WEBVTT - The Current State of Meme Politics 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:04.960 Cool Zone Media. 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:10.320 Welcome to it could happen here a podcast that is recorded. 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:13.600 But I'm very tired. But you know who's not tired, 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:16.079 Garrison Davis, our host for today. 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:18.320 No, I'm probably more tired than you. 0:00:18.440 --> 0:00:20.320 I was up to I don't know about that. 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:23.800 No, I was up till nine am. Eest writing desks. 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:26.599 Oh geez. Yeah. I went to bed by like five or. 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:29.080 Six, except for three hours. I'm going right back to 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:32.239 bed after this. Excellent, as is the grind, you know, 0:00:32.400 --> 0:00:33.840 rise and grind, that's my motto. 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:41.519 Yeah, I'm going to do the same thing. So all right, well, Garrison, 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:43.920 what are we What are we talking about today? What's 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:46.479 our episode about? What's this sewed on? 0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:49.279 So it's it's been a while since we've done like 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:53.239 an update on what meme politics are up to. I 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:56.080 think that the last deep dive we did was like 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.800 an I wouldn't say, like a year ago when Ron 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:05.080 de Santis, then presidential hopeful Meatball Rod Garrison, Meatball rock me. Sorry, sorry, 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:09.280 the mypolity is putting. Ron just embraced the fast wave 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:13.880 like meme asthetic for his then failing and dying campaign, 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:16.720 and that was kind of the last that we did 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:18.920 one of these big deep dives into like how meme 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:22.440 politics currently operate, And it's been a long year. It's 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:26.040 felt in some ways much longer than a year since then, 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:31.520 and the meme lenscape has changed significantly, And that's kind 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:33.680 of what I want to discuss today. Just go over 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:37.559 the current state of meme politics in September twenty twenty two. 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:43.440 Great, it's like the State of the Union, but slightly dumber. 0:01:43.600 --> 0:01:47.720 But for us, yeah, just for all, for the completely 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:51.240 brain rots yeah, space of online politics, people who. 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:54.560 Have destroyed their minds by spending too much time on 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:55.080 the Internet. 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:59.600 Yes, exactly. So now that most of these like jokes 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:01.760 are reference and says we'll be talking about are actually 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:05.000 really old and not actually relevant anymore and are no 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:08.880 longer trend dig now we can talk about how they worked, 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:11.280 if they worked, and what they can tell us about 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:13.400 the changing landscape of mean politics in the year of 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.840 Our Lord twenty twenty four and beyond. So let's start 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:19.560 by going all the way back to July fifteenth, which 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:21.119 was just a lifetime ago. 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:23.120 Yeah, that was a thousand years ago. 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:25.040 Yeah, this was This was the first day of the 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:28.920 RNC vance is announced as Trump's running mate. This was 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:32.280 before Biden dropped out of the race, but when we 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:36.040 were pretty sure that he was probably going to hopefully. 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:37.919 That's interesting that you were pretty shit because I I 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:41.040 kind of thought he was going to like make us 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:43.960 like fucking hoist his corpse back into the White House. 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:46.160 I mean, we got a really good indication about five 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:48.720 days later that his dropout was like imminent. 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:50.800 Yeah, yeah, you're right, and it happened. 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:53.240 It happened less than a week later, So it was 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:56.079 it was really on the line. But anyway, it was. 0:02:56.160 --> 0:02:59.600 It was. It was a very different world, very different time. Meanwhile, 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:01.519 on the first day of the RNC, after Vance is 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:05.800 announced as the Republican VP candidate, the Twitter user Rick 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:12.560 ruds Calves posted this tweet quote, I can't say for sure, 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:15.920 but he might be the first VP pick to have 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:19.080 admitted in a New York Times bestseller to fucking an 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:22.440 insight out Latex Glove shoved in between two couch cushions, 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:26.560 Vance Hillbilly Elogy, pages one seventy nine to one eight one. 