Everyone Is Losing Their Goddamned Minds About Will Smith

Allow me to take you on a journey through some of the worst reactions of all time.

Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Unless you are living under about three million rocks, and then some icebergs on top of the rocks, and then Mount Everest on top of the iceberg, and then another Mount Everest on top of the first Mount Everest, you are likely aware that Will Smith strode onto the Oscars stage on Sunday night and smacked/punched/assaulted/some other euphemism for “put his hands on” Chris Rock, in response to a somewhat mean joke Rock made about Jada Pinkett Smith. If you are that person under the aforementioned rock/iceberg/double mountain configuration, first, congrats on your super-powerful wifi that you’re reading this! And second, here’s the unbleeped version of The Incident, complete with Chris Rock noting that Smith had “just smacked the shit” out of him, and Smith yelling, “keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth.”

Truly we will never be the same, etc. I watched so many Oscar movies in the runup to the awards, and now it’s like I sat through The Eyes of Tammy Faye for nothing. Everything else that happened at that show will be but a distant memory, replaced by the single most insane Oscars moment in 94 years of awards ceremonies. And they say the movies are dead!

I do not have a take on The Incident, except to say a) sure don’t hit people etc but also b) everyone involved here will be just fine, and there’s not much more to be extrapolated than that. The rest of the universe, though, is conspiring to bring some of the most insane energy I have ever seen to the table in response to Slapgate, throwing just about every awful take you can think of into the atmosphere and pretending like this discrete event has literally global reverberations. Seriously, everyone is losing their entire minds about this one.

Allow me to bring you on a journey through some of the most unhinged reactions to Will Smith’s smackdown. Strap yourselves in because this is possibly the bumpiest ride of all time.