a simple guide to roasting your friends with screenshots from TV and movies

become the menace of the group chat

I started making screencaps from movies and TV shows a long time ago. It was a work thing back then, a way to break up blocks of text with an image so a recap flowed better, or a way to make a point with a visual instead of my own words. It eventually became a part of the viewing experience for me, seeing a moment happen and then saying “oh, I gotta screencap that,” especially once I realized how fun it was to have a big collection of them to use as shorthand for reactions. I don’t know why I’m explaining the concept of a meme to you like you’ve never used the internet before. My point is that I have a ton of screencaps saved on my laptop. Like, easily hundreds, probably thousands. It’s fine and normal.

One of my favorite things is when there’s a character in a show or movie who has the same name as one of my friends because then I can use a screencap to be a rascal. An example will help, which is good because I have a ton to show you. The other week I was watching the new Apple TV movie The Instigators, the one with Matt Damon and Casey Affleck. It’s an okay movie I would recommend only if you’re bored on a Friday night, but it does have a character named Alan who gets yelled at a lot, which is nice because I have a friend named Alan. And now my friend Alan gets these sent to him sometimes…

Which is fun. For me. Maybe less so for Alan, which makes it even more fun for me, in a way. And once you open up this window, there’s a whole new world to experience. Like, I also have a friend named Stacey who I am in a fun group chat with. And there was a character named Stacey in the latest season of True Detective. And, well, suddenly this became a very important moment in the show for me…

I have a friend named Andy who is in the same group chat. And I was watching Out of Sight again recently. And there’s that great scene in the restaurant of the hotel where George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez have that conversation. And right before it happens some dork named Andy tries to hit on her and it gave me this very useful still image…

I also have a friend named Josh, who is a lovely and patient man, which is good because one thing I’ve realized is that… there are a lot of characters named Josh out there. And they are always getting told to shut up or stop being weird. I used one of Natalie Zea from La Brea at the top of this whole thing, but I really can’t even count how often I’ve used these two images from Godzilla Vs. Kong and Joe Pera Talks With You in various chats with him…

I suppose my points here are follows:

• It is kind of cool that these little moments can have a second life completely stripped of their original context that can be used to help you communicate with the people in your life

• This is my thing so you are not allowed to use it against me if someone on a television says something like “Stop being weird, Brian” to a character named Brian

• Joe Pera should be in a Godzilla movie

I think that about covers it.

STUFF I TYPED

— I only wrote one thing this week but in my defense it was a groundbreaking piece of criticism related to bounce house tragedies on popular television shows

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— excellent blog by James Poniewozik about one of my bigger pet peeves: there is too much time between seasons of television shows 

— Goggins interview

— interview with Ben Collins, the new CEO of The Onion, in which he discusses how they are attempting to save a beloved institution despite an ongoing media nightmare

— great blog by Emma Baccelieri about a kickass Paralympian

— I will read anything about Paul Skenes

— speaking of baseball: Shohei Ohtani’s dog, Decoy “threw out” the first pitch at a game recently, documented in glorious hi-res photos by Defector, and yup, there’s already a $20k golden bobblehead to commemorate it, which I am going to steal

— the bad news is that crashing a Cybertruck into a fire hydrant can cause the car to go up in flames but the silver lining is that at least the cars are also comically easy to break into (lol)

— Oasis feud timeline

— “Controversy grows after out-of-state entry wins Kentucky State Fair cake competition”

— a little obsessed with the yacht sinking

— “Bald eagle thought to be injured later deemed ‘too fat to fly’”

— “Kanye West Selling Gutted Malibu Mansion at $36 Million Loss”

— some dudes tried to rob a train like it’s the Wild West out here 

— lox heist (thank you, Sean)

— no

— lmao

— John Stamos says he was kicked out of Scientology for being a lil rascal

— “Lonely dolphin may be behind series of attacks on swimmers in Japan”

— my friend Stacey — the one I mentioned above, who is not actually an idiot — introduced me to this video of the gnocchi window, which is now the only thing I care about 

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Okay, that’s it for this week. Please subscribe and consider upgrading so I can eat five meals a week at the gnocchi window.