Endless Thread - I, Ken Bone

Episode Date: June 1, 2018

We talk to the man, the meme, the legend: Ken Bone. What happens to a meme deterred? We find out.

Support for endless thread comes from Mathworks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

Produced by the ILAP at WBUR, Boston. Amo. Benjo. If you were a human meme, what human meme would you be? You mean like a person made famous by the power of the internet? Right, which obviously we are because we make a podcast. But no, I'm thinking like Tay Zonday, you know, the child. Chocolate rain guy.

Chosenate rain. Or that Leave Britney Alone guy. Leave Britney alone. Some real famous people. Yeah. Mine would be Jessica's daily affirmations. You know, where she's like, I love my house. I love my shoes.

That's good. I like that. That seems that fits you, I feel. Thanks. Yeah. What's yours? I think probably like a mix between David after dentist, like that primal scream that he does. And the other half maybe like the Charlie bit my finger kid like Charlie.

If I could choose, I think that would be my mix. Well, that's the whole thing, right? You don't get to choose the way you have a meteoric rise to fame online. You just have to live with it. It's a thing that just happens now. And it's intense. And sometimes the outcome isn't great. Yeah.

Also, even though it's this super ephemeral thing, 15 seconds of internet fame and the lives of the famous go on, it's worth remembering them and their momentary impact on culture, because there's usually a lesson in there, somewhere. Which is why today we're going to talk about one of the big ones, one of the truly epic internet human moments. You know this moment. Maybe you don't know that the person made famous by this moment is a famous redditor as well,

but you know this moment. It happened to a human on national television on October 9, 2016, during a presidential debate. But the reason why. for the moment itself happened just a little bit earlier. When a guy named Ken left his house in St. Louis, walked over to his car, Ken was in a hurry, and he had a ticket to the big event that night. But then something happened.

My nice suit that I was going to wear was too small, and I ripped the seat out of it, and had to switch into something else. And I only had about two minutes to leave the house where I was going to be late. And if you're late, they don't let you get in. So you put on the suit and it tore? Yeah, I went to get into my... car. Like, I had to lay down on the bed to put the suit on, like a high school girl getting ready to go out on her first date, like kicking my legs and everything to get the pants on. And, yeah, then I went

to get into the car and I tore probably an eight-inch piece of the seam out sliding into my car. That's not going to work. And then I knew like, uh-oh. You know, like, I need to find the nicest thing that I own that's camera ready. And that's when my wife ran downstairs with the sweater for me. A red cable-knit sweater, to be precise, as Duds go. Not that exciting, but in context, pretty eye-catching. Because almost everyone else had opted for darker, more business-like tones for this televised event. It was nearing the end of the debate when Ken, Ken had his moment. We have one more question from Ken Bone about energy policy.

Ken? What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs, while at the same time reminding environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers. Mr. Trump, too much. I think it's such a great question. And in those 21 seconds, a star was born, the Ken Bone Star, though he didn't know it in the moment. When I left the debate that night,

they had told us, we'll have security walking back to the parking garage in case there's reporters that want to, like, bug you and talk to you. And I remember thinking, like, well, I'd kind of like if, you know, I got my picture in the paper is my grandma's on vacation right now and didn't get to watch this. And then maybe she'd have something for her scrapbook. That'd be cool. And as we're walking back to the parking garage, no reporters, no photographers, no nothing. I was kind of bummed out.

And I get my phone out of the glove compartment of my car. I turned it back on. And I had, like, my emails, just dozens of emails. My text messages, probably 100, dozens of Facebook. messages and people are sending me articles with me and my voice mailbox is already full. It's just craziness. And then when I got home, after about a half hour drive, I saw on television they were talking about me and not Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton.

It was very strange. What makes Ken Bone so awesome? Ken Bone, the breakout star from Monday night's primetime presidential debate. Bones unassuming charm, that cozy red sweater. Please welcome. Ken Bone is back with us. In the coming days, Ken Bone was the subject of headlines like, America needed a hero. Ken Bone answered the call. Some guy wrote a song about him the night of the debate and posted it that same night.

Oh, Kenneth Bone, you make us all feel less alone. In this bizarre old phantom zone, in this darkest of timelines. And then there was the nod from Stephen Colbert. Ken Bone End of the microphone We were scared Ken Bone went from having seven Twitter followers

two of which were somehow his grandmother to more than 200,000 At the height of his popularity Ken Bone was more searched on Google than Kardashian and Cats Oh yeah and that red sweater he wore to the debate

it sold out on multiple online marketplaces He even released a limited run t-shirt that read hashtag Bonezone And then there were the memes. Oh, the memes. Things like, feel the bone. Make America bone again.

