Daniel Hentschel
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Bug Spray Delivery Driver
🕑 Added 2023-09-25 16:22:44 +0000 UTCHello all. You may or may not have seen over the weekend I tweeted this:
I didn't post it to any other platform because I was concerned about violating the community guidelines and getting my account banned on IG and TikTok (technically, I did post briefly to IG, but deleted for the aforementioned reason).
Many people got very, very upset. Tipping, and particularly delivery apps, seems to be a constant point of contention. Especially on Twitter.
So I wanted to use this as an opportunity to describe this from my perspective and give you, my most loyal and dedicated followers, an insight into my side of the process.
Some of you may remember an old video I posted on the subject where I pretended to be a Doordash driver smashing a person's order into my dashboard and screaming, "Stupid spoiled brats, pick up your own food!"
I deleted this shortly after posting, but Inner Circle members can find it on Patreon as a bonus video.
The story behind this particular video is one of humiliating failure. I drove to a McDonald's drive thru and ordered two large fries, because I thought that would make for the most visually interesting explosion. I also asked for an extra bag in case I had to do another take, but they either didn't hear me or didn't care and didn't give me one. Oh well.
I filmed the first take with the first bag. Rewatching it, I thought I could do better, so I drove back to the same McDonald's 10 minutes later and ordered again (this time I got a Big Mac meal, because I wanted to see if a messy hamburger would be funnier).
Tried again with the second bag. I ended up liking the first take better, so that's the one I used. I had already spent my entire week's food budget on this production, so I had to call it a day.
I uploaded the video, and it was fine. Some people liked it, but many pointed out a key flaw, which is that McDonald's uses a different bag when you order delivery vs drive thru.
So I deleted it, because I knew the concept had a lot of potential and I could do better. I filed it away somewhere in the back of my brain and moved on with my miserable life.
This was about a month ago. Fast forward to last week, I saw a tweet from a server about a European who didn't leave a tip on a bill that was several hundred dollars and said, "I'm European, we don't tip."
This and the charged discourse surrounding it late last week sort of pre-heated the oven, and it reminded me of the Doordash thing I never revisited.
I've been using a lot of bug spray recently because we think a rat died in the walls of our apartment and flesh flies have been emerging from the drain by the dozens. So it was on my mind.
The image of a delivery driver spraying it into a bag of food made me laugh really hard. This is a key point I want to make. Most of the time, I don't go into these sorts of things solely wanting to drive engagement by making people mad with a lie. I don't make any money at all off views or engagement, like many other grifters. The only money I make from social media comes from Patreon, Cameo, and brand partnerships on TikTok.
First and foremost it's always because I genuinely think the idea is funny. I try to do it with some artfulness. I'm not coming at social media with a Candace Owens mentality. Making people mad is easy.
The fun for me comes from the idea that social media as a medium allows you to play sitcom level absurd ideas as though they actually happened to somebody.
Nobody on the internet is real. There aren't any actual people, they're just characters you invent in your head based on what they post.
That, and the internet only exists moment-to-moment. I'm having trouble even trying to remember viral posts from last week. So it is perfectly believable to me that I can make a fake post, everybody can get mad at it, and then the next week I can make another fake post and nobody remembers I'm the same guy from last week.
That's one of the big reasons I keep reinventing myself with different schticks, because even if you get REALLY famous for doing one thing, you'll die along with the relevance of that one thing once everybody moves on (which they will).
So I try to take all of the disadvantages of social media and use them to my advantage.
Anyway, to execute this particular post, the first thing I did was order McDonald's delivery to myself. That way I'd have it the exact same way it would appear to a delivery driver.
I very carefully removed the receipt from under one of the stickers to remove any identifying info. I also drove a few blocks away to take the actual photos in case people tried to identify the background and dox my location (you can never be too careful).
I rolled all my windows down, so I wouldn't accidentally asphyxiate myself. I honestly thought the car would smell more like Raid afterwards, but it completely dissipated after about an hour. Every time I do something in my car, like toss cayenne pepper in the back seat, people always say "this wasn't worth ruining your car!" It's called cleaning your car, morons. You should try it sometime.
