Section:GDN 12 PaGe:3 Edition Date:190906 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 5/9/2019 17:17 cYanmaGentaYellowblac
- The Guardian
Friday 6 September 2019 3
Lost in showbiz
Joel Golby
Oh Jeremy
Renner,
you’ve
only got
yourselves
to blame
the app you got a push notifi cation
that, due to an incredibly thoughtless
quirk of design, made it seem as if
Jeremy Renner himself was whispering
it directly into your phone. So
you could type, say, I don’t know:
“I literally don’t know how my
movie career happened. I am
entirely charmless and a completely
forgettable actor. My go-to facial
expression is ‘midway through a
polite conversation with an
unfamiliar neighbour, I realise my
dog has rolled in a dog turd’. They
should have left me in the make up
truck where they found me” and it
would appear as if Jeremy Renner
was saying that, about himself. So
you can see how this instantly and
spectacularly fell apart.
As Stefan Heck wrote on
Deadspin , “I Broke the Offi cial
Jeremy Renner App by Posting
the Word ‘Porno’ On It”. After a
screenshot of someone responding
to the word “porno” with “Nasty!!
Not Cool” went viral, the Jeremy
Renner app was inundated by
Renner impersonators all saying
how much they loved porno and
pornography-aligned things. And
lo: Renner had to shutter the app he
primarily used as a way of wishing
people a rockin weekend.
“The app has jumped the shark.
Literally,” Renner said in a statement ,
literally. “Due to clever individuals
that were able to manipulate ways
to impersonate me and others within
the app I have asked ESCAPEX, the
company that runs this app, to shut
it down immediately.”
Ah yes, those galactic-brained
hackers who were able to manipulate
the iron-clad security of the JeremyRenner app by ... simply signing up
with Renner’s name and photograph.
How on earth could we have seen
this happening?
The thing is ... this is not even
the fi rst time the Jeremy Renner app
has been shut down because of
trolling. In 2017, around the time of
the app’s initial launch, the Renner
community (Rennerheads?
Renoids? Jerryboys? God knows)
was tearing itself apart in the
comments section under Jeremy
Renner’s updates. This was due to
a multipronged controversy
involving a Hurricane Harvey
giveaway experience (fans were
mad that a Renner-promised visit to
the set of the Avengers fi lm turned
out to just be a visit to his house) ,
comment moderation described as
totalitarian, a wonky app update
and accusations of bullying. I
simply cannot believe that Renner
somehow attracts this much online
drama. But see you in 2021 for the
inevitable Biannual Jeremy Renner
App Catastrophe.Not in front of
Cardi, please,
children
I am both sad and delighted to
announce that Cardi B is locked in a
rap feud with four 10-year-old boys.
In a way, we should have seen this
coming, shouldn’t we: Cardi B, a
lightning bolt of drama , glamour
and soft-spoken charisma, who
took possibly the last original pathto superstardom going – from viral
motivational Instagram speaker
(“A hoe never gets cold”) to alumni
of the reality show Love & Hip Hop:
New York , to multi platinum artist
to one of the biggest stars in the
world – was always, truly, destined
to have this headline written about
her: “Cardi B tells 10-year-olds
who wrote diss track to go ‘drink
f***ing milk.”
To catch you up: on Monday
night, Cardi broadcast one of her
regular tell-all Instagram Lives,
in which she uttered the immortal
lines: “Not gonna let no little
fucking white boys come at me
all motherfucking day long.
Motherfucking shut the fuck up and
stay in your motherfucking place.
Go drink your motherfucking milk,
bitch.” The clip was interpreted as
being a dig at ZN8tion , a group of
four fraternal quadruplets who had
recorded a diss track aimed at Cardi
in which they chant , “They fi xed
your teeth / but they couldn’t fi x your
face” and that they “Don’t know
what’s faker / your life or your butt”,
before one of them danc es toward
the camera with a cushion down
their tiny child’s trousers to simulate
a curvy arse. I simply don’t know
how four children – Hollywood,
Slim Z, Bonez McKoy and Mr Great,
before you ask – got access to a
studio, a camera, a cushion, a beat
to diss over the top of and 143,000
Instagram followers, but it’s 2019
and we just have to accept these
things as facts now. That’s just the
world we live in. I mean it’s better
than a Jeremy Renner app, isn’t it?
