Dos Equis sponsors a comedian’s tweet, gets more than it bargained for

So when Michael Ian Black, of “The State” and “Ed,” shared an uncharacteristically joke-free tweet about beer brand Dos Equis’ “Legend of You” app with his 1.9 million followers, people knew something was fishy. They asked Black why that tweet seemed so weird, and he answered them:

@planetoffinks No, they wrote it and paid me thousands of dollars to run it.

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 11, 2013

Many of the other tweets in the thread are too crass and expletive-laden to reproduce here, but a few expressed anger at both Dos Equis and Black for bringing advertising into a user’s Twitter timeline, others wondered why Dos Equis would associate itself with a comedian who has written jokes about 9/11.

In 2011, Aflac quite publicly fired comedian Gilbert Gottfried from his job as the voice of its spokesduck after he tweeted jokes about the earthquake that hit Japan that March.