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:29.480 So this is the this is the start of the 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.160 couch meme. Sure the next few days, the memes spread 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:34.359 online with the help of liberals who were unable to 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:38.400 detect the fictitious nature of the claim. Now un ironic 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:41.920 spread is crucial to the success of mimetic attacks like this, 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:45.920 and the couch fucking claims gained such widespread prominence on 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:49.080 Twitter that on July twenty fifth, the AP decided to 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:52.200 do an official fact check of the claim, running the 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:56.240 headline no, JD Vans did not have sex with a couch. 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:00.840 Now this had two problems. By platform forming this story 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:04.640 in the AP, the image of JD's couch coitus was 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:08.240 propelled outside the confines of overly online and Twitter ship 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:11.680 posters into the popular discourse. Now the topic was welcome 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:16.400 on new shows, talk shows, and other respectable publications. The 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:21.080 other problem is that you can't definitively say JD Vance 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:23.000 has never had sex with a couch. 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:24.880 No, no, I say I would never say that. 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:28.839 You can say it's untrue. He wrote about sofa sex 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:31.239 in his memoir, but not that he's one hundred percent 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.640 never made love to a love seat. Yeah, so making 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:38.600 matters worse. Hours later, the AP removed their fact check, 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:42.680 leaving a web page that just read quote. This story 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:45.200 did not go through our standard editing processes. And has 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:46.000 been removed. 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:49.000 I gotta know, I do desperately want to know what 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:51.599 actually happened in the background there. 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:59.480 It's it's quite funny. It's it's quite a big fuck up. 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:00.200 Now. 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:05.599 This led people to reasonably conclude that if the fact 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:08.240 check was taken down, that really only leads us to 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:10.400 believe one thing is that this is a true claim, 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.200 which at this point many people knew that it's not. 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:17.200 I think interestingly, JD. Vance has refused to comment on 0:05:17.240 --> 0:05:21.560 this claim, which is probably smart, but his continued refusal 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:24.279 to even deny the claim adds a bit to the 0:05:24.400 --> 0:05:29.280 humorous nature. So the retraction of this fact check became 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:31.680 a news story itself and gave a whole new life 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:34.000 to a meme that had kind of been reaching the 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:37.840 end of its cycle. People created doctored pages of Vance's 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:40.960 book He'll Billy Elegy, where he reflected on tales of 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:44.240 his youth in Ohio, where it was commonplace for young 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:47.479 boys rejected by girls to turn to couch cushions for 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:51.440 sexual pleasure. The fake pages were framed as a limited 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:54.120 first edition of the book before per Teal found it 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:57.200 and revised the book for a secondary, wide released copy. 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:01.440 The next week, the meme continued to proliferate, having completely 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:03.760 broken out of the Twitter ship posting bubble it was 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:06.800 birthed in, but the peak of the meme was still 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:10.480 to come. On August sixth, Kamala Harris announced at Minnesota 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:12.880 Governor Tim Walls as her running mate, and the two 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:16.680 appeared together at a rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During Walls's 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:19.479 first speech, he made a very safe kind of dad 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:24.359 joke style reference to his vice presidential opponent's viral sticky 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:25.320 sofa situation. 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:28.360 Like all regular people I grew up with in the Heartland, 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:33.120 JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:37.640 Valley billionaires, and then wrote a best seller trashing that community. 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:41.919 Come on, that's not what Middle America is. 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:45.719 And I gotta tell you, I can't wait to debate 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:46.279 the guy. 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:52.320 That is, if he's willing. 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:57.719 To get off the couch and show up, you'll see. 0:06:57.560 --> 0:06:58.159 What I did there. 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:05.200 So, due to the references kind of like explicit sexual context, 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:08.160 this was a bit of an unexpected move. 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:09.400 Yeah you could say that. 