If you haven’t heard of Rob Delaney, you probably aren’t using Twitter correctly.

Delaney is easily described as a comedian, but he doesn’t just stand on a stage, tell jokes and smoke cigars.  Unlike most stand-ups and comedy writers, his forte isn’t necessarily on stage late at night; it’s on the Internet … and it’s all day.

Delaney is one of Twitter’s most prolific, most frequented and most consistently hilarious users (@Rob Delaney).  Granted, most of his tweets are extremely grotesque
and vulgar.

Normally, that’s enough to turn a person off of it completely, but in Delaney’s case, there’s something completely different about it.  I mean, the guy has 210,000 followers on Twitter, so people are listening.

Part of the reason his particular brand of 140-character comedy is forgivable is because he does other great things that help remind you that he’s not a completely foul (albeit ridiculously funny and charming) comedian and he’s actually just a really polite, nice guy who’s really effing good at making you laugh.

One of those things (and I might be alone on this) is a YouTube video he made of himself improv-ing a theme song to that owl movie, “The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole.”

The video is innocent, hilarious and it showcases Delaney’s charm (not to mention his tremendous gift at creating theme songs about owl movies) without going blue (not that that’s a problem
for me).

And another, more important reason that Delaney is wonderful are his weekly columns for VICE magazine where he’s given a completely open forum to discuss anything he wishes.  The results of this are an incredible blending of beautiful and succinct writing, great jokes and really heartfelt storytelling.

So those are the reasons why Rob Delaney: YOU’RE THE BEST.

Delaney can exist in two places.  On Twitter, he’s  viciously funny and brash.  In his VICE columns, he’s sincere and heartfelt, which is definitely a positive thing.  It allows his Twitter and his VICE columns to be separate entities of gorgeousness in completely different ways.

In his columns, he’s tackled tough issues like health care (“Make it easier for your citizens to be healthy and smart and they will save you in ways you have yet to imagine.”) and the debt ceiling (“Money has one of those smells, like gasoline or a freshly paved road, where you just want to sniff it so hard you pass out. In fact, most cocaine addicts don’t even like cocaine, they just use it as an excuse to put dollar bills up their nose.”) with grace.

Similarly, he manages to handle absurd subjects like Zankou Chicken (a chain of restaurants around Los Angeles) or reinterpretations of a Katy Perry song with the same voice.  It’s incredible.

My favorite thing he has ever done (besides that glorious Ga’Hoole song) is when he used one of his columns to tell a riveting story of when he and some people he barely knew bungee jumped off the Manhattan Bridge
illegally.

He tells the story so well, you forget that he’s a comedian and he turns into some prolific modern writer with a light heart and an urge to tell you stories in the best possible way.

You can just tell he takes writing very seriously and is passionate and genius in creative and lovely ways.

So whichever way you decide to hear his stories, I suggest you do.