Conan O'Brien Taunts Tonight Show At Google HQ
Conan O'Brien visited Google's corporate campus and apparently "killed," in part with a line discouraging people from watching his old show.
Silicon Valley's office-bound computer engineers are hardly the most discriminating comedic audience; if you let them listen to jokes from a TV celebrity during work hours, on the company dime, they'll happily laugh their asses off. But O'Brien's digs against his old employer NBC retain a broad appeal, given how many people are familiar with the network's very public mishandling of the transition between O'Brien and his Tonight Show predecessor/successor Jay Leno. Anti-NBC material also appeals to anyone who feels he's gotten an unfair break at work, a group that, by all accounts, includes at least some Googlers, what with the cutbacks in perks and gyrations' of the stock.
It helps that O'Brien couched his NBC put down in good humor rather than transparent bitterness. Toward the end of the clip above, via YouTuber/Googler Brittany Bohnet, O'Brien teases assembled Googlers about their youth. When it's pointed out to him that many of the computer whizzes don't even know what the Tonight Show is, O'Brien says that's a good thing — "there's no reason to know what a Tonight Show is anymore." Hey-OH!
Googlers also came in for some teasing over the obscurity of their company's rivalries. Everyone might now about O'Brien vs Leno, but Google vs Twitter is decidedly lower profile:
Googlers can at least comfort themselves with the knowledge that, while O'Brien might be far wealthier than most of them, he was nonetheless caught off guard by their bidets — and, with his sidekick, participated in the delivery of the zinger "I hope you enjoyed those Twitterer's filthy asses:"
Nice though these videos are, we were hoping someone had recorded the context around O'Brien's line, "You're such entitled a-holes." Do send us a link if you spot it.