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:13.520 But for those already familiar with the meme, the bit 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:16.920 served as a humorous, yet tame in joke, and for 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:21.360 those unfamiliar, the huge crowd reaction prompted others to inquire 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:25.160 about the context for the whole jd vance couch thing, 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:29.240 once again boosting its popularity as a trend. Now, I 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:32.520 think this was a bit of a gamble from Walls, definitely, 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:36.600 as acknowledging a viral meme often leads to its impending death, 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:39.679 where recognition and participation of viral trends from the mainstream 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:42.840 establishment signal that something is no longer cool and is 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:44.040 now instead cringe. 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:45.000 Now. 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:47.840 Part of the long lasting presence of the coconut tree 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:52.360 meme is the Harris campaign's wise unwillingness to make continuing 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:56.480 coconut Tree references or capitalize on its imagery. The White 0:07:56.480 --> 0:07:59.840 House going all in on Dark Brandon using the imagery form, 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:02.800 and Biden increasingly making references to the meme and interviews 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:03.600 and speeches. 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:05.600 Oh, I've just killed it dead nuked. 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:08.559 It exactly, ultimately led to this meme's death long before 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:11.680 the death of the Biden campaign itself. But this could 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:15.680 be like a delicate balance. Before Biden made a Dark 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:18.960 Brandon one of the early chorsnic images associated with his 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:23.000 twenty twenty four reelection campaign. The first few Dark Brandon 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:26.240 references from the White House actually increased the memes spread, 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:28.640 and I think this is where Walls's joke was able 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:32.760 to succeed. The couch reference was vague enough and disconnected 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:36.720 from the more explicit aspects of the meme, and paired 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:40.000 with Walls's goofy facial expressions and his kind of dad 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:43.520 joke refrain of see what I did there, it made 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:47.040 what could have been a cringe and or crude moment 0:08:47.600 --> 0:08:51.280 into a charismatic and endearing one. I think the other 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:54.760 thing that makes me lean towards Walls's invocation of the 0:08:54.800 --> 0:08:58.520 couch helping more than herting is that the meme had 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:02.079 already begun to be legitimate the establishment. When it's the 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:05.040 subject of an article in every major publication and Stephen 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:07.920 Colbert is making couch jokes on TV, then it is 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:10.359 already broken containment and hit the mainstream. 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:13.840 Yeah. I would also add, I think there's a degree 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:17.920 to which, like the Dark Brandon stuff was cringy so fast, 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:21.720 because it was very clearly the Biden campaign jumping onto 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:26.680 a meme that Biden himself certainly didn't understand. Absolutely not, 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:29.280 Whereas I think Wall's got a little bit of the 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:32.520 kind of energy Trump used to get, in part because 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:35.120 it was it was like such a I can't believe 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:38.520 this is happening in American politics. The VP candidate for 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:42.439 the DIMS just accused the Republican VP candidate having sex 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:45.400 with the couch Like it was such a wow. This 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:47.920 is like the breaking of a seal kind of moment 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:51.120 which normally the Republicans have kind of had to themselves 0:09:51.160 --> 0:09:54.400 these like yes line crossing moments, And I think that 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:58.280 does get attention and energy to you. It was it 0:09:58.320 --> 0:09:59.760 was interesting to see them do it and have it 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:00.720 as actually work. 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:01.360 Yeah. 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:03.000 Well, we'll talk about that a little bit later. How 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:07.360 this sort of tactic has been almost entirely monopolized by 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:09.760 the right to the past decade, and just now we're 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:13.000 starting to see someone that's change. I think Tim Wall's 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:17.320 making a single couched reference, I believe did very little 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:20.760 to hurt the inevitable trajectory of the JD Vance couch meme. 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:24.160 In the days after the speech, searches for JD Vance 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:27.560 Couch reached an all time high, and as is the 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.600 nature for peaks, was followed by a gradual fall off 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:34.240 during the month of August, but crucially, the spirit of 0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:37.240 the meme never really fully went away. I think one 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:40.200 aspect that separates the couch meme from Dark Branded and 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:42.960 even Coconut Tree to some degree is that it's not 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:46.760 based on trying to prop up a political figure like Positively, 0:10:47.400 --> 0:10:53.040 but is instead attacking a widely disliked figure with slanderous disinformation. 