Mark Normand ties the black mermaid dad to a firing squad

Mark Normand found a Rolling Stone headline and turned it into a character study in about twenty words.

The headline, posted by Rolling Stone, reads "The Pentagon Is Going to Livestream a Firing Squad Execution." Normand quote-posted it with two lines of dialogue from the same invented dad. The first is him refusing to let his kid watch a black mermaid. The second is him gathering everyone around for the execution stream.

mark normand

@marknorm

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Tonight we live stream the execution as a family

That is the whole bit. No commentary, no thread, no follow up. Normand does not explain who the guy is or name anybody, because the joke only works if you already recognise the type, and the headline above it supplies every bit of context the premise needs.

Why this one travels

The structure is the oldest one there is. Say a thing, then say the thing that makes the first thing look ridiculous, and let the reader close the gap themselves. Normand's version is tight enough that the punchline is really just the phrase "as a family," which takes a state execution and files it under wholesome evening activity.

It also costs him nothing. He is not arguing about the Pentagon, he is not arguing about the mermaid, and anybody who wants to fight him about either has to first admit which half of the tweet annoyed them. That is a fairly comfortable position to tweet from.

This is the second time this week Normand has gotten a full joke out of a quote post and very little else. He also renamed a pair of boots in two words, which we covered earlier. The man clearly has the format dialled in. Find something already on the timeline, add the minimum number of words, leave.

It is a bit, not a news report, and Normand is not claiming to have met this dad. He is just confident the guy exists.