Critical Reception (Dumb...Huh?) - Tealy and the Crew

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The episode of Dumb...Huh? was uploaded to YouTube at 2:14 AM on a Wednesday, which was really the first sign of how things were going to go.

DumbDird had titled it:

"DUMB HUH EP 1 (GONE WRONG) (GONE VIRAL) (CATAPULT)"

The thumbnail was a photo of the catapult. Just the catapult. DumbDird was not in it. Nobody was in it. It was a slightly blurry photo of the catapult taken from a low angle, as though the photographer had been sitting on the floor. The font used for the title text on the thumbnail was Comic Sans, in yellow, with a black drop shadow that was offset way too far to the right.

It was, in every measurable sense, not going viral.

By Thursday morning it had 39 views.

DumbDird called Tealy immediately.

"DURR, TALLY, WE'RE VIRAL—"

"You have 39 views."

"DURR, THIRTY. NINE. VIEWS, TALLY."

Tealy stared at his ceiling. "That's not viral. That's barely a neighborhood."

"Durr, my last video had four views."

Tealy paused. That was, mathematically, nearly a ten times improvement. He didn't say this out loud because he wasn't prepared to validate whatever was happening.

"Who were the four views," he said instead.

"Durr, me, SuperDumbDird, UltraDumbDird, and durr, me again."

"You watched your own video twice."

"Durr, I wanted to see if it was good the second time."

"Was it?"

"Durr, yeah."

Tealy hung up, stared at his phone for a moment, and then, against every instinct he had, opened YouTube and watched the video. It was nineteen minutes long. The first three minutes were DumbDird adjusting the camera. The catapult footage was genuinely pretty funny. He did not comment. He did not like it.

He was, he realized, one of the 39 views.

This bothered him more than he expected.

The 2 likes were DumbDird and SuperDumbDird, in that order, which anyone could have predicted with their eyes closed.

The 1 dislike was widely suspected to be Blara, who when asked responded only with "I was catapult-adjacent and didn't even get a good snack out of it" and then walked away, which was essentially a confession.

The 0 comments were a yawning, echoing void of public indifference that DumbDird seemed genuinely unbothered by, which was somehow the most impressive part of the whole situation.

"Durr, people are just thinking about what to write," DumbDird said confidently, checking the comments section for the eleventh time that day. "Durr, it's a lot to process."

"It has been four days," Dird said flatly from across the room.

"Durr, deep content takes time, Dird."

Dird looked at him over his book. Then looked back at his book. He had thoughts. He kept them.

Beric, who had been launched by the catapult and had somehow returned by Friday with no explanation and only mild windburn, watched the video once, nodded thoughtfully, and said the catapult's launch mechanics looked even better on camera than in person. He left a view and no other trace of his presence.

Dird had technically watched it but had done so in a private window, a fact he would be taking to his grave.

UltraDumbDird had tried to watch it on a microwave, failed, and then tried to eat the microwave. Status of the microwave was unknown.

By the following Tuesday the view count had not moved.

39 views. 2 likes. 1 dislike. 0 comments. Completely, perfectly, magnificently frozen in time like a bug in amber, a small monument to an event that had technically happened and that 39 people, for whatever constellation of reasons, had witnessed.

DumbDird looked at the analytics page with the serenity of a monk regarding a sunset"Durr," he said softly, "it's doing great."

Tealy looked at the screen. Looked at DumbDird. Looked back at the screen.

39 views stared back at him.

"...Sure," said Tealy.

"DURR, WAIT TILL EPISODE TWO, TALLY. BIGGER CATAPULT."

Tealy had genuinely forgotten about the bigger catapult. The memory of it returned now like a slow-moving threat.

"How much bigger did you end up going," he said carefully.

DumbDird's smile was enormous and said everything.

Tealy started mentally preparing.

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