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:56.360 And though the couch meme is well past its peak, 0:10:56.400 --> 0:10:58.480 there's been no shortage of ways to make fun of 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:03.120 jd Vance. The overall momentum against him specifically has continued 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:06.800 on utilizing memes with a true, untrue, and semi true basis, 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:09.960 whether that be his inability to order donuts or his 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:13.720 legitimately possible interest in dolphin sex as evidenced by his 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:18.800 Twitter searches. Do you know who also likes dolphin sex? 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:19.280 Robert? 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:24.360 I mean, I could be convinced, but I guess let's 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:32.160 check out these ads anyway. 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:40.280 All right, we are so back. So the right did 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:44.640 not take kindly to Walls's acknowledgment of the whole Sopha spectacle. 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:45.640 We were so pissed. 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:48.800 They're really pissed, And it's funny. It's like as if 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:51.280 their main guy has not spent the last ten years 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:54.400 making up wild and spewing all sorts of like offensive 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:55.640 lies about his opponents. 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:59.000 Yeah, yeah, that's why they're pissed. Yeah, we're supposed to 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:01.320 be the ones doing so. 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:05.880 In response, the online right's finest posters cooked up a 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:10.360 memetic counter attack against Tim Walls, and what they decided 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:12.960 on is that Tim Walls once had to get his 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:18.400 stomach pumped from drinking a gallon of horse seamen with 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:21.280 this meme originating from a fake screenshot of an AP 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:25.000 fact check posted by the Twitter account National Conservatism. 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:26.160 See. 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:30.920 Uh, I'm sure you're going to get into it, but 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:33.680 there's so many reasons why this was always destined not 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:34.240 to work. 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:37.800 Yeah. Absolutely, Almost immediately this was seen as like a 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:38.680 massive misfire. 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:41.240 Yeah yeah, it made it immediately clear. Oh, you guys 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:44.200 don't understand why what you used to do, like what 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:46.679 you were doing was working. Yeah, like you never actually 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:50.559 understood the principles behind what you were playing around with. 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:54.280 And I think crucially, most of the attacks from these 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:56.920 like weird online figures never actually caught that much traction. 0:12:57.000 --> 0:12:59.000 The only ones that succeeded were ones that were just 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:02.000 pairting stuff that Trump was talking about, because I think 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:04.600 Trump actually understands this line of attack much better than 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:07.199 most of these like right wing posters do. But yeah, 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:09.280 it was very clear that this was this was a failure. 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:13.360 Some of the first horse Seamen posts got immediately ratioed 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:17.640 by replies and quote tweets, deeming the meme a manufactured 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:20.920 and desperate attempt to respond to the natural growth of 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:24.280 the couch hooks from a random twitter ship post to 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:26.800 the Democratic vice presidential candidate's opening speech. 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:30.520 With a guy like Walls, you don't go with horse 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:33.319 com you do something like you you start spreading a 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:36.520 rumor that like he uh cooked a bunch of well 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:39.480 done t bone steaks at a barbecue or totally like that, 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:42.120 totally like something that really hits to the center of 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:43.320 his dad core thing. 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:46.560 It has to it has to line up with his vibe. 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:49.160 Right right right, and his vibe is like you know 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:53.080 that nice Midwestern dad who's a dog shit cook, right like. 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:55.880 Yeah, which is something that Walls has actually been able 0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:58.760 to like utilize himself with his like white guy tacos 0:13:58.760 --> 0:14:00.760 the stuff right like right exactly. 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:02.280 He's leaded into it very smartly. 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:04.320 He lead into it and then it becomes a strength 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:07.400 that then the right also gets upset about accusing him 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:09.280 of quote unquote anti white racism. 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:13.079 That was quite a moment for American political history. 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:16.920 The other thing with like this horse semen thing is 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:20.680 like you simply just can't force these things to happen. 