In a Twitter thread Thursday, Twitter user @QiaochuYuan explained to his Twitter followers, in great detail, an acid trip he’d had several days prior. It’s unclear whether or not the thread was serious, or simply satire, but many online had a lot to say about the story.
“A few days ago, I took a medium dose of acid and wrote for several hours straight and admitted some things to myself, mostly about money,” Yuan said in the thread’s opening tweet. “Let’s start here: last August, my mom gave me $100,000 for my birthday. I resented her for this and also suppressed the resentment.”
Writer Carey O’ Donell described the tweet as an “iconic cold open.”
Astead Wesley, a politics reporter for the New York Times, added: “[I] refuse to read the rest of the thread. No way it gets better than this tweet — a masterpiece.”
But the thread did get better.
Yuan reveals in the thread that he has a strange relationship with money, to say the least, which caused him to put off doing his taxes until the day before the federal tax deadline. He claims that during this time he moved out of his group home and into an Airbnb, which is where the aforementioned acid trip took place. Through this process, he said he discovered that he currently is and always has been financially dependent on his parents.
In addition to all that, he explains that his parents show him love by sending him large amounts of money — which he says likens him to “Harry f**king Potter” — and that by doing so, his parents have had to put off their retirement to help him afford his lifestyle.
He does admit that he is “speaking from a position of extreme privilege,” but concluded the thread by arguing that he no longer needs to feel guilty about not having a job, a life plan, etc. but that he just needs to “keep writing.”
Twitter, of course, had a field day with the thread.
“Taking acid and writing a long thread about your mom giving you $100,000 is without a doubt the most boring way to spend your time on acid,” said writer Niko Stratis.
Writer and podcast host Edward Ongweso Jr. responded: “My brother, why are you writing for several hours on acid? That was the first red flag.”
He added, in jest: “Wow I’m tripping on this powerful psychedelic, I’m hallucinating, I’m feeling colors and sounds more intensely, I’m seeing wondrous visions when I close my eyes, what if I just wrote for 7 hours.”
Writer Chris Gayomali joked: “Conveniently my love language is $100,000.”
Novelist G. Willow Wilson said that the thread was “entertaining,” for those who are into the “‘woe is me for I am a rich kid having an existential crisis” type of content.
Several users took to the comments to ask Yuan for money, to which comedian and podcast host Kath Barbadoro said: “Personally, I believe if he’s not gonna give it away he should spend some of that money on a therapist to work this stuff out instead of posting to Twitter but what do I know!!!”
In the end, people don’t quite know what to make of the thread. But most can agree it provided great entertainment for a weekday afternoon.
