What must it be like to be Owl City, a dude best known for a song containing several nonsensical lyrics about fireflies hugging him? More importantly, what’s it like to be a person still perplexed enough by the scientific impossibility of such a phenomenon to tweet at Owl City eight years later demanding an explanation? Behold the greatest/worst fan-artist exchange in human history: the moment someone asked Owl City’s Adam Young to settle once and for all what it means to “get 1,000 hugs from 10,000 lightning bugs,” as sung on his 2009 hit “Fireflies.” Perhaps a bigger artist would’ve scoffed at a request for such a personal annotation, but let it never be said that Owl City doesn’t know how to have fun. Young answered — oh, did he ever answer — with a mathematical and entomological breakdown that will both force a tear out of Bill Nye and zap your brain.