It was a regular bonanza. I'm always been a big fan of internet culture. You know, memes and things just make me laugh. I love that stuff. And I just didn't foresee myself being one of them. Why do you think people latched on to you? Well, it was a combination of things. Like, immediately, as soon as the cameras turn on, you see everybody's wearing kind of subdued colors

because it's a formal, like, important occasion. and then here in the front row is this really big guy in a bright red sweater with a goofy mustache. And he's kind of funny looking. And so right then people were like, oh, this is fun. You know, this is going to be the guy that we're going to make memes of in the background of the debate. Then all of a sudden, at the end of the debate, Anderson Cooper calls on me and they find out my name is Ken Bone. And people thought it was like a made-up comedy name. But no, that's my real name, named after my grandfather, who was who's a woman.

was also named Ken Bone. And then I actually asked my question, and they're like, well, this guy's actually kind of articulate. And that was a good question. But as often happens to anyone who achieves accidental fame overnight, Ken Bone's moment of glory didn't last. Actually, in this case, the fame pendulum swung in the total opposite direction. A man who started the week as America's hero ended it as a bit of a zero. In the immortal words of Spider-Man, you either die a hero or you live. long enough to see yourself become the villain.

So what happened? The answer, in part, has to do with his Reddit history. Ben, I have an idea for what to call this one. Okay. Did you see I, Tanya, the biopic about figure skater Tanya Hardings, fall from grace? That's what made me want to become a figure skater. You thinking what I'm thinking? I think I'm thinking what you're thinking. Well, if you're thinking what I'm thinking, I think we should call this episode, I can bone.

I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and this is Endless Thread, a show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. I'm here with my co-host, Amory Siebertson. We're coming to you from Boston's NPR station, WBUR. All right, so we've been reacquainted with Ken Bone the meme, but what about Ken Bone the man? Friends, it is time to enter the Bone Zone. Ken Bone is 35 years old. He is a Midwestern middle-class guy. He has a teenage son and a wife.

He adores. So everything good that happens is because of her and everything stupid that happens is because of me. That's how marriage works. Ken works in the energy sector, which makes sense when you think back to the question he asked at that presidential debate about creating a responsible energy policy that minimizes job loss for fossil power workers. Ken has a dog in this fight because he is a fossil power worker.

I'm what's called a control room operator. The most familiar person you could think of that does what I do is Homer Simpson. Ed noise Five minutes before critical mass Critical what? Homer sits at his board full of switches and panels We have it all on computers now

But it's basically the same job You're Homer Simpson? We found Homer Simpson and it's you? I'm just a lot better at it than he is You just kind of monitor the plant And hope nothing bad happens Ken went into that 2016 presidential debate As an undecided voter

I'm aggressively moderate I guess I'm more libertarian than anything social issues, gay marriage, LGBT rights, you know, civil rights, anything like that, do what you want to do. Fiscally, the government is real, real bad at handling money. They just are. And until we make them get better at it, we probably shouldn't let them have anymore. Now, whether you agree with Ken Bone's politics or not, it was this kind of level-headedness and willingness to consider both sides that made him so appealing. in the days following the debate.

The very nature of his question captured it. Yeah, he works in the fossil fuel industry, but he's concerned about its environmental impact. Where did this reasonable person come from? America wanted to know. So Ken Bone did an AMA or ask me anything on Reddit. I lurked on Reddit for probably two years before I even had an account, my account, which is my only one, is, I think three years old now.

That account is Stan Gibson 18. It's named after a few of his favorite St. Louis baseball players, in case you were wondering. It is significant that Ken Bone has only one Reddit account because he used that account, the same one he had been using for more than a year before he went viral, to conduct his AMA. Which means he outed Stan Gibson 18. Suddenly, Redditors could see Ken Bone's entire posting history. Really, anyone could. I didn't think anything I'd ever posted before was, you know, relevant or important.

and I had slept for, I think, seven or eight hours out of the previous five days combined. And I was just, you know, hallucinating almost. I was so stressed and tired from doing all the stuff I was doing. And it just slipped my mind. People started combing through old posts and comments he had made. And a lot of people didn't like what they saw. You may be shocked to learn that Internet comments can be not very deeply thought out, sometimes even get this taken out of context.

This is what Ken says happened with his comment about the killing of Trayvon Martin. I used the word justified, which was a poor word choice. What I meant by that comment was George Zimmerman didn't do anything technically illegal, which is true. At least according to the jury that acquitted him. What he did do was shoot a kid. That's not right. That's not morally right. It's not a good thing.

But the way he did it wasn't against the law. And that's all I was trying to say. And from that, people thought that I was okay with Trayvon Martin getting shot, which I am not. I wish he was still alive. People also called Ken out for posting in the Prego porn community, which is what it sounds like. If you go on Reddit and when you go to type in a subreddit, if you just do R& NSFW, R-A-N-D-N-S-F-W, it'll take you to a random, not safe for work, subreddit. And so we'll do that for fun at work when we get bored.

