Embrace Quarantine Brain With Conner O'Malley's Vines

What is it that makes one man approach another on the street to say, "Dude, what's up man? Maxim Magazine, am I right?" Why would a man go up to an idling Bentley to say, "Money is a game, and you're the winner because you have the most points"? Conner O'Malley, as his management told VICE, is not doing press right now, so we may never know.

Conner O'Malley is a comedian and writer who's written for Late Night with Seth Meyers, performed in Tim Robinson's I Think You Should Leave, and writes and acts in Joe Pera Talks With You on Adult Swim. Years ago, O'Malley created a masterful series of videos on the now-defunct Vine platform, that are either pure stupidity, or an avante-garde satire of the kind of guy who thinks the coolest thing in the world is smoking a cigar and wearing a watch, depending on who you ask.

O'Malley's eccentric and erratic style of comedy has always been enjoyable. People who've seen his Vines will respond to the question as to whether they've seen his Vines with a confident, "Oh hell yeah, pimp!" These erratic videos were more polarizing in Normal Times but as our collective consciousness seems to be sharing one quarantine brain, they should resonate more broadly.

In a YouTube video titled Conner O'Malley Vine Compilation: The Transformation, you can see a man, who worships false idols like money, cars, players, and pimps, devolve into a pure id-demon, yelling at various men of wealth in imported ultra-luxury vehicles, like Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Rolls-Royces.

In the original format, these Vine-length clips were like a spritz of that super-sour Warhead candy spray; short blasts of intensity, leaving the viewer's palate curious for more. Consuming all 1,040 seconds of the Vines at once is like chugging a bucket of the stuff: it may change your taste forever.

As a white man, O'Malley is able to use his skin as camouflage, and blend in with the money men of Manhattan, until he reveals himself to be an outsider with his guttural belches, pleas for help, and, in one, case, intense chanting of "WHITE MEN!" Watching this compilation is a reflection of pre-pandemic times when rich white men might open the windows on their Mercedes for a fellow white man. Until those days return, we have this compilation.