Having backed off for the moment from his more overtly supervillain-esque antics—and recently been eclipsed in his role as America’s “Most Hated Medical CEO” by EpiPen baron Heather Bresch—Martin Shkreli has resorted to the classic fallback of the bored and ornery: trolling comedians on Twitter.
We’re not sure what it is about human nature that drives the desperately attention-poor to go after people who literally tell jokes and shut down hecklers for a living, but Shkreli recently attacked Stephen Colbert over a Late Show joke that targeted him, inviting Colbert to “suck a dick?” Sadly for Shkreli, Colbert shut things down pretty fast:
However, Shkreli got a more sustained retaliation from another comedy star earlier this week by targeting a guy who’s always up for a Twitter fight: Patton Oswalt. Oswalt was idly mocking Donald Trump by riffing on the candidate’s supposedly superhuman health with the #TrumpCantSwim hashtag, when Shkreli forced himself into Oswalt’s feed with a well-considered piece of invective:
@pattonoswalt who r u again
— Martin Shkreli (@MartinShkreli) September 6, 2016
Never one to ignore a healthy load of fish flopping listlessly in an open barrel, Oswalt spent the next two hours eviscerating Shkreli, who fired back with such burns as “ur the king of queens im the KING OF BROOKLYN” and “anyone especially me could do what u do plz stop pretending u matter.” Oswalt responded to each in turn:
Unusually for Twitter, the encounter seems to have culminated in the rare “Win-Win-Win” for everybody involved: Oswalt got to sharpen his wit on the dull whetstone of one of America’s largest and least interesting egos. Shrkreli got the brief burst of public acknowledgement that keeps his lonely heart beating. The rest of us got the phrase “Transdermal Patch Adams” out of the deal.
And finally, Chris Hardwick and Comedy Central’s @Midnight got to reap the rewards by tackling the fight last night, offering up a recreation of the conflict with James Davis as Shkreli, 24 alum Mary-Lynn Rajskub as Oswalt, and The Hebrew Hammer’s Adam Goldberg standing in for all us random Twitter passerby.
Unfortunately, not even hearing his words performed in front of a live audience seems to have dissuaded Shkreli from pursuing this feud: As of literal minutes ago, he and Oswalt are still going at it, suggesting this dramatic reenactment may soon be in need of a sequel.