Culture

Grover Swearing On ‘Sesame Street’ Is The New Yanny And Laurel

First there was Yanny and Laurel. Now there's Sesame Street's Grover apparently saying "fuck".

by Amanda Yeo  29 December 2018
Grover

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First there was Yanny and Laurel. Now there’s Sesame Street‘s Grover apparently saying “fuck”.

In a short clip of beloved children’s edutainment show Sesame Street shared by redditor schrodert, Muppets Rosita and Grover are solving some sort of problem. The six-second video is too brief for us to figure out exactly what they’re doing, but that is not important. What is important is that lovable, wholesome Grover Monster, in his excitement at discovering a potential solution, appears to drop a less-than-wholesome F-bomb.

Grover didn’t actually swear on a classic children’s television show, of course. Even presuming he knows any swears or would be bold enough to use them, it would never make it past edits. The fuzzy blue monster is innocently exclaiming “yes, yes, that sounds like an excellent idea”, and it is just the slight audible ambiguity and our own corrupt minds that have twisted his words into “yes, yes, that’s a fucking excellent idea”.

This Sesame Street swearing is another audible illusion in the vein of the Yanny and Laurel phenomenon earlier this year. But unlike Yanny and Laurel, people are reporting that they are able to switch between hearing the fuzzy blue Muppet say “that sounds like an excellent idea” and “that’s a fucking excellent idea” merely by listening for one or the other. Meanwhile, I am unable to hear anything but “Laurel” no matter how much I meditate on “Yanny”.

The debate regarding Grover’s potty mouth hasn’t torn as much of a rift in the internet as Yanny and Laurel did, presumably because most are able to hear both. There are a few who are militant about the fact that Grover Did Not Swear, but most are just enjoying the unexpected dissonance of a childhood icon apparently saying a naughty word.

It’s nice that even when we’ve grown past Sesame Street‘s target audience of three- to four-year-olds, its Muppets can still unite us.

Grover has yet to make a statement on the matter.