WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. â Josiah Johnson crafts most of his jokes in a comfortable room tucked in the back of his Southern California home. There is no complex setup.
The roomâs dĂ©cor includes an array of sports books, shoe boxes and a light blue University of California, Los Angeles basketball chair from when he played for the team. A plump brown couch takes up much of the space. Above it is a painting of LeBron James in a Los Angeles Lakers jersey by Rod Benson, a former college basketball player. A photo of the deceased rapper Nipsey Hussle hangs over a bed in a corner.
This is Johnsonâs makeshift office, where he posts most of the memes, funny images and videos he uses to satirize current events in sports and pop culture. His comedic efforts have made him one of the most popular personalities on Twitter, with the handle KingJosiah54.
Johnson considers himself a modest one-man social media company, where much of the work of watching live sports and posting about them is done with his feet propped up, iPhone in hand, comfy T-shirt and shorts on.
âI just want no frills in how I operate and move,â Johnson, 39, said. âAt the end of the day, social is what the name implies â just being social. How would you talk to your friends normally? Would it be a whole elaborate setup? No. Itâs just a phone wherever youâre at, and being able to use that technology to be able to communicate with the entire world.â
Anyone involved in #NBATwitter â the community of hoops fans who celebrate, and argue about, basketball daily â has come across one of Johnsonâs memes. He pokes fun with references from movies and TV shows, well-known and obscure. He has a keen ability to find humor in even the most serious situations, like the vaccination status of Nets guard Kyrie Irving or the fraught relationship between Ben Simmons and the Philadelphia 76ers.
âIâm getting some satire off in a way that they may laugh, but itâll make them think as well,â Johnson said.
Johnson, who is Black, knows his jokes arenât for everyone â and he doesnât care. He often pulls from elements of Black culture that havenât been appropriated, and thus may sail over the heads of non-Black sports fans. Many of his memes are nuanced references to shows specific to his own interests, like the drama series âThe Wireâ or the sports movie âWhite Men Canât Jumpâ (his father, Marques Johnson, is in the movie).
âIâve just really built a devoted following with people that Iâm super appreciative of that get the joke, too,â Josiah Johnson said. âIâm almost 40 years old, so I do a lot of stuff from my lane. And that could be problematic for kids who are looking at me as an old geezer. They donât get a lot of the references, so they donât understand why people are laughing at them.â
Locker rooms and movie sets characterized Johnsonâs early life.
He was a forward at U.C.L.A. in the early 2000s on teams that included future N.B.A. players like Matt Barnes, Jason Kapono and Trevor Ariza.
Johnson always had a unique sense of humor and a big, energetic personality, though he could be reserved and almost seem shy at times, said Steve Lavin, who coached Johnson at U.C.L.A. and is now a college basketball analyst. Lavin added that Johnson brought an authentic lightheartedness to a high-pressured environment where winning was expected.
âHe doesnât have to say anything,â Lavin said. âIt could be the expression on his face or knowing what heâs thinking. You could tell the mind was always at work.â
Johnsonâs father also played for U.C.L.A., under John Wooden in the 1970s, and spent over a decade in the N.B.A., mostly with the Bucks and Clippers. The Johnsons were close with the family of Marques Johnsonâs Clippers teammate, Norm Nixon, and Nixonâs wife, the producer and choreographer Debbie Allen. So Johnson spent many afternoons on the set of the sitcom âA Different World,â which Allen produced. Johnsonâs mother, Jocelyn, was an extra.
Those experiences nurtured Johnsonâs love for entertainment. He cocreated the Comedy Central animated sitcom âLegends of Chamberlain Heights,â which lasted two seasons. During the show, Johnson studied how programs like âSouth Park,â âGame of Thronesâ and âInsecureâ used social media to build fan loyalty and followed that formula to amass nearly 100,000 followers on the âChamberlain Heightsâ social media page. That was the impetus for generating his own following of over 200,000 accounts across Twitter and Instagram.
His content has caught the attention of everyone from athletes to filmmakers. LeBron James, whom Johnson has followed closely since learning that James sat in his U.C.L.A. chair during a 2003 high school tournament, may be one of Johnsonâs biggest fans. He often retweets Johnsonâs jokes and has referred to him using the goat emoji, a symbol of greatness. Johnson has one of Jamesâs tweets to him printed out and placed on a shelf.
In 2019, Johnson posted a meme representing the N.F.L. players Antonio Brown and Josh Gordon as two characters from the thriller âGet Out.â Jordan Peele, the filmâs creator, saw the tweet and replied to it.
âYou win, Josiah,â Peele wrote in a tweet that Johnson has printed on a T-shirt hanging in his closet.
âThat really launched this thing to where it is,â Johnson said. Peele followed him on Twitter and the two communicated via direct messages. âI just thanked him so much for giving people like myself the opportunity to be successful,â Johnson said, adding later: âIf I went to my agents and was like, âGet me a meeting with Jordan Peele,â theyâd laugh in my face. But if I put up a tweet that can get Jordan Peeleâs attention. I can have him come to me. So thatâs the thing that for social, that really kind of opened my eyes.â
Johnsonâs social media content has yielded numerous outside opportunities, including a podcast called âOutta Pocketâ that he co-hosts on Wave.tv. He also has a writing role on the Netflix series âColin in Black and White,â based on the life of the former N.F.L. quarterback Colin Kaepernick and produced by Kaepernick and the filmmaker Ava DuVernay.
Johnsonâs ascension coincides with a rise of content creators who post on social media and make money off nearly every aspect of their lives. He said he sees situations âin meme form.â When something happens in sports or pop culture, Johnson knows where to look in his photo album with of a couple thousand clips and images.
âA lot of times, Iâm like, âDamn, did I just see that?ââ Johnson said. âAnd itâs like, âYep, I did, so everybody else did too. So Iâve got to get it out as fast as possible.ââ
He has become known as much for his speed as his wit.
âJosiah Johnson is one of those folks that legitimately stopped the timeline,â said TJ Adeshola, who leads the United States sports division at Twitter. âWhen Josiah has a tweet, itâs always timely. Itâs always hilarious. Itâs always at the perfect moment.â
Twitter has paired Johnson with brands and pays him to make appearances on Twitterâs N.B.A. show called âNBA Twitter Live,â which the social media company hosts with Turner Sports.
The N.B.A., with its bold personalities and resulting drama, is distinct among professional sports leagues in the way it has cultivated a fan culture that routinely births instant-classic comedic moments that are widely shared across social media.
âThereâs always going to be something funny to pick up on,â said Tyler Puryear, a close friend of Johnsonâs and another popular social media personality. He is better known by his Twitter handle, DragonflyJonez, an homage to a character on the â90s sitcom âMartin.â
Like Johnson, Puryear gained notoriety by making fun of almost anything, or anyone, in the N.B.A. news cycle. That comedic element, Puryear said, puts the sportâs competitiveness in perspective.
âYou canât ever lose sight of the fact that itâs just a game. Itâs just a sport,â he said. âItâs a bunch of dudes in tank tops and shorts throwing a leather pouch at an aluminum ring.â
That view has made room for Johnsonâs success.
âThatâs where heâs masterful at this whole Twitter thing, is that he can reach a common ground and pull us in, and have us laugh there,â Puryear said. âAnd I think thatâs the best possible way to use Twitter.â
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