2012’s commencement speaker circuit included such famed dignitaries as President Barack Obama, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Oprah, and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.
It also included longtime pals Rhett and Link, prognosticators of a YouTube channel that has over 880,000 subscribers and whose quippy songs and blithe sketches put the duo’s message more in tune with the collective attitude of today’s youth than any of the aforementioned celebrities and influencers.
Last week, the comedy team—Rhett McLaughlin and Lincoln Neal—returned to their native Angier, N.C., to deliver the commencement address to the 2012 graduating class of their alma mater, Harnett Central. Looking studious beyond compare in their black scholars robes, the two recounted tales from their days in high school, performed a song about growing up that they admitted to writing just a few days prior, and rattled off a laundry list of “Things We Would Have Liked To Have Known” before they themselves went off to college.
“It is acceptable to wear the same underwear two days in a row, but no longer,” Link professed. “Then, you can turn them inside out and wear them for two more days.”
“Jeans are a little different,” Rhett added. “You can pretty much wear them for a month without washing them.”
Since posting onto YouTube Tuesday, the video has been a smash hit with Rhett and Link’s fans, garnering 63,000 views, some of whom were moved enough to consider it “The world’s greatest commencement speech.”
“That was the most amazing graduation speech I’ve ever heard,” YouTuber esil144 wrote. “If more schools had interesting speakers like you two, people wouldn’t want to fall asleep during the ceremony.”
“Why can’t Rhett and Link do this at my high school when I finish?” AussieWithGlasses asked.
Maybe they will. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll close that speech the same way they closed this one at Harnett Central: by inviting a graduate on stage to help behead a Pokémon piñata.
It was a finale so inspirational that it almost made me want to graduate from high school again, and I’m 27.
Photo via YouTube
