“I can’t take 100 percent of the credit, but I can take all of the credit for what happened on Twitter,” he says, referring to the meme he started around the hip-hop group's song “Bad & Boujee.” On December 6, 2016, his tweet about the song, a picture of a cartoon mouse looking back through a doorway with the caption “when you bout to leave the club and hear offset say ‘you know....’” was the perfect expression of the song’s inescapability.
The tweet started a chain reaction, which resulted in more memes and meme formats until the song hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in mid-January 2017. The final push was Donald Glover calling out the group at the Golden Globes, but an analysis by the data firm Crimson Hexagon showed that a vast majority of Twitter posts about the song came after Fox's tweet.
“They ran the numbers, they brought me back the numbers, and it said I did that,” he declares.
Of course, that’s not all Fox has done. On May 31, he’ll host Adult Swim on the Green in Bayfront Park: a night of games, new episodes of Adult Swim shows, and audience participation. Here’s what you need to know about the host with the most ahead of the event:when you bout to leave the club and hear offset say "you know...." pic.twitter.com/oGrt4zLJEJ
— Zachary Fox (@zackfox) December 8, 2016
He took his name from one of the Power Rangers. “When I was young, my favorite show was Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and there was a black Power Ranger, and his name just so happened to be Zack, and I was like, Well, how does this motherfucker spell it, because
He became best friends with Thundercat by catfishing him. “It was back when I was kinda using Twitter as a very violent nihilist propaganda tool, but also as a dating website,” Fox says of his early days on Twitter, where met jazz bassist Stephen Bruner, better known as Thundercat. “He kind of found my profile and — this is actually a true story; I’m not trolling — I fooled Thundercat into thinking I was a girl for like, five months, I think it was. He would DM me, and I’d be like ‘Yeah, I’m a girl.’” Since then, they’ve developed a bizarre, dadaist repartee, spitting random words at each other on the TL for all to see. “I don’t know how we ever plan to hang out, 'cause we just say to each other really stupid shit all day.”
Seeing Beyoncé live was the best thing that has ever happened to him. “There’s a lot of things that you gotta do to be great, and I’m not gonna do any of that, but I’m really happy that I saw someone else do that,” he says of the pop goddess’ recent Coachella performance. “I don’t really get starstruck, but seeing her perform, I was like, Holy fuck. It was crazy; it was really spectacular. And I don’t use that word, ever.”
He thinks the Swag Surf should replace the National Anthem. During that Beyoncé show, Fox was a bit dismayed when barely anyone in the (very white) crowd danced along when she started the Swag Surf dance with an enormous marching band. “I feel like if that were the National Anthem, a lot of people would forget about a lot of shit. Like, fuck all that put-your-hand-on-your-heart; put your hand on the dude’s shoulder next to you and Swag Surf,” he says of the dance. “If you think about the idea of, like, the Pledge of Allegiance, it’s very individualist — hand on my heart, I only care about my heartbeat and my feelings. Whereas the Swag Surf, it’s literally a physical connection. You’re forming a cosmic bond.”
He’s trying to stay off the internet. “I just learned what incels are today, and I don’t really wanna know about that.”
Adult Swim on the Green. 6 p.m. Thursday, May 31, at Bayfront Park, 301 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; 305-358-7550; bayfrontparkmiami.com. Admission is confirmed with the purchase of a concession voucher, $10 to $35 via frontgatetickets.com.
