Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it could happen here a podcast that is recorded.
Speaker 2: But I'm very tired. But you know who's not tired,
Speaker 2: Garrison Davis, our host for today.
Speaker 3: No, I'm probably more tired than you.
Speaker 2: I was up to I don't know about that.
Speaker 3: No, I was up till nine am. Eest writing desks.
Speaker 2: Oh geez. Yeah. I went to bed by like five or.
Speaker 3: Six, except for three hours. I'm going right back to
Speaker 3: bed after this. Excellent, as is the grind, you know,
Speaker 3: rise and grind, that's my motto.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to do the same thing. So all right, well, Garrison,
Speaker 2: what are we What are we talking about today? What's
Speaker 2: our episode about? What's this sewed on?
Speaker 3: So it's it's been a while since we've done like
Speaker 3: an update on what meme politics are up to. I
Speaker 3: think that the last deep dive we did was like
Speaker 3: an I wouldn't say, like a year ago when Ron
Speaker 3: de Santis, then presidential hopeful Meatball Rod Garrison, Meatball rock me. Sorry, sorry,
Speaker 3: the mypolity is putting. Ron just embraced the fast wave
Speaker 3: like meme asthetic for his then failing and dying campaign,
Speaker 3: and that was kind of the last that we did
Speaker 3: one of these big deep dives into like how meme
Speaker 3: politics currently operate, And it's been a long year. It's
Speaker 3: felt in some ways much longer than a year since then,
Speaker 3: and the meme lenscape has changed significantly, And that's kind
Speaker 3: of what I want to discuss today. Just go over
Speaker 3: the current state of meme politics in September twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Great, it's like the State of the Union, but slightly dumber.
Speaker 3: But for us, yeah, just for all, for the completely
Speaker 3: brain rots yeah, space of online politics, people who.
Speaker 2: Have destroyed their minds by spending too much time on
Speaker 2: the Internet.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. So now that most of these like jokes
Speaker 3: are reference and says we'll be talking about are actually
Speaker 3: really old and not actually relevant anymore and are no
Speaker 3: longer trend dig now we can talk about how they worked,
Speaker 3: if they worked, and what they can tell us about
Speaker 3: the changing landscape of mean politics in the year of
Speaker 3: Our Lord twenty twenty four and beyond. So let's start
Speaker 3: by going all the way back to July fifteenth, which
Speaker 3: was just a lifetime ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a thousand years ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was This was the first day of the
Speaker 3: RNC vance is announced as Trump's running mate. This was
Speaker 3: before Biden dropped out of the race, but when we
Speaker 3: were pretty sure that he was probably going to hopefully.
Speaker 2: That's interesting that you were pretty shit because I I
Speaker 2: kind of thought he was going to like make us
Speaker 2: like fucking hoist his corpse back into the White House.
Speaker 3: I mean, we got a really good indication about five
Speaker 3: days later that his dropout was like imminent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're right, and it happened.
Speaker 3: It happened less than a week later, So it was
Speaker 3: it was really on the line. But anyway, it was.
Speaker 3: It was. It was a very different world, very different time. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: on the first day of the RNC, after Vance is
Speaker 3: announced as the Republican VP candidate, the Twitter user Rick
Speaker 3: ruds Calves posted this tweet quote, I can't say for sure,
Speaker 3: but he might be the first VP pick to have
Speaker 3: admitted in a New York Times bestseller to fucking an
Speaker 3: insight out Latex Glove shoved in between two couch cushions,
Speaker 3: Vance Hillbilly Elogy, pages one seventy nine to one eight one.
Speaker 3: So this is the this is the start of the
Speaker 3: couch meme. Sure the next few days, the memes spread
Speaker 3: online with the help of liberals who were unable to
Speaker 3: detect the fictitious nature of the claim. Now un ironic
Speaker 3: spread is crucial to the success of mimetic attacks like this,
Speaker 3: and the couch fucking claims gained such widespread prominence on
Speaker 3: Twitter that on July twenty fifth, the AP decided to
Speaker 3: do an official fact check of the claim, running the
Speaker 3: headline no, JD Vans did not have sex with a couch.
