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For Some Reason, GameStop Posted an Old Photo of Lil Uzi Vert Smiling with an Employee After Purchasing GTA V and a Pokemon Plush
By Matt Schultz
Published:
Some weeks there are good tweets, some weeks there aren’t. This week, we’re lucky. We’ve been blessed with a great one:
Everything about this tweet rules.
Things About This Tweet I Find Particularly Enjoyable
-GameStop not knowing that the rapper in the photo is the very famous, Philly-native, multimillionaire rapper Lil Uzi Vert.
-GameStop potentially knowing exactly who Lil Uzi Vert is and calling him “a rapper” anyway, knowing it’d go viral. This is a pretty good move. If this is what happened, well done.
-Lil Uzi Vert going to a GameStop when everything in the world can be purchased online.
-Lil Uzi Vert going to a GameStop in Springfield, which could be Montco or Delco. Apparently the one in Flourtown is now CLOSED.
-The idea of Lil Uzi Vert running errands around Springfield Montco or Delco: picking up checks at Trumark, grabbing a sixer from Pinocchio’s, dropping off his phone to get fixed at the Suburban Square Apple Store, then hitting GameStop to kill time.
-The fact that Lil Uzi Vert was there buying GTA V, released in 2013, and a Pokemon plush, which is a stuffed animal.
-The GameStop employee. Seems cool.
-The GameStop employee’s Kingdom Hearts shirt, which has a small stain there just below the graphic. The charitable read is that it’s water. Maybe the employee bathroom is one where water collects on the vanity and annoyingly gets on your shirt while washing your hands. A more realistic guess is that it’s sweat. This is a big guy. It’s July out there. Been humid, too. The uncharitable read, of course, is that it’s a mayo stain. An old one, too. Like the mayo stain wasn’t properly treated and the shirt went through the wash and came out with a permanent stain. That’s my guess. Going with mayo.
-The way the GameStop employee is standing: Smiling huge, hand on his hip, arm around Lil Uzi Vert, looking proud, as if he’s posing with a medium-ish sand shark he just caught.
-The idea that, perhaps, this is not a GameStop employee at all. The tweet does not specify that; it’s an assumption I made. It could be the case that this is just Lil Uzi Vert’s friend. He could’ve come with Lil Uzi Vert to GameStop. Maybe the friend is the one who had errands to run, and Lil Uzi Vert is the cool kind of come-with buddy who’s down to tag along and chill. Maybe they’re lifelong friends. Maybe they met at camp. Maybe they got to talking and realized there’s not that many cool pictures of them, not since camp, at least, so they asked the actual GameStop employee to snap a photo. Maybe after the picture was taken they both huddled around the phone to take a look and they nodded and smiled and said, “Yup, that’s a keeper.” Maybe they sent the picture in their mostly dormant camp friends group text, which got the conversation going with everybody for a while, until it kind of petered out again. This is probably what happened.
-The size difference between these two guys is very good.
-Lil Uzi Vert is so small. My guess is 4’5.
-The fact that GameStop looks exactly how I remember it from the last time I stepped in a GameStop, which was probably around 2007.
-The memories of GameStop this picture conjures.
-The nice plastic-y smell of GameStop that my brain has retrieved from the archives of my memory and brought to the forefront of my mind. That’s a good smell.
-The fact that this brick-and-mortar GameStop is getting some customers. That’s great. Would be cool if stores starting doing well again. It’s nice to go to a store. Feels good to get out of the house and do something sometimes.
-Pitching this blog to Kinker, who then pointed me to this Crossing Broad article about when Ronald Darby said Lil Uzi Vert is the next Michael Jackson, an incredible, wildly bad, and possibly CTE-influenced take.
That’s a lot of good stuff to come from one tweet. Thank you, GameStop, for this gift.
Kinkead: Something Matt didn’t consider – what if Uzi now works at GameStop and the rapper is the guy in the Kingdom Hearts shirt? Also – there is a visible poster for Doom Eternal, which came out in 2020, so this must be old. Why is GameStop posting an old photo with no context in 2026? We will “effort” more information.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…) email: M.Schultz@sportradar.com