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:23.120 Like a crucial part of the success of a political 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:24.920 meme like this is that it must have a degree 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:28.880 of un ironic spread by people who genuinely believe it 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:31.480 to be true. Now, the horse semen meme was also 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:35.080 intended to counter the Republicans or weird talking point that 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:38.720 picked up steam this summer, and for some reason they 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:41.960 chose to go about this by making an escalatory and 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:46.320 just grossly bizarre claim about Tim Wall's guzzling animal semen 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:50.400 masterful gambitzer not a weird thing to say at all. No, 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:55.120 in doing this, the Right displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:58.920 why the JD. Van's couch story was successful. The reason 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:02.240 why it caught on the easily verifiable fact that Jadvance 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:04.160 did not write about pleasuring himself with the couch as 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:07.040 a teenager is that JD. Vance seems like the kind 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:09.360 of guy to have used a couch to masturbait as 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:11.000 a teenager in rural Ohio. 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:14.000 Yeah, you know that adolescence was awkward as shit. 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:16.760 Absolutely, like it wasn't successful just because it was like 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:20.440 a weird sex story. It evoked a genuine feeling of 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.200 something a sort of like white trash young guy might do. 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:26.960 On the other hand, swallowing a gallon of horse seamen, 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:30.360 it's such an outlandish jump into fantasy by comparison. 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:31.760 Yeah, nobody has done that, right. 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:36.080 Well, well, Tim Walls is no mister Hans. The vibes 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:37.480 simply do not match. 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:41.400 And to be clear, Garre said, mister Hans wasn't swallowing it. 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:43.640 That was part of the problem. That is true. 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:48.040 And like, meanwhile, Vance has the exact vibe of like 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:51.160 a gross little teen gremlin who fucked it inside out 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:55.440 rubber gloves shoved between two couch cushions. So the horse 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:58.360 even meme failed to reach outside the confines of the 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:02.360 niche right wing Twitter, but conservatives had another meme up 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:06.640 their sleeve. Chronically online far right influencers cat turn to 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:09.760 chaiai Check aka Limbs of TikTok, and Ian Miles Chung 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:14.000 led the charge in branding Tim Walls as tampon Tim 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:17.680 in reference to a bill Walls assigned requiring menstrual products 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:21.560 be provided in schools. Oh the horror the Babylon b 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:25.240 wrote JD. Vance is weird, says guy who signed bill 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:29.920 to put tampons in boys' school bathroom unquote. So similar 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:33.760 to the horse thing. This attempt to frame Tim Walls 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:36.640 is Weird just didn't work that the meme never caught 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:39.360 on beyond its initial posts. I think part of the 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:43.320 reason why the overly online right is so focused on 0:16:43.400 --> 0:16:46.320 painting Walls is Weird is not just revenge for the 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:49.960 couch joke, but because Tim Walls is often credited with 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:54.840 popularizing the quote Republicans are just plain weird line of attack. 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:57.800 Something that's really caught on this past summer. Now, the 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:00.400 oldest clip I can find if Tim Walls pause this 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:04.040 message comes from December of twenty twenty three. I'll include 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:04.760 that clip here. 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:07.479 And you said, basically, there's no such thing as a 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:08.560 generic Republican. 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:10.040 These guys are weird. 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:13.480 Once they start running, their weirdness shows up. 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:15.760 What do you mean, Well, that's weird? 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:16.520 Stand by that. 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:21.560 Well, look just the strange things they become obsessed with 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:25.679 demonizing our children, becoming obsessed with people's personal lives in 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:27.440 their bedrooms, restricting freedoms. 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:29.040 I'm surrounded by states. 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:30.840 Who are spending their time figuring out how to ban 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:34.360 Charlotte's Web in their schools. Why we're banishing hunger from 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:37.280 ours with free breakfast and launch. That's what the public's 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:39.479 looking for, That's what they're trying to get to, and 0:17:39.520 --> 0:17:43.200 they will weirdly obsess with everything to be mean and 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:46.720 cruel and small in their ideas. And I didn't hear 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:49.720 anything last night that did anything different to that, so 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:50.600 I'll stand by that. 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:53.439 I just think Americans know this is just weird stuff 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:54.840 to be focused on now. 