That Wasn't Very Bro, Bro: An Open Letter to Our Fellow Bro, Martin Shkreli

Dear Bro Shkreli,

Bro! How’s it bro-ing, bro? The bros are worried about you! Look, no bro ever wants to step on another bro's party vibe, popped-collar positioning, or temporary girlfriend, but you’ve been blasting out some pretty un-bro choices, bro!

When you, like, monster-bought that drug patent for that killer AIDS drug Daraprimus, or whatever, me and the bros were like, “SWISH! Can I get an amen? Pants-off lights-on f#@kers, we’re fighting immunodeficiency viruses with our dicks! BOOM!” And then you, like, went and raised the price on it from $13 per pill to $750 each, and we were like, “yeah, uhh...I mean, we’re doing it still, the dick thing. Cool, I guess...right?” After much discussion and, like, six BuzzFeed Venn diagram consults, we realized it actually isn’t that cool.

You’re hurting the frat. As bros--you know this, Martin--we hold ourselves to a higher standard. We make things cool, like memes where we tell people to come at us. Or urinating in places that aren’t toilets. We look at naked pictures of each other’s girlfriends, because what’s mine is bro’s, bro! And we manspread. Holy shitballs, do we manspread! But the thing is, bro, we don’t manspread to BE dicks; we manspread because we HAVE dicks, and a true bro knows the limit of his spread. When you made life-saving drugs remarkably inaccessible through your price re-structuring, you exceeded the limit of your spread, bro. Big time.

So, maybe just “stop,” bro? We already get enough flak from un-bros that will never be bros and just don’t get it. Every time Dellan calls his uncle at VW and pressures him to pump out a new “emissions-tested” model for his birthday, lame cyclists and enviro-whistle blower guys are always like, “I can’t breathe, I wish I had one, why is my dick so small?” Or whatever. We don’t expect every 18-speed nerd to see a well-built car and say, “that’s so bro.” But we’re *also* not going out of our way to make life harder for AIDS victims, y’know? Like, if they ever make a movie about AIDS, that might look really bad for us.   

And now a rival company made a $1/pill alternative before you could make good and bro the price back down, and you’re busy hosting Reddit AMAs? You want a question to answer, bro? Here’s a question: have you even called your dad yet? Does he even know? Scientists are cornering you and calling you out on your company's “R&D” bullshit, and you’re boasting about the hot girls you've met through all this. We’ve Skimm'd the thread, Martin. Your explanation is frustrating (because we don’t really get and/or believe the whole science part), and those girls are a 6 out of 10. At best.         

So, I guess you’ve left us no choice here. Officially, We, the Bros are officially rescinding your bro status. Please refrain from using our trademark workout selfies, duck faces, dick pics, photobombs, sneering, sick burns, side burns, pick-up lines, Eminem lyrics, eye-rolls, pectoral implants, sarcasm, YouTube meat-eating, lil’ Jon dick gyrations, or full-out beer-bong-thigh-squat-hugs.

You’re done, Martin.

Also, tell your dad that all of our dads say hi.

--The Bros

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Steve Hobbs is a Toronto-based actor/comedian/writer, trained in improv and sketch writing through Second City’s Conservatory and longform programs. He’s also a past senior editor/writer for The Beaverton satiric Canadian news magazine and is best known for his work at Toronto Fringe 2014 in sketch juggernaut “Everything is Fine,” as well as with ex-Impatient Theatre Co. headliners “El Fantoma.”