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Entertainment

The Man Behind @DadBoner

We caught up Mike Burns, the comedic genius, VICE contributor, and fully grown man-child behind the @DadBoner Twitter phenomenon. We watched some WWE, drank a few domestos (that means beer), and talked about online humor.

Twitter has also held a greal deal of fascination for me. As someone with a lowly amount of followers, it has always geeked me out knowing that you can @ or talk to someone that you would never have the opportunity to speak to in real life. For some reason or another I have always held a great amount of respect for Michigan. I started following Karl Welzein's Twitter, @DadBoner, just to get my lowest-common-denominator kicks. With tweets like "Starbucks acts like they're so fancy. You sell hot black water and muffins. Calm down." and "Never understood why people count how many drinks they have. A real man drinks by body feel. More natural. Boozin' ain't math, you guys" I knew I had to met this man some day. By the time our series My Life Online rolled around I knew the man behind this satirical masterpiece would be perfect for the show. I looked online and saw that Ology and Deadspin had discovered that a comedian named Mike Burns was DadBoner, but Mike had neither confirmed nor denied if that was the case. I was intrigued. I saw that Mike was repped by Creative Artists Agency and did a cold call to the offices general LA number. In what only can be defined as sheer luck, I was put on a conference call with Mike Burns and his agent who then told me he would give me the DadBoner exclusive (whatever that means). When I met Mike outside his apartment in Echo Park he seemed tired and a bit rough around the edges. He eyed me warily as only a veteran of the comedy and entertainment world can. He smoked a cigarette and asked me what we should do. It seemed fitting that Mike was the man behind this gluttonous, out-there Twitter feed. Karl could say all the things that Mike wanted to but couldn't say in his own voice (for fear of retribution). It later occurred to me that every one of us might have a Karl inside; Mike is just more wanton to let him out. I traveled out to LA for Click. Print. Gun and Jerome LOL and, as it turned out, to have some drinks and get to know Mike and his crew. We watched WWE, drank some domestos (that means "beer"), and talked about the internet as it relates to comedy. I like to think of it as a tragicomedy.

—Erin Lee Carr

Read Karl's VICE posts here.