Twitter chief executive and former improv comic Dick Costolo couldn't help but drop a joke into his recent spat with Stanford professor Vivek Wadhwa, who accused Costolo's company of "male chauvinistic thinking" for lacking women in the most powerful positions.
"Vivek Wadhwa is the Carrot Top of academic sources," Costolo tweeted Sunday, referencing the flame-haired prop comic who has a reputation for being, as The New York Times put it, "over-the-top." Business Insider was more blunt, declaring the comedian "somewhat uncool."
So we asked the obvious question: What does Carrot Top think about all this?
"I should get some free shares out of this don't you think?" he said in an interview with The Huffington Post on Tuesday, alluding to Twitter's impending IPO. "I mean, I didn't do anything!"
Carrot Top, whose real name is Scott Thompson, wasn't familiar with Costolo prior to the tweet, and first read about the executive's joke in news reports. He had no idea that Costolo, who turned down tech jobs early in his career to be a professional improv comic in Chicago, used to be a comedian.
"That makes more sense, coming from a comic," said Thompson. "Comics are comics, so everyone likes to rip on each other."
Moreover, Carrot Top jokes have become, as the comic himself describes them, "fill in the blank with me."
"I could probably list you a thousand references to me from different sources," Thompson said. Rather than feeling discouraged, he said he's "just honored to be mentioned" by someone like Twitter's CEO, even as the butt of a joke.
Thompson is about to celebrate the eighth anniversary of his feature show at the Luxor Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.
Yes, that means Carrot Top was headlining in Las Vegas before Twitter even existed.