In a series of tweets leading up to Christmas, Tyson decided that he was going to take a big old dump all over anything and everything surrounding the idea of Santa Claus. With fact after fact after fact, he sought – for some inexplicable reason – to disprove Santa.

On Santa’s workshop:

“Since the Northern Arctic is just ocean, Santa’s North Pole workshop has only ever existed on a floating sheet of ice. Images that portray Santa’s workshop with pine trees and snow-capped hills on the horizon are geographically underinformed.”

On Santa’s delivery system:

“For Santa to deliver gifts to all world’s Christians in one night requires hypersonic speeds through Earth’s lower atmosphere, vaporizing his reindeer & sleigh. Just sayin’.”

Speaking of the reindeer:

“Santa doesn’t know Zoology:  Both male & female Reindeer grow antlers. But all male Reindeer lose their antlers in the late fall, well-before Christmas. So Santa’s reindeer, which all sport antlers, are therefore all female, which means Rudolf has been misgendered.”

(To be fair, that last one is kind of interesting and opens up a whole realm of potential inquiry. Also – it’s Rudolph with a -ph, Neil; two can play at this pedantry game.)

As you might imagine, there was a ton of blowback at Tyson, though one imagines it didn’t do much – this is a dude who has embraced his role as pop culture science troll and seems to really enjoy being a little bit of a petty pr—k.

For real, though – this is some Grinch-level bulls—t. What kind of person gets off on spelling out the myriad ways in which a joyful seasonal story is wrong? Who hurt you, Neil? You’re so far removed from the point that you need a massive telescope and high-end orbital math just to find it again.

It should be noted that we are generally pro-troll in this space, but only when it is famous people taking the piss out of one another. If you’ve got a famous person on one side and millions of innocent kids on the other, well … we know which side we’re going to be on. And it ain’t the one where the dude talks about the unrealistic logistics of Santa Claus.

We’re honestly still trying to wrap our heads around this one. It’s just so unnecessary. Like, what could you possibly have hoped to accomplish with this, Neil? Did you need the attention that badly? Were you worried that you hadn’t been a small, petty d-bag online for too long a stretch and needed to remind everyone what a big man you are?

It’s just so ridiculous.

Obviously, Neil DeGrasse Tyson is an incredibly intelligent guy. He’s a hell of a lot smarter than we are. And yet, we’re not the ones who hopped on to social media to stir some s—t. He picked a fight with Santa Claus at Christmastime, people.

For a smart dude, he sure is f—king stupid.