, you should probably rest your case
Is this a Videogum Everywhere mission? Because I thought our job was NOT to play pranks.
I was feeling totally confused and betrayed until the twist, which made it into the quintessential Videogum Everywhere mission.
Mission Accomplished (TM), guys. Back pats and root beer floats for everyone!
I Bet I Can Find 500,000 People Who Want Betty White To Do A “Gabe & Max’s 100 Seconds” Video.
I think we should start a “Wish Betty White Would Go Away So Gabe Would Stop Crying About Her Popularity,” page.
betty white is masterminding this whole thing.
soon, the breadth of her ultimate goal shall be known to all.
you will rue the day you crossed mrs. white… yeah, i am talking to you.
Let’s get Betty White to stop Gabe posting about Betty White
Oh thank God, the phrase “Let’s make our own ‘fucking Betty White’ Facebook Group” could so easily be misunderstood. I apologize for adding those quotation marks.
LOL, Gabe is soooooooo mad that his “Getting Topher Grace to Host the NAACP Image Awards” group only has 3 members.
I am having the same problem with my ‘Get Alec Baldwin to host SNL’ group.
If we want to get people that don’t read Videogum to like our page we pick something impossible but really good or really bad to happen for Betty White.
If we want to have the page which most accurately describes what is really going to happen, let’s start the “Let’s Get Betty White to maybe be in another commercial some time while Steve Martin hosts the Oscars, 30 somethings reminisce about ‘Alien,’ and the govt tries to plug up the oil leak with golf balls and old tires.”
Let’s start a Facebook group to force Gabe to write an explicit x-rated You Can Make It Up fan fiction piece about his precious Betty White who he is in love with and wants to marry and bestow oral pleasure upon. Move over, Gray Poupon.
Don’t you mean GREY Poupon? THE HUNTER HAS BECOME THE HUNTED
Both are acceptable; I’ll allow it!
-An editor whom no one asked.
Not really, Lengli, because Grey Poupon is a proper name, so though both grey and gray are acceptable spellings of the word, in Grey Poupon, it should be spelt with the e.
-Another editor no one asked.
This was the exact conversation I had in my head before posting. Verbatim.
Editor fail! I need to brush up on my mustards.
Is it too late to say that you didn’t cut the mustard? It is? Oh. Sorry.
It is NEVER too late. Videogum means never having to say you’re sorry.
With as much explicit Bill Hicks-ian imagery as possible, please.
If I have learned anything from internet Facebook groups, it is that onion rings and Betty White are quite popular with users. It just seems right to combine the two…
Viola! I hope it tastes better than her muffins!
Gabe is to Betty White as the Man in Black is to The Island.
betty white is the only thing keeping gabe’s evil wine from getting all over the tablecloth?
Someone needs to force Gabe into Betty’s magic glowing cave. (I’m sorry.)
Gabe, the internet is your job, but I think your job is getting to you. I get your point, always got it, but sweet Rue McClanahan, why? Ok, pretending that this was some kind of grassroots movement is silly, but if there was no popular support, I don’t think NBC would have taken a gamble on a woman OLDER THAN THE VERY MEDIUM OF TELEVISION.
Just once the internet, the Public Relations Industrial Complex, NBC, SNL, the universe at large did something right and you just WON’T LET IT BE GREAT.
I APOLOGIZE FOR NOTHING.
My needs are simple. How about the “Let’s Get Betty White To Host The Gatherings Hayride”. I suspect the Juggalos would really enjoy that.
Can we just go back to shitting on Jay Leno already?
Gabe, do you need a hug? I think you need a hug. I will hug my monitor and hope it has a cheering effect. We keep saying that we should all be so lucky as to find something that makes us happy – is it so wrong that the internet has rediscovered the greatness of Betty White (answer: no. If anything is wrong, it is that apparently SOME people forgot Betty White was great in the first place.) Yes, Betty White is great, but Videogum is also great. There is enough great to go around!
