Upon Further Review...

September 25, 2019 11:06 AM

If you saw ESPN's College Gameday broadcast from Ames, Iowa, you might have noticed an Iowa State University football fan holding a sign asking for help replenishing his Busch Light fund. It worked! People sent money to Carson King's Venmo. And then more did. So many, in fact, that he decided one case of beer was plenty, and he was giving the rest to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital. Then Busch matched his donation. Then Venmo matched it. And people kept giving, until the pledged amount topped a million dollars.

A great story! Hawkeyes and Cyclones, normally bitter rivals, united in pride over this supreme example of Iowa nice.

Then a Des Moines Register reporter decided to dig through Carson King's social media. Soon, that very reporter's tweets came to light. Now, it's everyone Iowan's favorite conversation-starter.

Bonus: The Iowa Wave at the Hawkeyes' home football games.

Extra bonus: The Hawks won when a couple of Cyclones decided make a GIF instead of returning a punt.

posted by Caxton1476 (21 comments total)

He who fights with Milkshake Duck should look to it that he himself does not become a Milkshake Duck.

But truly, it's very easy to not be a Milkshake Duck. Step 1: don't be an ass. End of steps.
posted by ZaphodB at 11:15 AM on September 25, 2019 [6 favorites]

I think his response is exactly what we want from people who have espoused stupid opinions in the past. He apologized, with humility, and moved on.

Like, dude raised a million dollars for charity. I don't care that he was an edgelord when he was 16.
posted by skullhead at 11:43 AM on September 25, 2019 [27 favorites]

Sounds like Carson King did exactly the right thing. He acknowledged harm, he apologized without anyone needing to drag it out of him.

Sucks that Busch didn't see that contrition as a virtue, but it's unclear what "partnership" they cancelled, since it sounds like it was mostly just a one-time charity match, and they're upholding their pledge.
posted by explosion at 11:45 AM on September 25, 2019 [7 favorites]

He was getting a 1 year supply of Busch Lite with his face on the cans, explosion. dunno what else.

So maybe this saved his life...?
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 12:09 PM on September 25, 2019 [3 favorites]

Pro-tip: If you are in the office and don't want to get all dusty, don't watch that Iowa wave video just yet...
posted by TreeRooster at 12:12 PM on September 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Man this makes me think back to that kid that started at U of Illinois the same time as me. He had this wacky idea to write the Chicago Tribune's Bob Greene (the closest thing we had to viral media back then) and ask everyone for a penny.

He wound up making $29,000.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:35 PM on September 25, 2019

Pro-tip: If you are in the office and don't want to get all dusty, don't watch that Iowa wave video just yet...

Oh god, the Iowa wave is the worst. The absolute worst. It's a bunch of drunk-ass asshole football fans endlessly congratulating themselves for a pointless, saccharine gesture. A cool thing would be if Iowa football fans would spend less time talking about how awesome they were for waving at sick kids and maybe a little more time thinking about how to make sure that nobody assaults the marching band.

Anyway, I generally don't agree with critiques of cancel culture, but I guess I think there should be a statute of limitations on tweets that people made when they were 16. I would feel differently if the tweets had been more recent or if he'd been an adult when he made them.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:50 PM on September 25, 2019 [9 favorites]

But truly, it's very easy to not be a Milkshake Duck. Step 1: don't be an ass. End of steps.

Step 2: review any online writing that can be tied back to you, particularly if you can edit or delete it, and if you can revise or remove it, periodically check to see if you'd be comfortable making those past statements again today.


I think his response is exactly what we want from people who have espoused stupid opinions in the past. He apologized, with humility, and moved on.

Like, dude raised a million dollars for charity. I don't care that he was an edgelord when he was 16.

Giving money to charity + showing humility regarding statements made as a teenager = good egg in my book. (Now delete those posts! De-toxify the internet, even one or two old tweets at a time!)
posted by filthy light thief at 12:54 PM on September 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

I've tried to figure out the purpose of Twitter multiple times in my life, and I keep reaching the conclusion that it's where you go when you want to say racist stuff.
posted by TrialByMedia at 12:58 PM on September 25, 2019 [3 favorites]

I have absolutely not been able to find the actual tweets to confirm this, but the rumor has been that he was repeating jokes from Daniel Tosh's show which was, you know, on national TV at the time. If that is really the case then yeah, unfair. I mean, what are the chances that Anheuser-Busch wasn't at one point paying the people who paid the people who wrote those jokes to run ads, to sell beer to the prime demographic of young male sports fans who like edgy comedy?