The first thing I debated was whether I should just post the one picture of the Raid being sprayed actively into the bag, or I should add a second picture of the re-sealed bag. I eventually decided to do the second option, to solidify the narrative that I had tampered with it and resealed it with the intent of delivering it.
When it seemed like it was going to gain traction, I changed my profile picture to the Ravens logo, simply because the profile picture I normally use screams "I'm a comedian" and I wanted to add a layer of believability. And I'm from Maryland.
Now, there are many aspects of this scenario that, to me, seem like they would be a dead giveaway that it could never plausibly happen.
The most obvious being that it is completely insane and no one would ever do something like this, to start with. But let's say somebody did. I don't know if you've ever smelled bug spray before, but even if you spray a tiny bit, it literally smells like a chemical warfare attack.
Imagine receiving a food delivery bag that looked like it was hastily resealed by Ted Bundy, had a big wet spot at the bottom, and smelled like noxious gas so strongly you could barely hold it next to your face let alone eat it.
Even if someone was crazy enough to do this with the knowledge that they would very easily be caught, it would be incredibly obvious, and from the customer's perspective I don't think they would be physically able to eat it even if they tried (that's the exact reason they make insecticide smell like that).
My point is that people don't take the time to logically think through things like this when they see them online. I am not trying to seem morally or intellectually superior (I am, but I'm trying not to seem like I am), and I am not trying to prove a specific point about society or any of that at all.
But, it is just interesting to think about these things after the fact. I scroll through all of the replies and shares taking it completely at face value, and it goes back to my point at the beginning of the post. On some level, I don't think they actually believe it, either. They're playing a part just like I am. The internet isn't real, so words and actions don't carry the same weight online as they would in real life.
It's fun to be mad at people online. It's a form of entertainment. It's exciting to play into a fun fantasy. You get to participate in a heightened version of reality and feel more powerful and smart than you actually are in real life.
Nobody would confront somebody in real life with the bravado they do on social media. The way everybody acts online in general sits somewhere halfway between reality and performance, in my mind.
So, the next day, I deleted the initial post. I did so for a very selfish reason-- I didn't want other people to go viral on the back of my hard work. "No free clout."
The next logical step to me was that this character would face the consequences of his actions. If a particular scenario gets a lot of attention, I'll start playing it out in real time. There's rarely any sense of narrative conclusion to internet villains.
One actual real-life benefit of doing this is that, if people who are mad at me think that I have already gotten my comeuppance, that will satisfy them and they'll leave me alone.
I also decided to go another layer deeper. Instead of playing it like I got suspended for actually poisoning somebody, I decided to play it like I got suspended for making the joke that I poisoned somebody.
Then it would work both ways. Whether you think I actually did it or know it's a joke, I got what you think I deserved either way.
So I went into my spam folder and screenshotted an actual e-mail I got from Uber.
Here's the original screenshot. The funny part is, it already looks fake.
Here's my version:
Everything circled in red is what I changed-- in the original, you can faintly see the actual subject of the message. You can also see the message was sent several days ago. So I took another screenshot of an e-mail I had received that morning and swapped out these elements.
Then I downloaded the font Uber uses and typed out the message body with that. I tried to copy their verbiage, including the kind of stupid header that's like, "whoopsie daisy, we'll fix that right in a jiffy," brand baby talk.
You might have noticed by now there's a typo. I typed "suspect" instead of "suspend." This original version was up for about 30 minutes before I fixed the typo and reposted.
This is the truly astonishing part for me-- this completely gave away that it was fake and only 1 person said anything about it. I'm sure plenty of other people noticed and just didn't care enough to say anything, but throughout the day so many more people took it as 100% real, despite the fact that this had happened.
So, that's the end of that. I thought it would be interesting to describe my perspective to you all, since you are giving my money.
If you are thinking-- wow, he really takes this too seriously-- yes, that is true, sue me. All day all I see is lazy, stolen, low effort content that sucks. Putting care, attention, time, and dedication into what you put into the world goes a long way.
Comments
Jonathan
This is your best post. Beautiful.
Lyss
Lmfao this is beautiful
Daniel Hentschel
Do not stop listening to the podcast until I allow it
Avery
i cant stop reading everything i see in your voice dan
alex
someone used that tweet as a real response lmfao