Now lets all play with our puppies or kitties or yellow squirrels or whatever our monstrous hearts desire!
Speak truth to seemingly irrational ire, lilbobby!!
Shmetty White dude. She and her shadow agents and Public Relations side-deals are small OLD potatoes.
You want to make a facebook page that snidely fucks with the awful hollywood backroom deals? How about “Let’s get the Oscars to stop nominating terrible movies like Crash and the Blind Side to balance out the audience for the show, and then somehow letting them get awards”
that’s pretty easy though, and facebook is awesome at bringing out the lazy, so something like that is probably there. with a couple of fans.
I resent the implication that liking Betty White is ironic and absurd. I’ve been a huge Golden Girls fan since I can remember the show being on. I have Betty White’s autograph. I have all seven seasons of the Golden Girls on DVD.
I wish I could just like something for liking it without being accused of having an ironic intention.
“I wish I could just like something for liking it without being accused of having an ironic intention.”
-Like half of the Internet, 1993-2012
Would this be a good place to unironically link to my favorite Betty White moment? Okay, then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaZX6Swvdv8
I could not agree more.
The problem with this whole thing in specific is that Betty White is a talented comic (as is Carole Burnett) who is good at what she does. There is no humor or irony in wanting her to do things that she is clearly good at. For the concept to really work, you’d have to pick some one who wasn’t funny, not someone who actually would be good at the job. What you end up with the implication that it is funny for Betty White to host things because she is a) old, or b) an old woman.
If you like a popular song, it is ironic. If you like an unpopular song, you are pretentious. You know, Billy Joel wrote alot of really great songs that are very enjoyable to listen to. I also enjoy Big Black for no reason other than pleasure.
There comes a point in life where you just realize that there are things that give you pleasure, no matter what they are, and it is okay to like them for what they are without some posture that distances you from the actual enjoyment.
So much yes, so much of it.
Don’t know where best to put this in all this commenting, but it’s not like this whole thing only just started a year or so ago with the Snickers commercial or whatever. In a lot of ways, the Golden Girls never lost popularity, sure it got way, way more popular, but it’s continued to have a cultural presence since forever. The show didn’t get canceled and then go off the air forever, but has been in reruns so long as I know of, I mean, I remember watching random bits as a kid, seeing it on tv home sick in high scool. When/where I went to college (I’m 24) reruns of The Golden Girls aired during those random midafternoon hours when kids weren’t likely in class, but probably had class soon, or had just got out, so the tv was often thrown on, and I knew more than one group of friends who intentionally, reguarly, went and watched The Golden Girls then, because they liked it, because it was funny.
There’s no doubt in my mind that there were a lot more of people like that than Gabe and others are assuming, and that with Internet, with random events, it gained steam, and sure, a lot of people probably signed on to the Betty White movement without really having been fans of the Golden Girls, but who cares? They like her, they like her, whatever. To subscribe this whole thing to irony and meanness and whatever is just foolishness.
Albini should produce Billy Joel
Get Betty White To Suxx The Butts
Members: Me
I was going to try and lay out my case here but it became somewhat incoherent so I will simply just ask:
Can someone explain to me how the Betty White-Facebook/internet relationship and the Topher GraceVideogum/Gabe relationships are similar? B/c to me, I see one as a critical, condescending look at the career of a moderately talented actor who is part of our/Gabe’s generation and one as a self-described unironic and supportive movement to celebrate a venerable comedic actress of 88 that seems to have been catalyzed by a Snicker’s commercial. I don’t see how one can argue that it is hypocritical to not support the BW thing while supporting TG.
Who cares? The Topher thing is boring and unfunny. Once LOST is over then Topher posts will be the thing I hate the most about the site. Although Gabe seems to hate on LOST more than I do in his recaps so maybe I will miss those.
But the Betty White thing is stupid also.
So everybody wins (loses).
Have you ever heard of “mountain and mole hill”?
I think it is unfair to hold a very popular website entirely devoted to commenting on videos posted on the internet and/or recapping TV shows to either a mountain or molehill standard. It is neither, and both, and there is no spoon.
