If mirrors aren’t real, what are we to make of Jaden Smith’s tweets?
The rapper and actor has been perplexing us for years with the mind-blowing musings he chooses to post on Twitter. In fact, his tweets became so wild that, after he told GQ he is a scientist experimenting on humanity, people began to think Smith was just trolling the internet with, well ... “bullshit.”
Since the interview, he’s offered his befuddling remarks with less frequency. So, was Jaden just messing with human subjects the whole time?
During an interview with HuffPost about his new movie “Skate Kitchen,” in which social media becomes a character unto itself, Smith happily explained some of his most cryptic tweets.
No, they’re not just b.s. And there’s a reason you’re seeing fewer of them.
According to Smith, he has a “love and hate” relationship with social media.
“It gets to a point where you have so many followers that you can’t really post things like a normal person without getting criticized on a major level on everything that you post,” Smith explained. “I’ve cut it down to a place where on Instagram I just don’t post unless there’s something really going on in my life.”
He also started a side Instagram account, Lottavision, for his clothing line, where he said he’ll post more personal stuff.
When asked if his concern about criticism online is what led him to publish fewer classic Jaden Smith tweets, he told us, “Yeah it has. That’s a big thing.”
“Every once in a while I might go crazy on Twitter and say some crazy stuff, but that has changed my relationship with Twitter and social media,” he said.
Speaking of “crazy stuff,” we’ll skip straight to the part where the modern-day philosopher explains some of his most cryptic fan-favorite proclamations from over the years. Behold, a master class in Jaden-speak:
“How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren’t real.”
This is probably the most famous of Smith’s reflections, showing up on list after list of his greatest tweets. Fans constantly referred to it during his Reddit AMA.
Smith seems to like his mirrors tweet, too. Though it’s from 2013, he recently tweeted it out again in Portuguese. Why?
“This one comes from a study that a scientist was saying, that the way that the eyes perceive reality is not the way we actually see it,” he said. “So, like, we can only see three base colors, but there’s so much more on the electromagnetic spectrum of light that we could see, but our eyes are just not capable of seeing, which brought me to the realization that what we see on an everyday basis is not actually what’s there. It’s actually only what we can take in.”
“And I also took in another study,” he continued, “that ... our eyes are kind of like mirrors in a sense to where they perceive things and then they flip. We take in the information upside down and then the brain flips it right side up so that we can see it right side up ... and I was like, if we take in the raw visual information upside down and mirrors portray things in reverse, then they’re not real. We’re living in the Matrix.”
OK, so ... nothing’s real and we’re in the Matrix.
“I am not a human and I don’t speak English.”
According to Smith, this one’s just a fact.
“That’s true! That’s true!” he said. “Because I’m not gonna be categorized as a human. Oh, humans are supposed to do this or act like this or people are supposed to act like this or people are supposed to be this. I’m my own thing. Don’t judge me off some standards that were made up before I was born. I’m doing my own thing.”
“The biggest flex anyone will ever have is dying.”
Smith got serious for this explanation.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a sad one,” he said. “But it’s true. Because when someone leaves, that’s when everybody starts to care about them.”
“If a cup cake falls from a tree how far away will it be from down. #Jupiter”
Not even Jaden knows what he was thinking here.
“That one? I really don’t know where my head was at with that one,” he said, laughing. “Yeah, I love that one. That was like an abstract painting in the form of words. The visuals that get created in your mind when you say that sentence, I created those visuals in your mind.”
“The more time you spend awake the more time you spend asleep.”
The actor posted that he was about to tweet “the most Jaden Smith thing ever” right before this one.
“It’s true!” Smith said with a laugh. “It’s true!”
“The more time you spend awake, the more time you do spend asleep,” he noted. “I mean that’s just a fact. But like, I just fucking need to ... as soon as I say it, then it becomes like a novelty thing. Then it becomes something that’s super funny. It’s super true though.”
“I only skate when I have emotional trauma.”
Smith told us the tweet came to him when he was shooting “Skate Kitchen.”
“It really was a cathartic experience,” he said on shooting the film. “There was so much, ‘Ugh! Ugh Ugh!’ There’s so much yelling and throwing and smashing. That’s why it’s like a thing we do when you’re upset about something sometimes.”
“A lot of my tweets will come true in 2018.”
This was a Nostradamus-like prediction on a more personal level.
“I’ve tweeted about a lot of things that have to do with myself musically or creatively or saying, ‘Oh here’s my plans or here’s what I’m gonna do.’ I’ve hinted at starting a vision clothing line. I’ve hinted at going on major tours,” he said. “One thing that’s coming true is me going on tour with J. Cole. I’ve never said specifically that I wanted to be on tour with J. Cole, but I’ve always said that I do love J. Cole, and I want to be on tour, and I wanted to be in different arenas and play Staples Center. I’m sure even if I didn’t tweet it, I have an internal circle of homies where I talk about things like this. I’ve talked about performing at Staples Center, performing my new album on tour.”
“I tweet things like, ‘One day you’ll all see The Vision!’” he added. “You know what I’m saying? I feel like that’s all been coming true in 2018, so that’s exactly what I was talking about. Music, the Vision, coming to fruition, and that’s what’s happening.”
Ultimately, Smith said the tweets he likes best are the ones he’s been writing in Portuguese, such as this one repeating his mirrors tweet.
“I just love the fact that whenever I tweet in Portuguese it gets so much more views than anything else,” Smith said. “My favorite stuff is when I just tweet in Portuguese. That’s my vibe. My Portuguese fans just like me. It feels like they like me more than my American fans, honestly.”
If a cup cake falls from a tree, will Jaden Smith ever tweet like he used to again? #Jupiter.