Let Frankie Muniz’s Weird Twitter Take You Away From All This
It’s been a difficult few weeks online, between impeachment fever and the no less geopolitically significant Caroline/Natalie discourse. When everyone on the timeline is constantly fighting over something as mundane as kale, it can be hard to remember why we all logged on in the first place; what are we getting, exactly, from devoting the better part of our “wild and precious lives” to the internet?
That’s where Frankie Muniz’s Twitter comes in.
Yes, the former child star who starred in Malcolm in the Middle and Big Fat Liar. You might not think of him as a social media star, but somehow, without much fanfare, Muniz has established himself as one of the funniest people currently tweeting—partly because of the daily hijinks he shares on his feed, but partly because it’s sometimes unclear whether he knows he’s being funny. Let’s take a brief tour of his account.
Muniz is the antithesis of the onetime child star who spends his time swanning around West Hollywood, undertipping the valet and constantly alluding to his former fame; instead, he’s opted to spend his time promoting a drawing of himself as rap phenom Lizzo’s weird little manservant. This is a vision of masculinity I can get behind.
Muniz also shares his highly relatable food adventures:
Muniz’s Twitter is fascinating because it’s not always good; you have to search for the gold, which makes it all the more rewarding. Interspersed with boomer-esque complaints about banks, ubiquitous self-promotion, and sports chat are nuggets of Weird Twitter–esque unintentional brilliance, like this one:
He kneed! The luggage rack! So hard he threw up! Could this unlikely series of events really have happened to television’s erstwhile Malcolm? Or is this the brief comedic creation of a virtual slapstick genius?
In a way, Muniz’s Twitter surpasses mere comedy to become a fully realized portrait of a man’s pathos, as the below tweet explains:
Then, there are the more human touches: Muniz is upbeat when faced with genuine hurdles, such as health problems and the flood that destroyed his and his fiancee’s house, but he’s not afraid to get deeply philosophical:
Muniz makes his own olive oil. He crowdsources destination weddings. He loves golf and DiGiorno pizza. He’s like your favorite uncle, if your favorite uncle were a former child star who almost hit Megan Fox with his car and frequented the same restaurants as Fabio:
In these troubled times, it’s heartening to see someone simply enjoying himself as much as Muniz does on Twitter. “It’s the little things in life,” he tweeted in August about the joy of using pennies, and that statement serves as a kind of guiding principle for the entirety of his account; ultimately, Frankie Muniz loves life, and he’ll make you love it too.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