Speaker 3: Now this had two problems. By platform forming this story
Speaker 3: in the AP, the image of JD's couch coitus was
Speaker 3: propelled outside the confines of overly online and Twitter ship
Speaker 3: posters into the popular discourse. Now the topic was welcome
Speaker 3: on new shows, talk shows, and other respectable publications. The
Speaker 3: other problem is that you can't definitively say JD Vance
Speaker 3: has never had sex with a couch.
Speaker 2: No, no, I say I would never say that.
Speaker 3: You can say it's untrue. He wrote about sofa sex
Speaker 3: in his memoir, but not that he's one hundred percent
Speaker 3: never made love to a love seat. Yeah, so making
Speaker 3: matters worse. Hours later, the AP removed their fact check,
Speaker 3: leaving a web page that just read quote. This story
Speaker 3: did not go through our standard editing processes. And has
Speaker 3: been removed.
Speaker 2: I gotta know, I do desperately want to know what
Speaker 2: actually happened in the background there.
Speaker 3: It's it's quite funny. It's it's quite a big fuck up.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: This led people to reasonably conclude that if the fact
Speaker 3: check was taken down, that really only leads us to
Speaker 3: believe one thing is that this is a true claim,
Speaker 3: which at this point many people knew that it's not.
Speaker 3: I think interestingly, JD. Vance has refused to comment on
Speaker 3: this claim, which is probably smart, but his continued refusal
Speaker 3: to even deny the claim adds a bit to the
Speaker 3: humorous nature. So the retraction of this fact check became
Speaker 3: a news story itself and gave a whole new life
Speaker 3: to a meme that had kind of been reaching the
Speaker 3: end of its cycle. People created doctored pages of Vance's
Speaker 3: book He'll Billy Elegy, where he reflected on tales of
Speaker 3: his youth in Ohio, where it was commonplace for young
Speaker 3: boys rejected by girls to turn to couch cushions for
Speaker 3: sexual pleasure. The fake pages were framed as a limited
Speaker 3: first edition of the book before per Teal found it
Speaker 3: and revised the book for a secondary, wide released copy.
Speaker 3: The next week, the meme continued to proliferate, having completely
Speaker 3: broken out of the Twitter ship posting bubble it was
Speaker 3: birthed in, but the peak of the meme was still
Speaker 3: to come. On August sixth, Kamala Harris announced at Minnesota
Speaker 3: Governor Tim Walls as her running mate, and the two
Speaker 3: appeared together at a rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During Walls's
Speaker 3: first speech, he made a very safe kind of dad
Speaker 3: joke style reference to his vice presidential opponent's viral sticky
Speaker 3: sofa situation.
Speaker 5: Like all regular people I grew up with in the Heartland,
Speaker 5: JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon
Speaker 5: Valley billionaires, and then wrote a best seller trashing that community.
Speaker 4: Come on, that's not what Middle America is.
Speaker 5: And I gotta tell you, I can't wait to debate
Speaker 5: the guy.
Speaker 4: That is, if he's willing.
Speaker 5: To get off the couch and show up, you'll see.
Speaker 4: What I did there.
Speaker 3: So, due to the references kind of like explicit sexual context,
Speaker 3: this was a bit of an unexpected move.
Speaker 2: Yeah you could say that.
Speaker 3: But for those already familiar with the meme, the bit
Speaker 3: served as a humorous, yet tame in joke, and for
Speaker 3: those unfamiliar, the huge crowd reaction prompted others to inquire
Speaker 3: about the context for the whole jd vance couch thing,
Speaker 3: once again boosting its popularity as a trend. Now, I
Speaker 3: think this was a bit of a gamble from Walls, definitely,
Speaker 3: as acknowledging a viral meme often leads to its impending death,
Speaker 3: where recognition and participation of viral trends from the mainstream
Speaker 3: establishment signal that something is no longer cool and is
Speaker 3: now instead cringe.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: Part of the long lasting presence of the coconut tree
Speaker 3: meme is the Harris campaign's wise unwillingness to make continuing
Speaker 3: coconut Tree references or capitalize on its imagery. The White
Speaker 3: House going all in on Dark Brandon using the imagery form,
Speaker 3: and Biden increasingly making references to the meme and interviews
Speaker 3: and speeches.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've just killed it dead nuked.
