How a Twitter Cabal of Diaper-Obsessed Madmen Killed Scott Baio
#RIPScottBaio was trending on Twitter this afternoon, despite the effusive and vulgar protestations of the Joanie and Chachi star. If you'd visited Wikipedia, searching (as one does) for some "Baio"-graphical information, you would've learned what killed him: diaper rash. "There was only one way to spread awareness of the very real threat of 'diaper death,'" I was told when I talked the guy who'd kicked off the rumor.
That guy is @boring_as_heck, or "stefan," and today represents a kind of career high. @boring_as_heck was the first person to Tweet #RIPScottBaio, and was the driving force, along with co-conspirator @SPERGERS and a loosely-aligned gang of Twitter weirdos—a couple dozen people who mostly post on, and know each other through, the Something Awful message boards—behind its rise to the top spot on worldwide trends list. All of which made Scott Baio—best known on the internet for being a racist prick—very, very angry, and everyone else very, very pleased.
The members of the diaper cabal that killed Baio are probably the most advanced Twitter users I know, even if, and maybe because, they mostly just troll people in deliberately odd and unbelievably funny ways, thick with in-jokes and obscure references. Diaper fetishists and "adult babies" are frequent topics of conversation, alongside, not that I really understand any or all of it, dogs, bogs, pizza, atheism, and Skrillex being stung by wasps. Another thing that they, like all other normal human beings on Twitter, love to do: Tweet weird shit at or about brands, corporations or celebrities. (Stefan maintains a hilarious Tumblr collecting his and his friends' Tweets at corporations.)
In that context, this following sequence of Tweets was more or less a regular kind of not at all weird thing to do:
We should all ask Scott Baio about his diaper fetish. And go!
— Bra Shaman (@SPERGERS) December 14, 2011
@scottbaio Scott, huge fan here. Are the diaper rumors true - are you a member of the adult baby community? You can tell me, Scott.
— stefan (@boring_as_heck) December 14, 2011
Was Charles (of Charles in Charge) the first diaper positive character on TV? @scottbaio is the Jackie Robinson of the diapered
— 56789 (@martian_balls) December 14, 2011
Baio, @boring_as_heck explained to me, "responded by blocking anyone who brought up diapers" and calling everyone "dipshits":
Don't know why I'm getting spammed with diaper comments. It's HUMPday, Not DUMP day dipshits!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
— Scott Baio (@ScottBaio) December 14, 2011
On a normal day, being responded to in such a fashion would be considered a more or less complete victory. But this was not a normal day. Inspired by the recent, beautiful troll of Ron Paul fans with a #RIPRonPaul hashtag, @boring_as_heck kicked off a hashtag of his own:
— stefan (@boring_as_heck) December 14, 2011
"After Scott blocked me," he says, "I knew there was only one way to spread awareness of the very real threat of 'diaper death.' It quickly spiraled out of my control." Within an hour, helped along by @SPERGERS and the rest of the diaper dudes, #RIPScottBaio was the top worldwide trend. The Wikipedia "vandalism" followed; Gossip Cop—which seems to have Googled "Scott Baio dead" and found one of those insert-a-celebrity's-name fake obituaries—"debunked" the rumor. So did MSNBC.
Its co-instigators were understandably excited:
well im never gonna top this
— stefan (@boring_as_heck) December 14, 2011
#RIPScottBaio is now trending worldwide. I have a big boner.screenshooter.net/8728532/sfinjgh
— Bra Shaman (@SPERGERS) December 14, 2011
Baio was not:
I never knew there were so many silly, misinformed people on Twitter. Grow up & find a life, as I enjoy mine. #layofftheeggnogdipshits
— Scott Baio (@ScottBaio) December 14, 2011
The trend has died down, the rumor has faded, and Baio is still alive. But he—like the rest of us—learned a lesson today. Not just a lesson about the dangers of diaper death. A lesson about the power of the internet:
twiter reveals the raw power of you have to talk to nerds about pee otherwise they tell every one your dead
— Wayne Gretzky (@DinkMagic) December 14, 2011