Wil Wheaton's Triggered, Angry Response to Larry David Assaulting Elmo Goes Viral, Divides Fans

One week after Curb Your Enthusiasm star Larry David attacked and throttled Elmo on the Today show, Wheaton is going viral for his impassioned, lengthy, triggered, and clearly very angry response to it.

"Holy s--t it's even worse than I thought," wrote Wheaton, who said it took him two days to watch him because just hearing about it upset him, on Facebook. "What the f--k is wrong with that guy? Elmo is, like, the best friend to multiple generations of children."

"In the Sesame Street universe, ELMO IS A CHILD, who is currently putting mental health and caring for others in the spotlight," Wheaton continued. "And Larry F--king David ... did ... that? And thought it was going to be ... funny? What?"

"What an a--hole. What a stupid, self-centered, tone deaf a--hole."

The whole sordid saga started innocently and wholesomely when Elmo posted to his X (formerly Twitter) account on January 29 simply asking, "How is everybody doing?" With 160,000 likes, 60,000 shares and 20,000 responses, he'd clearly touched on something.

Suddenly, it became a mental health moment, as Elmo's question quickly went viral and people started to really share their fears, concerns, joys, passions, everything. It was a moment of unity and community that touched a lot of hearts ... except, perhaps, for Larry David's.

The comedian, who's not nearly as curmudgeonly and awful as the fictionalized version of himself from his HBO series, which just kicked off its final season, was clearly leaning into that fictional side of himself.

Larry and Elmo were both guests on Today three days later. While Larry was waiting in the wings and the panel was talking to Elmo about his wholesome and heartfelt viral moment, Larry randomly walked into the shot and assaulted a puppet.

He throttled and punched Elmo out of nowhere and just as abruptly walked off. When he was challenged later to apologize, he started cracking jokes about having no heart -- again, seemingly in Curb character -- but ultimately did apologize.

He doubled down on the Curb-ier side of the narrative that night on Late Night, when Seth Meyers inevitably brought it up.

"Elmo was talking. I was waiting to be interviewed, and Elmo was going on about mental health and I had to listen to every word," Larry explained. "And I was going, 'Oh my God, oh my God, I don't think I can take another second of this!' And so I got off my chair and I approached him and I throttled him! I couldn't take it!"

"And you know what?" he punctuated his statement. "I would do it again."

This whole thing proved too much for Wheaton, who went scorched earth on the comedian just a couple of days later on Facebook. He also admitted that the whole incident was triggering for him personally.

"Full disclosure: all the time, when I was growing up, my dad would grab me by the shoulders and shake me while he screamed in my face," Wheaton shared in his lengthy post. "He choked me more than once."

"He was always out of control, always in a furious rage, and always terrifying," he continued. "I'm a 51 year-old man and my heart is pounding right now, recalling how I felt when I was a little boy who loved Grover the way today's kids love Elmo."

He laid into Larry for having to not only attack a beloved children's character who is himself (fictionally) a child, but doing so to tear down an impactful moment about mental health.

"I really want to know what raced through his tiny little mind, and why there was no voice or person who spoke up to stop him from expressing violence towards a children's puppet WHO WAS THERE TO TALK ABOUT HOW HIS LOVE AND EMPATHY FOR PEOPLE HAVING A TOUGH TIME MATTERED AND MADE A DIFFERENCE," Wheaton wrote.

"Elmo and his dad were there to talk about empathy, love, kindness, and caring for each other," the post continued. "Larry David was there to promote the final (thank god, maybe he'll go away now) season of a television series. Like, read the room, dickhead. It isn't always about you being the center of attention."

He worried about impressionable young minds who were tuning in to see Elmo witnessing such a violent act. "You know what that tells impressionable young people about sharing their feelings?" he asked rhetorically.

He closed by saying that he hopes Larry's antics won't overshadow the good that Elmo's unexpected viral moment brought into the world. "With one question, Elmo got lots and lots of people speaking openly and honestly about their mental health," he wrote.

"A nontrivial number of people who none of us will ever know were inspired by it, and that was the last little nudge they needed to make the call or send the email to being healing," he added. "Elmo probably saved lives and relationships by opening that conversation."

The response came in immediately, with Wheaton's post getting slammed with more than a thousand comments. Enough of that very mixed reaction was negative, that Wheaton jumped into the comments himself to weigh back in.

He called out those mocking his post or laughing about the situation and simply urged them to leave. "When you say your shitty little toxic and cruel thing, when you reduce the whole thing to a puppet and a joke, you're doing to us what the adults around us did when we were kids. And it hurts all over again," he wrote.

"Maybe take the impulse to be a jerk and redirect it into being grateful you have no idea why this is so upsetting to so many of us."

On Thursday, the Star Trek: The Next Generation alum, who reprised his role on Star Trek: Picard, suddenly went viral for this response, with the same divide happening across social media as he saw on that original post.

Some applauded him for acknowledging the moment could be triggering, sharing his personal reasons for why it was for him, while others thought he was overreacting and needed to just calm down. It was just a silly moment between a comedian and a puppet.