And so that's what I was doing. And landed on the Prego porn, and the top post on Prego porn at the time, was a bunch of pregnant women in bikinis. And so I thought, huh, a pregnant woman who goes swimming is kind of like a human submarine. And from that, people were like, oh, my gosh, he commented on prego porn. He is obviously some weirdo who just watches it for 16 hours a day.

You also talked a little bit on Reddit about your vasectomy and how your sex life got better and your wife's sex life got better after that. That was another thing that people kind of pounced on. Yeah, that was one of the two that actually really made me angry. It wasn't like I was just screaming into the vacuum and made my own post. But hey, guess what, everybody? I had minor outpatient surgery on my genitals.

A young guy had said, I'm thinking about getting a vasectomy, but I'm scared. What should I do? And that was my response. Like, well, I got one because we didn't want to have any more kids. And these were my results. And it was fine. So don't be scared. So that made me mad that people were saying that that made me some kind of weirdo or pervert.

when I answered a person's question. There are posts that Ken regrets, though, like the one in which he joked about seeing leaked nude photos of the actor Jennifer Lawrence and, quote, liking it. There's legitimate criticism to be leveled. If you go back on my profile, Stan gives an 18, and you scroll back, you know, a few thousand comments, you'll still see them there.

So read them and read them in context and decide for yourself which ones were mistakes and which ones were taken out of context. Quote, Ken Bone's creepy Reddit history emerges one headline read. Actually, Ken Bone is bad, said another. There's nothing more fun than building someone up to, like, hero status, except tearing those people down.

What was Ken's worst moment? Well, when my wife saw some of the negative headlines, she was very upset, and she started to cry. And the fact that doing something that, to me, was a lot of fun and was very productive, have made my wife feel bad, and it hurt her. that was the lowest thing for me because that's obviously the last thing I ever want to do. So first, Ken Bone was good in the eyes of the public.

Then he was bad. Then came an explanation for his rise and fall. It was his destiny. More of Ken Bone's destiny in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers.

And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from CitySpace Productions, the Creative Studio from WBUR's Business Partnerships Team. Become a thought leader.

Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org. slash creative studio. All right. So Ken Bone has gone from being an American hero. Bone has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel,

scored an invite from Snoop Dog to smoke weed, and was offered 100. $100,000 to do porn. To being a bad guy. Red is no longer just the color of his sweater. It's the color of his face. In just four days.

But within the next few days, a new round of headlines started rolling in. The quote, think pieces, the ones that try to make sense of it all. Like a piece in salon titled, The Rise and Fall of Ken Bone, this is what happens when real humans become internet memes. Or as the New York

magazine piece put it, how can Bone's Reddit AMA ruined him as a meme. They all made the same basic argument that when you start out as a hero, you can only go downhill from there. So, of course, we were going to learn some things about Ken Bone that we wish we hadn't. I never pretended like I was some awesome Superman or Paragon of Midwestern virtue and holiness. That's just what people kind of made out of me for a couple of days. And so they didn't know me as a person.

They didn't know that I'm a flawed human being like everyone else who's just trying to do his best. And then when they found out that I was just a regular flawed human being, it was a massive backlash for a day or two. It was really wild. Farewell, Ken Bone, New York Magazine wrote, We hardly knew ye, and that was the problem. That was precisely the problem. We set ourselves up for this disappointment by calling Ken Bone a hero and then a, quote, awful guy. Neither of those things are true. I'm not an awful guy, and it's irresponsible clickbait journalism to print things like that. But I'm also not

an American hero, and it's irresponsible clickbait journalism to print that, too. I'm just a person who got recognized at random on television. I feel like I'm a decent guy who tries to do better every day, and that's all there is to it. I'll never claim that I'm perfect, which is where I came by my policy of never deleting comments or social media posts. You know, you got to learn from those mistakes and move forward. That's an interesting policy for you having gone through what you've gone through. Really deleting stuff almost seems like an admission of guilt to me. You'd be like, oh yeah, I got caught saying something that I shouldn't have said, where I'm always just going to try to clarify and make people understand. I consider it somewhat cowardly to post something that

you actually, you know, believe and then delete it later. I've seen you referred to as a human meme. What do you think about that as a term? I don't mind it because, like I said, I'm really engaged in the internet culture. Sometimes, like when somebody will message me or post about me and they'll be like, what's it like to be a dead meme? That's kind of dehumanizing. That's like, you know what? I'm still the same person that I always was. I'm still just as much like alive as I ever was. And people are you're not relevant anymore. Well, who's relevant and who's not? Just because I'm not a big piece of pop culture anymore like I was for a week. It doesn't make me any less of a human being. So Ken Bone went from being a human being to a human meme and then back to a human being.

