Karp wasn't exactly famous before his Cinnamon Toast Crunch incident instead he lived the charmed life of a negligible Comedy Guy - adjacent to people more successful than him, producing the sort of Void Television that only exists on the most ethereal and transient Roku apps, hosting a podcast with his wife who somehow also happens to be Topanga from Boy Meets World. During his brief ingratiation with the national media, when Karp was enjoying the tenuous highs of white-hot social media superiority, a number of former girlfriends and colleagues accused him of being a shitty, abusive, gaslighting partner and friend. "What happened, are you okay?" says a nice lady who keeps a hand-drawn illustration of her granddaughter hugging a dog pinned to the top of her feed. "It was a hoax wasn't it," adds someone else, who describes themselves as a "sharpie enthusiast," a few days prior. "Why'd you make a big deal about shrimp being in a cereal box," posts some guy, on the same day I'm writing this newsletter. Seriously Jensen, what's up with that dang shrimp? Of course, the people in his mentions have not gotten that memo, and they remain united in their demands. Today, he lives the ascetic existence of so many other disgraced former posters their accounts all cheerful and breezy until a stark, jarring terminus at the top of the feed - no farewell, no apology, no notes app screenshot - just an overwhelming sense that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. Karp hasn't posted since, due to one of the most psychedelic and delirious cancellations of all time. Two days later, after stories from the New York Times and Washington Post elevated his breakfast debacle into international news, he made another tweet saying that he was waiting on General Mills to "DNA test" the alleged shrimp - thus bringing closure to this chaotic, deep-pandemic storyline. He tweeted about it, and quickly stormed the algorithm and conquered the trending tab. To recap: A man named Jensen Karp discovered what looked like a pile of fried exoskeletons in his cereal on March 22. It has become one of my recurrent brainsick rituals, and reader, I am always horrified by what I find. I know this because I search his name on Twitter once a month, curious to see if the remnants of that particular discourse are still rattling around in the benthic regions of cyberspace. The figures are placed in a plastic bubble and secured to the front.Every day, people ask Jensen Karp if he finally figured out what was going on with the shrimp in his Cinnamon Toast Crunch. To create the custom card backs for each one, he prints out images from Adobe Photoshop onto special paper and then glues them to trimmed cardboard. Producing toys can take a few days, and McAlpin uses a range of materials, including clays and paint. “I definitely also think there is something hilarious about producing a toy based on something like the Cinnamon Toast Crunch thing.” “I got into making ones like Internet personalities, celebrities, people I thought would make a funny action figure that you wouldn’t otherwise see,” McAlpin said. In September, when Nathan Apodaca became a sensation after posting a TikTok video of him skateboarding to Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 hit “Dreams,” while chugging Ocean Spray cranberry juice, McAlpin was quick to pay homage. They include posable action figures of comedian Dave Chappelle, actor Ben Affleck outside of a Dunkin’ shop, and Internet personality “Scumbag Steve.” Over the past year, he has whipped up dozens of one-off novelty toys, with the hopes of selling them through his Instagram account “Sir Collect-a-Lot.” McAlpin’s inspiration came from similar artists he’d been following on Instagram. Instead, he began making custom toys and action figures - many with a comedic twist - based on cultural moments and conversations. Last spring, when he was furloughed from his job in the travel industry due to the pandemic, he decided, like many others, that he needed to fill his time with a hobby.īread-baking wasn’t in the cards. For McAlpin, the Internet drama served up a heaping spoonful of inspiration.
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