CARRIE PLEASE marry ME.
You can’t marry a squirrel, silly.
I don’t think they’re that similar either, but Gabe’s premise is that the Betty White movement IS ironic and condescending — and if that premise were true, then they WOULD be similar. So Gabe is either hypocritical or wrong, depending on whether you agree with his premise.
I also think that there was more at play than that commercial. Two of the Golden Girls have died in the last couple years. The four of them were like the Beatles of ’80s TV comedy, and now we just have Paul McCartney (Betty White) and Ringo Starr (Rue McClanahan, no offense) left. So the commercial (plus maybe her great appearances on Boston Legal) was a reminder that she’s still here and still awesome and should be honored while she’s actually ALIVE (which is kind of a rare thing).
Now I’m just worried about overkill. And who the fuck would wish the Oscars on anyone? Nobody comes out of hosting that godforsaken broadcast looking good.
Golden Girls:Beatles :: Beatles:Jesus
Seriously. Loved that. So much. And I wanted to argue Rue being Ringo, but wow, you’re just so right.
To be honest, I don’t think everyone is on the same page with the diagnosis of irony in either case. I think it just depends on how you interpret it. Playful, condescending, sincere… Does it really matter? I don’t even know why we’ve been dissecting this as much as we have. It serves nothing.
I agree, I don’t care in the end. I just want to be an asshole and press the topic b/c, in reality, I totally agree with Gabe. The BW thing is stupid. It is also overwhelmingly condescending and ironic. The problem is that Betty White is already well-respected and loved so there are many people who actually do support her. However, for every Robin Rubbermaid, there are 100 16 year old kids saying “lol, old bitch.” (Sorry Robin, you are great. Kids are not).
I will concede that I wholeheartedly believe the reason she actually did end up hosting SNL was due to NBC/SNL respecting her and her career but at the end of the day Betty White, to the majority, is just a meme now.
Really? I am rather young (21) and my friends and I all genuinely adore her. There is no condescension involved.
For me, at least, it is the adoration of spunky old ladies. My grandmother was quick-witted until the end. She was amazing. Likewise, Betty White is surprisingly sharp and it’s a pleasure to see. I (like to) think that most people genuinely like her.
I don’t know, wwwest…even if it did start as an ironic/condescending thing, which I don’t think we can really know, it obviously got enough real support to get results. Facebook isn’t just a bunch of evil 16-year-olds. My 74-year-old mother is on it, for god’s sake. There are thousands of people on FB who remember when Golden Girls was on TV on the same night and the same network as SNL (me included). You can also find a ton of people who remember when The Mary Tyler Moore Show and SNL were concurrent. So if it started as an ironic movement, then it was an irony borne of total ignorance, which is obviously the most annoying kind. But the fact is, it made sense to a lot of people. She’s a gifted comic actress and the show was good. In the end, where’s the irony?
I completely accept that there are many, many people who truly enjoy Betty White; I will keep repeating that until the pads of my fingers start to bleed. It is a fact that I am not and will never be trying to argue. I think everyone is being a little too anecdotal about the whole thing and taking personal offense for an ultimately meaningless group of anonymous people formed on the internet. I would never try and say anyone’s enjoyment of Betty White is anything but just that but, also, no one can speak for the entire group of people who e-signed to get her to host SNL or whatever just b/c they sincerely enjoy Betty White and so does their mom.
All I wanted to know is how this related to VGum/TG. Something we can all agree IS ironic, at the absolute very least. People seemed to be attacking anyone who found the BW thing a bit disingenuous by implying it is not possible say that and read this site b/c of the TG thing.
This whole thing is beyond preposterous and I wholeheartedly apologize for even dipping my toe in.
Yeah, I drew that parallel at one point, and you are absolutely right. It doesn’t hold up. The way in which they ARE related is that the critical condescension toward Toph is in the form of playfully ironic adulation.
So maybe Gabe is all “This is my thing. You can’t just populate the internet with ironically-beloved minor celebrities!”