He still lives in St. Louis with his wife and son. He still works the same job as a control room operator, though he does have a podcast on the side now. Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Ken Bone Show. This is episode number 29, yet a number prime number, yet another prime number episode. Boy, do I ever love Matt. And although the spotlight is mostly passed over, Ken Bone, there are always a lot of, there are reminders. He still gets recognized at the grocery store by strangers.

He still occasionally makes it on to that jumbotron at sporting events as a kind of noteworthy attendee. He still has almost 200,000 Twitter followers. And he spends his weekends giving talks. I travel to high schools, colleges, nonprofits around the country, and give lectures about why it's important to be politically active, to pay attention to the news, decide for yourself, one of the things I made a focus point in one of my recent talks was trying to cut down on hyperbole

when people say things like Donald Trump is the worst president of all time. Well, you might think he's the worst modern president, but we've had presidents that literally exterminated people based on the color of their skin. We have had worse presidents. So you've just really taken away from the substance of the debate by getting into kind of childish yelling and screaming. And the people who love Donald Trump are no bad. better. Donald Trump's the best president ever. No, he's not. Shut up. Go on. Even if he gets the leadership in North and South Korea to make out on public television tomorrow, he still won't

be the best president of all time. It's hyperbole and it doesn't help anyone. There Ken Bone goes again with that middle of the road, reasonable thinking that endeared him to the American public without even knowing if he was Team Donald or Team Hillary. We asked him, by the way, he wouldn't tell us. Can you answer this based on how you think things are going in the country right now? Do you think you made the right decision? Everybody has second thoughts sometimes, but I think overall I made the right choice. Do you have any like Ken Bone life mottoes or mantras? Like what keeps you grounded? I always try to just remember it's all about family first. And when I think about myself,

I always tell myself, you're just a regular guy. When I look at myself in the mirror, the first thing I usually see is my bald spot. It reminds me that I'm not perfect. In other words, he's still Kenny from the block. If there is a Kenbone of the 2018 election or the 2020 presidential debates, what advice would you give that person or animal? Oh, well, use a throwaway account. It's not cowardly to hide some of your personal life from the public. Now, he's not advocating for deleting comments. Remember, he doesn't do that. He's just saying, be mindful of which opinions and preferences you make public in the first place. Because even though it can be an interesting experience and you can help people learn through that,

it's not worth it having your grandma know what kind of porn you watch. Would you change your sweater? No. I love the sweater. Amory. Ben. What do you think about Ken Bone? You know, I'm going to pull a Ken Bone and I'm just not going to say anything. You're not going to take one side of the other.

You're straight middle of the red. one side or the other. I want people to make up their own opinions about Ken Bone. That's what he would do. Okay. Well, I don't share all of his opinions, obviously, but as a sex positive podcaster, I want to say that anyone who inspired the phrase make America

bone again is good with me on that level. Yeah, I can openly endorse that as well. But it's also interesting to think about how like this is just our world now. These meteoric moments of internet fame that, you know, burn so bright and so hot, They dominate the conversation. True.

And then they just disappear into the background. But the Bone Zone, it is still there. It's just depleted a little bit. I know. Also, this is easy to say after the fact, but, Amory, I swear, I remember the moment Ken Bone stood up in that debate. And my first thought was that he was a plant. Like, somehow this was all staged because it was too weird.

I've got the Ken Bone conspiracy. Okay. Also, the Earth is Flat. I've seen proof on YouTube. Okay. All right. So conspiracy theories aside, what did we learn today, Ben? Maybe don't judge an undecided voter by his mustache and his wholesome red sweater. True. Maybe also don't judge him by his vasectomy comment on Reddit? Oh, yeah. Definitely don't do that. Memes are people, too.

Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station, in partnership. with Reddit. Our show is a dream realized by Jessica Alpert, who, when we ask if she likes the episode we've put together, she says, W-T-F. Iris Adler is our executive producer, and she makes sure our stories meet the bar of mildly interesting. Mix and sound design by John Parati and Paul Vikas, who, whenever we go to record in the field with them, they remind us... Nature is Fri-LIT. Our web producer is Megan Kelly, who looks at our attempts at writing web copy and goes...

Aw. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit, and... And whenever we try to have a serious meeting with him, he's all... You, I'm a toddler. Our theme music is by Squelcher. This week's episode, Art, is called In Honor of Ken Bone's AMA. It is from Reddit user Future Mrs. Nick Cage. Amazing username.

On Reddit, we are endless underscore thread. If you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode or give us a juicy story tip so we can tell it like we did today, hit us up. Hey, by the way, this week, we were featured on one of our all-time favorite podcasts, 99% Inviso. from the Radiotopia Podcast Network. 99% Invisible with the beautiful nerd Roman Mars explores the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world. If for some crazy reason you don't already listen to that show,

you really should. This show was produced by Josh Swartz, also my producer and co-host, Amory Sievertson. I am senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson. I'll let myself out.