A dad in the US has been dubbed one of the first “online villains” of 2021 after, on January 2nd, he posted an infamous Twitter thread. In the now-deleted thread, he went into the details of teaching his hungry daughter to use the can opener.

The dad seemed to be genuinely proud of his valuable lesson, calling it an “allegory of triumph” and “a parenting theater in some ways.” After all, after 6 hours of trial and error, and foggy brain, his 9-year-old proudly popped the can of beans open.

But people on Twitter, though, were less than impressed with dad’s schooling methods. Many condemned the incident, claiming it was an example of very “poor” parenting, while others said it was plain unnecessary, and the rest pointed out the whole story could have been made up.

A handful, though, stood up to defend him, but the heated debate on “bean dad’s” education was already on and it seems like everyone has something to add to it. So let’s see what the whole “Bean Dad” saga that’s just all over the internet these days is all about.

The “Bean Dad” saga started on January 2nd after this dad tweeted a lengthy thread on teaching his 9-year-old daughter to open a can of beans

In response to the backlash online, the infamous dad turned to Twitter on January 3 again and stated: “Somehow my story about teaching my daughter how to work out how to use a can opener and overcome her frustration got over onto a version of Twitter where I’m being accused of child abuse. It’s astonishing. My kid is fine, everybody.”

This tweet was followed by another one: “The only thing people are touchier about than parenting style is dog ownership.”The “Bean Dad” has since deleted his Twitter account, sparking even more comments on how he wasn’t that proud of his “parenting theater” after all.

But people on Twitter were less than impressed by the dad’s thread and the heated debate was officially on

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To find out what people online really think of the “Bean Dad” saga and how it became one of the most-talked about subjects in the past days, Bored Panda reached out to Twitter user Edward Stockwell, who shared this meme as a response to the infamous thread.

Edward believes that the thread caused such a stir on Twitter because at its highest level, “it’s an absolutely absurd story involving a can of beans and an utterly pretentious dad.” His personal opinion on the matter, as he puts it, is that the dad “should have helped her open the damn beans after like fifteen minutes instead of going on a weird monologue about can openers to his nine-year-old daughter for six hours.”

Having said that, Edward added that he totally gets his insistence on raising a self-reliant child. Yet the lesson may have caused the very opposite result. “I think what that whole lesson taught her is that it’s not okay to ask for help and that her dad thinks lowly of her. Those probably aren’t his intentions, but that’s likely what’s getting taken away from all of this.”

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Edward agreed that parenting per se is a controversial topic, as we’ve all seen in the replies. “There are plenty of folks who agree with his tactics. Now, does child psychology show that their children are going to grow up distrusting others and likely eventually stop talking to their parents after their first session with a therapist? That’s a whole other can of worms.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean “because of this one incident, he should have his life ruined.” Edward thought the story “was a weird thing to brag about and moved on with my day.”

Yet, “attacking him for this will only drive him more and more into fringe thinking, which will do some real harm,” he said and added that he hopes this was just a one-off incident that Bean Dad thought was hilarious and important to share.

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Meanwhile, other users have already dug up the dad’s older tweets, whose screenshots began circulating on social media. According to Know Your Meme, they were extremely problematic.

But the dad’s co-worker, with whom he hosts a podcast, tried to defend him on racial, homophobic, and sexist allegations. The co-worker called him “a loving and attentive dad” and stated: “There’s no axis where any anti-Semitic screenshot represents any actual opinion I’ve ever heard from him.”

On Sunday, though, the podcast for which the dad has been working announced it would no longer be using his music.

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