But Gabe…is just so…wrong…
The Betty White thing (which I admittedly was on board with for a while and am coming around to the Gabian view) is that she is an old woman and isn’t it weird and backwards for an old woman to be funny? I mean, I think the Betty White thing came from a mean-spirited and ignorant place where this woman has a 60+ year career (that’s like THREE of my lives) and is actually talented and funny but the younger, oblivious generation that’s going after her is not familiar with her as a comedienne whatsoever, but as this old grandma that they want to hear sex jokes out of because it’s so backwards and wacky. While I think it came from this offensive place where old women basically are sub-people, I think it’s good in the long run because it made me actually more familiar with the Betty White Canon and have been more exposed to her career than I ever would have been. But that’s a different topic.
As for the Topher Grace thing: how I see it, is that that feature is not about Topher Grace per se, he is just the token representation of one of the many mildly talented actors that Hollywood produces. I see it as kind of mocking (to use Rage Against the Machine terms) the “system” that both creates and punishes mediocrity.
Reading too much into it? Probably. And I see where you’re coming from with seeing them as the same: maybe it just comes down to one is in our group and one is in another group, but this is how I see the differences.
Let’s start a facebook Group for Betty White to continue to grow old NOT in our faces. Gabe, get on this!
Betty White to Dog-Sit
BIRDIE the Videogum Mascot
This Saturday Night (please?)!
I know the internet is being ironic and every positive movement has an equal and opposite backlash, but geez, Gabe. How many other actors and actresses can say that at the end of their lives people loved them enough to get them back in the spotlight?
You know Estelle Getty (the woman who played the mother on Golden Girls) died due to the side effects of dementia? Or that Bea Arthur died from cancer at home? Or that Rue McClanahan had a triple bypass and a stroke? These are only the actresses that Betty White performed with. There are plenty of examples of actors and actresses whose last years were far from their best.
Let Betty White get the most out of these years, Gabe. If people want her to host the Academy Awards, let them want. We could just lock her away in a home like we do our grandparents. Or we could celebrate her like someone who is a beloved, hilarious actress who is healthy in her old age.
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Fantastic comment.
I agree, Betty White is sharper and funnier than I am at 4 times my age
You’re so right, and this hadn’t occurred to me before. Just watch the goofy, smitten grins of the dudes on stage behind Betty White during her SNL monologue. For whatever variety of reasons, people genuinely adore her. And that is completely the opposite of how we treat most 88 and a half year old people–like we wish they would just go the fuck away and stop being sick and hard of hearing and making us feel sad.
You’re 38?
Is there something wrong with that?
I feel like pointing out here, even though it’s not related (or is it?) that it’s interesting that Betty White is kind of revered as our collective Grandmas, yet she never had any children her entire life. The More You Know.
That revelation just made me very sad for some reason…
Facebook group page to get Betty White to have Children?
And invent a time machine.
Hey, if you want Betty White to host the Oscars, just text “HAITI” to 90999.
I think you’re missing the potential here. We could use the awesome power of Facebook for good. For instance, Getting Betty White To Cure Cancer, or Getting Betty White To Bring About World Peace, or Getting Betty White To Ascend Jesus-Style Into The Atmosphere, There To Dissipate And Bond With The Ozone Layer, Thus Protecting Our Fragile Eco-Systems From The Ravages Of The Sun. Anything is possible, you just gotta believe!
Reminder that there is a grassroots movement to get me to host SNL: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Andrew-Kornfeld-to-host-SNL-Please/122222054464092?ref=ts
Stop Getting Betty White to Host Everything facebook group
I agree with Justice in Mustard’s (Team Betty) comment.
Betty White deserves the spotlight. She’s a great comedienne and I hope to be just as healthy, active, and funny when I’m her age some day.
Rock on, Betty!!
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uhm. something i said? betty white did nudes back in the day…. and like maybe she’d still do it if a facebook group asked her. get it? ha ha? no? sigh.