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Drugs

The Simpsons Marijuana Novel Is the Strangest, Most Wonderful Thing on Twitter

Read an excerpt about the Simpsons obsessively smoking weed, Bart getting sent to Iraq, Lisa and Maggie hitting a salvia blunt, and Marge falling into despair.

Photo via Flickr user playerx

You're allowed to use Twitter's 140 characters any way you want. Some people continually exhort their followers to read the freshest hot take they've posted on whatever politics/sports/tech site they write for, some get into incredibly petty fights with their ideological opponents, some post "inspirational" quotes or lame jokes in attempt to build a following they can later monetize through ads; some interact with brands as if they were human. Occasionally, some users attempt to cobble together narratives on the social network, which most definitely wasn't built for that—"Twitter novels" of the sort that @DadBoner and others write are almost always user-unfriendly, difficult to follow, and prone to rambling. You get the sense the authors are making them up as they go along, and if you miss a "chapter" you'll have to scroll down through their accounts to find where you left off. 

In the case of @Homer_Marijuana, however, none of that matters. After changing its name a few times in the past week or so, it's settled into a narrative about the Simpsons obsessively smoking weed, Bart getting sent to Iraq, Lisa and Maggie falling into despair, and a fourth Simpson kid, Ken, going to prison for shooting a guy. That summary doesn't do it justice, however—there are hints of Greek tragedy in it, and lots of bizarre humor, and also Sonic the Hedgehog is a character? Like most of the best things about Twitter, it's hard to describe, and you should scroll through its archive to get caught up. Below is an abridged excerpt of the beginning of the story if you want to get a taste for it.