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:58.119 We on nickod appen here and behind the Bastards have 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:01.000 similarly been advocating for the type of framing for the 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:04.600 new Right for quite a long while, Like Robert, I 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:06.960 know you've been like really pushing for this as a 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:08.680 tactic like for years now. 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:12.240 Yeah. Yeah, if they'd made me the vice presidential candidate 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:14.560 three years ago, I really could have made some progress 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:17.119 on this, but I had to see what they've got up. 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:19.960 Like we decided on the name for Molly's new show 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:23.480 like very early this year, Like this was way way before, 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:25.719 like the weird attacks went viral. 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:29.040 It's really the only name we ever considered was weird 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:29.679 little guys. 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:33.000 Yeah, because that's how we like internally refer to these freaks. 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:37.880 Because these are all unhinged, anti social freaks, and many 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:41.680 of them revel in being this antagonistic force. I think 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:45.040 part of their self image is the idea that liberals 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:49.680 find them dangerous. And the weird attack is very disempowering 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:53.080 for these people. It reframes them from this like scary 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:56.840 existential threat to being more akin to your just off putting, 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:00.359 creepy uncle. Here's a clip of Wals himself kind of 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:02.719 explaining the methodology behind this attack. 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:06.240 You've gotten some attention this week for calling Trump advance 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:10.480 and Republicans in general weird. And I think that you're 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:13.720 the one that set this tone, and there's this shift 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:16.960 the Harris campaign seems to be following your lead, echoing 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:19.960 this language. Why do you think weird is a more 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:23.000 effective attack line against Trump than what Democrats have been 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:26.400 done previously, which is argue that he's an existential threat 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:27.119 to democracy? 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:31.719 Yeah, And it's an observation on this and you, being 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:33.359 a school teacher, I see a lot of things. 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:36.200 But my point on this was is people. 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:38.040 Kept talking about, look, donald Trump is going to put 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:40.639 women's lives at risk. That's one hundred percent true. Donald 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:44.240 Trump is potentially going to end constitutional liberties that we have, 0:19:44.560 --> 0:19:47.240 end voting. I do believe all those things are a 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:48.480 real possibility, but it. 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:51.080 Gives him way too much power. Listen to the guy. 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:54.840 He's talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and just 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:58.080 whatever crazy thing pops into his mind, and I thought, 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:00.240 we just give him way too much credit. I think 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:02.439 one of the things is is when you just ratchet 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:06.159 down some of the the scariness or whatever and just 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:08.479 name it what it is. I got to tell you 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:10.720 my observation on this is, have you ever seen the 0:20:10.720 --> 0:20:14.199 guy laugh? That seems very weird to me that an 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:16.040 adult can go through six and a half years of 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:18.280 being in the public eye. If he has left it's 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:21.399 at someone, not with someone. That is weird behavior. And 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:24.520 I don't think you call it anything else. It is 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:25.840 simply what we're observing. 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:26.160 Now. 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:28.639 An interesting side effect of the weird framing is that 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:33.520 it's left these ultra conservatives utterly incapable of effectively combating 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:36.320 this line of attack. They've been so used to being 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:39.119 on the offense that they never really prepared for the 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:41.679 position that they're now stuck in over a decade of 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:44.440 they go low, we go high, conditioned to the rights 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:47.159 to be completely unable to cope with being put on 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:52.879 mimetic defense. Now, my favorite retort of the weird claim 0:20:53.040 --> 0:20:57.440 is from conservative pundent Helen Andrew, who wrote, quote, calling 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:02.240 people weird is such feminine behavior. Text book sex difference. 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:07.720 Men engage in open conflict, women police conformity. It's honestly 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:10.920 disorienting to hear male politicians use the line. 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:13.760 I love too that we're talking about how men are 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:17.680