Fred Toucher's Explosive Rant Against Twitter: 'All Of You Are So Dumb!'
"Why are we communicating in this fashion?"
--Fred Toucher, Oct. 25, 2017
BOSTON (CBS) -- Jenn Sterger made a lot of headlines on Tuesday when she took to Twitter to reveal some sexual harassment she endured when trying to get several jobs with ESPN years ago.
On Wednesday's show, Rich Shertenlieb was catching Fred Toucher up on the news when, mid-conversation, Fred snapped.
"Oh, Twitter. Oh my God, Twitter. GOD I HATE TWITTER! WHY DON'T THEY HAVE A CONVERSATION?!" Fred said, calling up the recent story of actress Charlyne Li's accusations against David Cross from an encouter 10 years ago. "What is going on? Everyone, get off Twitter. You know what I would not do, is respond to anybody on Twitter. What's the deal now? So the deal now is that you've come out and you say that I said something mean to you how many years ago, so what exactly do you want out of this? Do you want me to be fired? Twitter, man.
"By the way, the president is having a fight with a senator on Twitter. Do you understand how insane this is? Do you understand how damaging this is? We are so stupid. We're a bunch of apes that have been handed a bottle and we're gathering around it in mystery. This is ludicrous. This is so dumb. Stop talking on the internet. Stop talking, you big important piece of garbage, on the internet. If you have a problem with someone, I don't know -- call them! GOD I'M SO SICK OF TWITTER! Oh, what are you sick about? THE STUPID PRESIDENT IS FIGHTING WITH SENATORS ON TWITTER!
"We don't know how to use it. We're not capable of using it correctly. I'm telling you, man. I'm telling you. We're going to look back and go, 'We are idiots.' I'm telling you, we're a bunch of apes. We're a bunch of Cro-Magnons gathered around this stupid thing shining at us, knocking on it."
Fred continued.
"We can't handle it. We cannot handle this. This is how human interaction now -- at the highest levels. You can't dismiss this. The highest, possible, levels of human existence are being fought on Twitter -- where by the way, there can be no nuance and no explanation because there's a cap on what you can say," Fred yelled. "You can't even write 'you' half the time, you have to use the letter 'U.' WHY ARE WE COMMUNICATING IN THIS FASHION?! Why is this the way that we've chosen to do this, in little tidbits?"
Fred said that if someone really had a problem with someone else, they could communicate the old-fashioned way -- by talking to each other.
"It used to be cowardly to call someone on the phone," he said. "Calling somebody on the phone and firing them was a cowardly act. But now that's beyond us. Now, we can't even do that."
Instead, people just "put it out there."
"So a million people can go, like, like, like, and you can check your phone every 10 seconds to see how many people liked it. Like a stupid it. Like a Cro-Magnon. Button makes me feel happy! Heart means nice thing happen, heart means people like me!
"You're such idiots. All of you are so dumb! You have not realized yet that this is awful? Awful! No good comes of this at all. There's literally nothing but pain and awfulness and it's changing the way that we think. You know, you idiots, that it releases dopamine in your brain. It's a scientific fact that it releases dopamine. You're like a rat in a cage where they put opiates in a stupid straw and you keep going back to it until you die. You big morons! I don't know how many people have to lose their careers for you idiots to get it through your stupid heads that half of them are robots on there anyway."
Fred summed up his feelings: "I'm so sick of it on Twitter. The dumb president on Twitter, fighting with the senator on Twitter. Everyone on Twitter."
"Oh, are we stupid. God, I hate it. I hate it. And it's really damaging. Really damaging. Super damaging. You'll see -- you'll all see. Our kids are going to look back at us and laugh. You're afraid of the kids and what the internet's going to do? If you have young kids they're going to look at us like a bunch of idiots, because they're going to go, 'Wait a second, all people do on Twitter is call each other out and yell at each other? Why would I possibly put myself into that?' It's like walking into a room -- oh they're going to beat me into the gang! You did it once, well now I'm going to come in again! Kids are going to go, 'Why would I do this? Why would I do something that I know is going to make me feel bad?
"Oh," Fred concluded, "you're so dumb. All of you. And I was dumb too, but then I realized: what the hell am I doing this for? None of this is interesting, none of this is good, everything is taken out of context, they're suspending people for what they say on Twitter. Then you say something on Twitter, they fire you, and then you say what you were talking about, and that doesn't get covered. That's over. You give them context what you were saying but nobody cares about that, because they got the dopamine out of it by taking you down."
Even after a commercial break, Fred was still firing.
"We've conditioned ourselves to want likes," he said. "I did it too. You just sit there and you're like, 'Well, a lot of people liked that. Hooray for me!' A bunch of people I don't know and never met just think that I was very insightful with my whatever characters that I'm allowed to use. ... Twitter, we've got to get off of that. Politicians gotta get off of it, we just do. This is the way the discourse is happening. And if these accusations are that serious, that these people are making, why are you doing it on Twitter? If it's this serious an accusation, why are you just throwing it out there randomly on Twitter?"
Follow Fred on Twitter @FredToucher and be sure to click 'Like' on all of this tweets!!
