Tech

The Long, Sad Story Of The Official Jeremy Renner App

by Joseph Earp  5 September 2019
Jeremy Renner

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The only offensive thing about actor, musician and failed app magnate Jeremy Renner is how thoroughly inoffensive he is.

The man’s like a car commercial poured into a pair of sensible denim jeans and a windbreaker. His is the face you see when someone asks you to picture a 40-something suburban dad. In the possible world where he didn’t break out in The Hurt Locker, or nab his role as Hawkeye in the Avengers films, he’s the staff member in the hardware store that memorises his co-workers’ birthdays and organises the card for everyone to sign.

So then, riddle me this: why is it that on the two occasions that Jeremy Renner has tried to launch his own dedicated app, it’s ended in utter chaos?

What The Hell Is A Jeremy Renner App?

Early in 2017, shortly before the release of the mediative and snowbound thriller Wind River, Jeremy Renner launched an app. Helpfully, this app was called ‘Jeremy Renner’. It was basically a cross between Instagram and an early internet forum, where dedicated Renner-heads could ask each other important questions, such as, ‘Remember Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters?’ and, ‘Remember Kill The Messenger?’

But just months after the app launched, it became mired in drama. Kate Knibbs did a fantastic job unpacking the in-fighting for The Ringer, but the gist is this: fans became convinced that moderators were posing as real people on the app, in an attempt to keep conversations upbeat and positive. Then, when that didn’t work, moderators wiped the entire app’s comments sections as part of an ‘update’ that many felt was an excuse to “sweep the shit under the rug”.

For their part, Renner’s team denied accusations that they were censoring fans. “If someone doesn’t like Jeremy, they don’t have to like Jeremy,” one of the actor’s reps told Knibbs. “But that doesn’t mean that we have to post their comments in his app.”

Eventually, the angry comments spilled over onto Renner’s Instagram page. Shortly thereafter, the actor pushed the ‘Jeremy Renner’ app onto the backburner. It wasn’t gone, but it drifted from public view, and Renner’s team did nothing to stop that drifting.

That appeared to be the end of that. At least, for a few years.

Why The Hell Did Renner Try It Again?

Earlier this year, Renner launched something of a PR blitz. He released ‘Main Attraction’, an autotuned single that finds the exact middle ground between Imagine Dragons and Nickelback and somehow manages to sound more egregious than either extremely egregious band.

And, to the befuddlement of those who had missed it the first time around, he started to push the ‘Jeremy Renner’ app back into the public eye.

Not that much was different. It was still created and maintained by EscapeX, the company that maintained and created the first shitshow. And it still encouraged Rennerheads to share photos, connect with one another, and reminisce about the exploits of the third lead of the fourth Mission: Impossible movie.

Indeed, the single, slight change made to the app in the relaunch proved to be its downfall. This time around, in an attempt to convince users they were conversing with Renner himself, every push notification was formatted as though it was coming straight from the actor’s mouth.

Say you commented, ‘Hi Rennerheads!’ on the Jeremy Renner app. Then say a few moments later, another friendly user responded, ‘Hi friend!’ That response to your comment would come to you as a push notification. Moreover, this push notification would contain a little photo of the actor’s head, and the text of the response formatted as though Renner himself had written it. As in, your phone would buzz, you’d look down, and you’d see a little notification that read, ‘Jeremy Renner: Hi friend!’

You’ve probably already picked up the exploit here. This formatting decision made it extremely easy to make it seem as though Jeremy Renner himself was saying whatever heinous bullshit you wanted him to say. You didn’t need to write, ‘Hi friend!’ You could write, ‘Tag is a heinous pile of doo-doo’, and there would be a push notification that made it look like Jeremy Renner was dunking on Tag, a heinous pile of doo-doo.

It was writer and Twitter legend Stefan Heck who discovered this exploit by using the Jeremy Renner app to tell the storied actor that he planned to spend his weekend watching porno.

But once those floodgates were open, they could not be shut, and within days the Jeremy Renner app was totally overrun with trolls looking to disrupt proceedings. Some pretended to be Casey Anthony, most notable for being put to trial for the alleged murder of her child. Others pretended to be Jeremy Renner. All caused chaos.

The writing wasn’t so much on the wall as it was scrawled on every inch of the house. The Jeremy Renner app was beyond saving. And so, in the early hours of this morning, Renner himself delivered the killing blow and put the thing out of its misery.

The trolls on the Renner app responded as one might expect; with a mix of mournful longing and utter vicious shitposting.

Of course, this saga is not necessarily over. Jeremy Renner has apped, and he will app again, particularly now that his duties as Hawkeye have slowed down after Endgame. Let’s just hope next time around he follows the advice of his fans and launches a proudly porno-safe zone.