Back in January, Twitter user @thugtear sent out a photo of a ziplocked bag of air from a Yeezus show:
selling bagged air from the yeezus tour. i kno i got ktt dudes followin me so offer up paypal ready only. dm 4 info pic.twitter.com/jXHBD5w8mt
— g (@thugtear) January 28, 2015Over the next two months, numerous sites started posting on what seemed to be a very obvious joke. But, as always, things went too far too quickly. Last week, Kim Kardashian got word that the bag of air was up for sale on eBay:
WOW he can sell anything! Lol RT “@Femail: $65,000 for a bag of air from a Kanye West concert http://t.co/YnZapfk3id pic.twitter.com/tMfw16rCXP”
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) March 6, 2015We had to find out the story behind it, so we hit up @thugtear, a.k.a. G. Hassan, to get the backstory. Last year, one of his friends missed the Yeezus show in Toronto. "Basically, every time we talk about Kanye I bring up the fact that she missed out on her chance to meet God," he said over email. "Last month I decided to message her and tell her I found some tour merch and that I’d be willing to sell to her for a decent price (please don’t judge me). I sent her a picture of bag of air, and after a couple laughs I realized the shit was pretty funny so I tweeted it."
Some people found it funny, and others thought he was deadass serious. The photo ended up on Tumblr ("Dude did like 60k. I’m still very salty," he said) and, long story short, it went viral. "Part of me felt sadly accomplished," Hassan said over email. "Fast forward to last week, I guess someone posted it on eBay and people started bidding wild amounts. Everyone on my Facebook was re-posting it. My brother called me because he recognized the picture and my laptop in the background. Kids at my university were wildin’. Even Kim K decided to comment…nothing was the same after that. The internet kinda broke."
Safe to say, it really did go viral. The original photo of the bag was posted on eBay and was up for sale at $60,100, but has since been taken down. Don't worry, there are plenty of imitators on the site right now. After most sites posted the eBay screenshot, Hassan took to Twitter to, what else, air his grievances:
i dont know anything about journalism but there has to be a process in which these ppl get approval before posting right
— g (@thugtear) March 8, 2015
i get it. its funny. but in 2015 cant we see an online joke coming from a mile away? like when ppl thought paul mccartney was a new artist
— g (@thugtear) March 8, 2015We asked him to clarify his thoughts on the last month or so. "I don't really aspire to be some sort of Internet troll," he said. "I tweet to try and help balance out the time I spend studying the unnecessary shit my program requires me to. When I tweeted it, I didn’t really think it was gonna blow up, but I guess people actually believed I was selling air. It’s kinda like the whole Paul McCartney situation…when people were tweeting about him being a new artist and White America fell apart. The only thing that bothers me is the thought of people using this funny joke to vilify Kanye. Dude deals with enough shit already."
Hassan found some insults funny. ("One dude even said that my bag of air was an example of excessive idolatry and that the return of Jesus Christ was imminent," he said.) But the one thing he's taking away from everything is that since Kim tweeted it, it probably made Kanye laugh.
"Other than that, my existence now hinges on whether or not Kanye raps about this," he said.