I actually wonder a bit what the reporter's thought process was, in digging that far. Presumably they thought a milkshake duck situation would be embarrassing to the paper? I dunno, I don't think it's how I would balance my concerns.
posted by atoxyl at 1:53 PM on September 25, 2019 [4 favorites]

At exactly what age should people start being held accountable for their racist statements? I am so tired of hearing “He was only 16!” So were any black classmates of his. If you don’t want a reporter to uncover the racist jokes you told, don’t tell racist jokes. Carson King immediately acknowledged he did the wrong thing and was forthcoming with an apology. I wish everyone could accept that racist actions have consequences as well as he has.
posted by epj at 2:48 PM on September 25, 2019 [10 favorites]

Carson King was 16, and immediately apologized. Aaron Calvin, the reporter who unearthed this, had tweets that were arguably worse, and were said when he was an adult. I know who I wouldn't trust more then the other...
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:16 PM on September 25, 2019 [11 favorites]

I'm probably naive but if I were that reporter's editor, and he pitched me the story "So a guy raised like a million dollars for a children's charity, and I dug up some dumb racist shit he said when he was 16, should we run with this?" I'd probably have said no. Sure, he said racist stuff, and I'm not trying to excuse that (neither is he). But just from the perspective of, is this worth the public's time or attention, I think it's not.
posted by axiom at 3:51 PM on September 25, 2019 [7 favorites]

What do you call a guy who outs a Milkshake Duck but turns our to be a Milkshake Duck himself?
posted by chaz at 4:27 PM on September 25, 2019

If you don’t want a reporter to uncover the racist jokes you told, don’t tell racist jokes

Losing free beer isn't exactly the worst consequence in the world so, I mean, one can have some perspective here. King handled it graciously, and he'll probably be just fine! But again, allegedly (again I will include the disclaimer that I can't verify this claim because I can't find any archive of the tweets) he was a 16-year-old repeating things he got from a media property with millions of dollars behind it, which was targeted directly at people in his demographic and one of the most popular shows with that demographic at the time. And there is an illustrative irony in the fact that a company that has spent boatloads of money on ads catering to regressive gender politics over the years can pivot and treat some dude from Iowa as too hot to handle. To me, these particulars of the story make it a good example of why thinking of these sorts of issues in terms of individual transgressions can only take you so far sometimes.
posted by atoxyl at 4:37 PM on September 25, 2019 [14 favorites]

Everybody should auto-delete their tweets every 14 or 30 days.
posted by COD at 4:39 PM on September 25, 2019 [3 favorites]

The reporter's tweets and Buzzfeed posts read to me like Cumtown/Chapo-style privileged leftist shock humor. Offering to come to a politician's party and teach kids to 'turn tricks', liberal use of the n-word but appropriating colloquial use to make jokes. He has a Buzzfeed post titled "This cartoon Perfectly Explains What White Privilege Is."

No surprise to me that he would try to find dirt on some conservative jock meathead, completely oblivious to his own privilege and racism. I say this as someone who grew out of that phase before Twitter was a thing and deeply regret it.
posted by kittensofthenight at 5:34 PM on September 25, 2019 [5 favorites]

oh god it's Milkshake Ducks all the way down isn't it
posted by entropone at 7:21 PM on September 25, 2019

I've tried to figure out the purpose of Twitter multiple times in my life, and I keep reaching the conclusion that it's where you go when you want to say racist stuff.

Yes, yes, yes, you don't even own a television.

But!

For a lot of (marginalised) people Twitter is one of the few channels they have to make their own voice heard and arguably the only channel where they're able to hold peope directly to account.

With Twitter you have unfiltered access to voices you can't find anywhere else.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:24 PM on September 25, 2019 [9 favorites]

Sometimes it's unfiltered access to a voice of your own that you can't find anywhere else.
posted by slogger at 6:20 AM on September 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

> Everybody should auto-delete their tweets every 14 or 30 days.

We should have conversations exclusively via snapchat
posted by batter_my_heart at 6:39 PM on September 28, 2019