"but it’s the bread"

ok let's do this

Dec 26, 2020

First of all, if you are celebrating Christmas today, or just generally chilling and taking the day off, close the newsletter. There’s nothing good in here. In fact, I am using the cover of the holidays to finally, briefly write about the bread guy. It’s BAD.

I need to stress that you will not enjoy what is in here, and I am not negging you into reading further. If you are enjoying your day and want to keep that going, close the email, save it for later, or just delete it entirely. (I spent the last email ruminating on how to approach internet culture in a more thoughtful, dynamic manner and covering it from the ground level, and today I’m gonna undercut that whole thing by talking about the bread guy. I like to keep my readers on their toes.)

I have been hesitant to write about the bread guy for years, mostly because there’s a lot to unpack here and the word on the street is that he sucks. If I were writing this for a formal journalistic outlet, I’d feel an obligation to reach out to bread guy and ask him, “hey… what?” Luckily, this newsletter can play it a little looser, and I’m just gonna try and recap it as quick as I can.

I learned about bread guy from a Tumblr post. This one.

It’s an animated GIF in the original post. They’re strutting.

A subsequent user, jerryterry, reblogged it with this image.

So someone asks jerryterry how long it took him to photoshop the Pokémon at Target, and jerryterry explains, “It may be less than stellar, but I have a strict personal rule: ‘don’t put longer than 30 minutes’ effort into a fetish joke’. The second you hit 30:01, the exposure becomes lethal and the fetish becomes unironic.”

This only raises more questions in the thread.

The users in the know here are referring to a web user who goes by the name murrlogic1 on DeviantArt, which despite its name is not actually exclusively for deviants. murrlogic1 is less an artist himself than a patron, like the Medicis, who commissions other digital artists to bring his fixations to life.

A separate Tumblr thread started by user wet-monsoon elaborates on the works:

Please note the Wonder Bread chainsaw, bottom-right

His DeviantArt account has been deactivated but the two snapshots of his gallery of commissions show an interest in characters from show like Avatar: The Last Airbender, RWBY, Steven Universe, and Gravity Falls. According to one thread participant, murrlogic had one of his attempts to commission something rejected by Shadman, the artist behind the infamous Rule 34 website, Shadbase. (If any of these terms or proper nouns mean nothing to you, I recommend leaving well enough alone and not Googling them.)

A Tumblr user further down in the thread had this to say:

He absolutely was not just a normal guy with a weird kink. This shit was his life pretty much.
He had lots of talk about consumerism, slavery, and capitalism and why there were all good things. Almost to the point of a religion to him. He tried talking to me about his commission of a comic of, I believe, Asami [Avatar character] cutting down a rainforest and industrializing it, and like weird undertone of loving sandwhiches. Everything he talked about in this aspect came down to sandwhiches with him.
He has spent thousands of dollars if not more on commissions for

Asami abusing Korra [another Avatar character]
Asami owning a sandwich factory and slave labor
Blonde women own sandwhich factories and cutting down large expanses of forests
And the list goes on to other really strange stuff, but none of it inherently sexual

The same user, whose account is now deactivated, also goes on to say that murrlogic “has been fired from his job and possibly disowned from his family for this kinda stuff” and describe some of those allegations. Just really sort of dark, vile stuff all around. You can click the link to the thread if you want but I really gotta reiterate that it’s not worth it.

And to be clear, I have not verified any of these claims. But what those claims did serve to do, however, is turn murrlogic1 into a member of Tumblr’s vast rogue’s gallery. The fetish bread guy. In early March 2018, he posted a picture of another wealthy blond woman sitting legs crossed on one of many freshly-cut tree stumps outside of a Wonder Bread factory, holding a chainsaw whose blade has the word “sandwiches” written on it. The image was titled “So I am now recently on Tumblr's shitlist” and captioned “Defacto enemy #1 to them apparently.” In the comments, someone asked what he did and murrlogic1 replied, “Just get discovered.”

I could go into more detail, but it’s a little too depressing to untangle and compile all at once. But this long, convoluted chain of events did create one of the most perfect one-two punches I’ve ever seen on the internet, which still gives me a bit of joy when I think about it.