When it comes to retribution in the form of memes, there are few platforms whose strikes are as swift and relentless as Twitter, and actor/rapper Jaden Smith, son of Will Smith, was one of the latest to face it. Smith, however, handled it in a way that most would not, by participating in the parodying himself.
The infamous slapping incident at this year’s Academy Awards brought scrutiny down on the entire Smith family, and the internet was all too happy to go digging for content that may have preferably stayed hidden away.
One such piece of content was a 2018 interview with Jaden Smith with radio host Big Boy. During the interview, Smith lamented about what he perceived as immaturity from people his own age, and how it seemed to him like they were more concerned with their cellphones than with “the political and economic state of the world.”
Twitter users, true to form, went straight to work:
And, evidently, so did Smith:
The response to Smith’s participation in the joke was mixed, with most replies consisting of more of the same type of meme interspersed with the occasional kudos or detraction.
Interestingly, the interview seems to contrast with comments that Smith has made in the past; another 2018 interview with Dazed saw Smith open up about life as the child of two celebrities, which made it difficult for him to make friends and socialize with people his own age.
Currently, Smith is opening for Justin Bieber’s concerts on the latter’s Justice World Tour.
