Dear Good Greatsby Reveals His Fake-itude

And today’s question comes from The Daily Retort‘s Tor Constantino, who seems to be skeptical of the authenticity of The Good Greatsby’s glasses.

Dear G2,

Are those prescription glasses you wear in your photos or are they simply the fakey fashion kind to make you look smarter – know what I mean? Some people dress up to come off as more erudite, by wearing things like…oh I don’t know… a brocaded smoking jacket or holding a pipe – stuff like that. I only ask because I really want to make sure that you really are smart before I ask my question. Thanks.

DumbFounded by Fashion

Dear DumbFounded by Fashion,

First of all, I can confirm the smoking jacket was prescribed by a doctor…me, Dr. Life of the Party, M.D.

On the other hand, the pipe isn’t real, and if you zoom in on the picture you’ll notice it’s actually a half-eaten bran muffin, although the bran muffin was prescribed by a doctor.

One accessory you can’t see in my pictures is that I’m wearing corrective leg braces, which were definitely not prescription and were part of a new look I was trying calling the ‘Erudite Cyborg’ (copyright pending).

I’m also wearing pie tins on my feet to make me sound more intimidating when I approach.

My hair is also fake in the sense that I paid a stylist to artificially cut its length and shape it into a pattern most suitable for my head shape.  Every morning it must be

Are you suggesting Justin Bieber CPA might be deceiving us with these glasses?

artificially restyled into an unnatural state, and the most shameful thing is that I can’t even do this myself but have employed my wife to reshape it, often in overly flamboyant styles she knows will make women assume I’m gay and leave me alone.

My words can also be a bit fake.  Sometimes I say, “I couldn’t care less,” but when I think about it I realize I probably could care less if I really set my mind to it, and this makes me feel guilty.

Most of my anecdotes are fake.  They did in fact happen, just not to me, and were stolen from the much more interesting lives of the Beatles, Cart Grant, and Harry Potter.

Sometimes when I tell someone, “It’s great to see you,” I really mean, “I’m neutral on seeing you, but I’m sure glad you brought your girlfriend.”

I understand it’s very common to wear fake glasses to try and appear smarter, and this may be frustrating to people who actually need glasses and feel looking smarter is the trade biology gave them for bad eyesight, but I’m not sure the glasses actually make me look any more intelligent anyway.  If I look back at all the jobs I’ve ever had–and I would assume I got those jobs because I made an impression of competence and intelligence–I always had more success when I wasn’t wearing glasses, or even a shirt, but was actually only wearing a swimsuit.

Now before I answer your question about the glasses so you can decide whether I’m truly smart or just pretending to be smart, allow me to ask: If you need someone smart to solve your problem, and I assume you mean someone smarter than you or you would have solved the problem already, are you sure you’d be smart enough to recognize this someone smarter than you?

Do you have a question for The Good Greatsby?

Submit your questions on the Dear Good Greatsby page.