Anyway, turns out it was all a
misunderstanding. Cardi was
actually lamenting footage from
Travis Scott’s Netfl ix documentary,
Look Mom, I Can Fly , in which he
seems visibly annoyed to lose the
best rap album Grammy to Cardi’s
Invasion of Privacy. So she defended
herself and her work on Instagram ,
relating how she recorded it
throughout a diffi cult pregnancy,
and these eerily matching 10-year-
olds had absolutely nothing to do
with it. This has, therefore, become
a self-fulfi lling rap beef: ZN8tion
have somehow blipped above the
radar by swinging for Cardi and
fundamentally missing, and now
she’s mad that everyone thinks she’s
mad at four identical children. So in
a way: yes, Cardi B is now annoyed at
ZN8tion because everyone thought
she was annoyed at ZN8tion, but she
isn’t, she’s annoyed at ... I don’t
know. “The industry.”
I think the main takeaway from
this, though, is: this cannot be the
last I hear from Hollywood, Slim Z,
Mr Great and my precious Bonez
McKoy, please. It’s a dark and
miserable year, a grey and torrid
time to be alive, and what I need –
what my soul craves! – is four
matching 10-year-olds in
wraparound sunglasses rapping
on an anti-bullying platform, but
bullying Cardi B as they do it. Please,
more beef from the ZN8tion quads.
Go for Kanye next, or Taylor Swift.
Call Ed Sheeran out for a rap battle.
This is what the future of culture
needs: four aggy 10-year-olds,
cushions fi rmly down their trousers,
ILLUSTRATION: NICK OLIVER/THE GUARDIANCOVER PHOTOGRAPH: TRISTAN BEJAWN/THE GUARDIAN calling Drake a “fart boy”.
I have spent more of
my life than I would like to admit
imagining who a Jeremy Renner fan
would be. In my mind, they have dogs
and a gleaming pick up truck, but
they don’t live on farmland; instead,
they live in a grey-fronted new-
build on an uphill cul-de-sac in a
generic American town. They have
a number of sweated-in caps that
they wear every day, even to formal
events. At least one pump-action
shotgun and possibly a long-range
weapon, too.
I dream that Renner fans literally
all air guitar along to Don’t Stop
Believin’, even when the song is not
actually playing. The males still
somehow have early- 00s goatees
and jeans that pool over their boots
like curtains. When they walk into a
gas station – which Renner fans do
up to seven times a day, always
making a creaking, groaning noise
when they pay at the register in
damp, crumpled wads of cash – they
walk sideways and stiff -legged , like
Liam Gallagher after bruising his
tailbone, so that other people cannot
easily navigate past. My imaginary
female Renner fans, meanwhile,
self-describe as “mom” in their
Instagram bios , have one eye that
cannot look directly at a camera lens
and are always making some sort of
vile American casserole that is mainly
pork lumps and garlic powder.Night after night, these Renner
fans sit in a cuddle puddle with their
dozens of large rescue dogs. As the
lights dim against the night, truck
engine tinkling cool outside , they
watch The Hurt Locker, then all the
Marvel fi lms, that Bourne one Renner
did, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.
Renner fans are fundamentally
happier and more at peace than
you and me, yes, but will history
remember them when they are
dead? It will not.
What history will remember,
though, is Renner’s attempt at
becoming an app billionaire, which
came crashing down this week.
In case you have somehow not
downloaded the Jeremy Renner app- called, simply, “Jeremy Renner” – it
was a bit like Instagram, but only for
pictures of Jeremy Renner, posted
by Jeremy Renner, with Jeremy
Renneresque captions such as:
“Have a rockin weekend everyone!!!”
You could communicate with other
Jeremy Renner fans , and every time
someone commented back to you on
The Jeremy
Renner app was
inundated by
impersonators
saying how much
they loved porno
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