Speaker 3: It exactly, ultimately led to this meme's death long before
Speaker 3: the death of the Biden campaign itself. But this could
Speaker 3: be like a delicate balance. Before Biden made a Dark
Speaker 3: Brandon one of the early chorsnic images associated with his
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four reelection campaign. The first few Dark Brandon
Speaker 3: references from the White House actually increased the memes spread,
Speaker 3: and I think this is where Walls's joke was able
Speaker 3: to succeed. The couch reference was vague enough and disconnected
Speaker 3: from the more explicit aspects of the meme, and paired
Speaker 3: with Walls's goofy facial expressions and his kind of dad
Speaker 3: joke refrain of see what I did there, it made
Speaker 3: what could have been a cringe and or crude moment
Speaker 3: into a charismatic and endearing one. I think the other
Speaker 3: thing that makes me lean towards Walls's invocation of the
Speaker 3: couch helping more than herting is that the meme had
Speaker 3: already begun to be legitimate the establishment. When it's the
Speaker 3: subject of an article in every major publication and Stephen
Speaker 3: Colbert is making couch jokes on TV, then it is
Speaker 3: already broken containment and hit the mainstream.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I would also add, I think there's a degree
Speaker 2: to which, like the Dark Brandon stuff was cringy so fast,
Speaker 2: because it was very clearly the Biden campaign jumping onto
Speaker 2: a meme that Biden himself certainly didn't understand. Absolutely not,
Speaker 2: Whereas I think Wall's got a little bit of the
Speaker 2: kind of energy Trump used to get, in part because
Speaker 2: it was it was like such a I can't believe
Speaker 2: this is happening in American politics. The VP candidate for
Speaker 2: the DIMS just accused the Republican VP candidate having sex
Speaker 2: with the couch Like it was such a wow. This
Speaker 2: is like the breaking of a seal kind of moment
Speaker 2: which normally the Republicans have kind of had to themselves
Speaker 2: these like yes line crossing moments, And I think that
Speaker 2: does get attention and energy to you. It was it
Speaker 2: was interesting to see them do it and have it
Speaker 2: as actually work.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll talk about that a little bit later. How
Speaker 3: this sort of tactic has been almost entirely monopolized by
Speaker 3: the right to the past decade, and just now we're
Speaker 3: starting to see someone that's change. I think Tim Wall's
Speaker 3: making a single couched reference, I believe did very little
Speaker 3: to hurt the inevitable trajectory of the JD Vance couch meme.
Speaker 3: In the days after the speech, searches for JD Vance
Speaker 3: Couch reached an all time high, and as is the
Speaker 3: nature for peaks, was followed by a gradual fall off
Speaker 3: during the month of August, but crucially, the spirit of
Speaker 3: the meme never really fully went away. I think one
Speaker 3: aspect that separates the couch meme from Dark Branded and
Speaker 3: even Coconut Tree to some degree is that it's not
Speaker 3: based on trying to prop up a political figure like Positively,
Speaker 3: but is instead attacking a widely disliked figure with slanderous disinformation.
Speaker 3: And though the couch meme is well past its peak,
Speaker 3: there's been no shortage of ways to make fun of
Speaker 3: jd Vance. The overall momentum against him specifically has continued
Speaker 3: on utilizing memes with a true, untrue, and semi true basis,
Speaker 3: whether that be his inability to order donuts or his
Speaker 3: legitimately possible interest in dolphin sex as evidenced by his
Speaker 3: Twitter searches. Do you know who also likes dolphin sex?
Speaker 4: Robert?
Speaker 2: I mean, I could be convinced, but I guess let's
Speaker 2: check out these ads anyway.
Speaker 3: All right, we are so back. So the right did
Speaker 3: not take kindly to Walls's acknowledgment of the whole Sopha spectacle.
Speaker 2: We were so pissed.
Speaker 3: They're really pissed, And it's funny. It's like as if
Speaker 3: their main guy has not spent the last ten years
Speaker 3: making up wild and spewing all sorts of like offensive
Speaker 3: lies about his opponents.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's why they're pissed. Yeah, we're supposed to
Speaker 2: be the ones doing so.
Speaker 3: In response, the online right's finest posters cooked up a
Speaker 3: memetic counter attack against Tim Walls, and what they decided
Speaker 3: on is that Tim Walls once had to get his
Speaker 3: stomach pumped from drinking a gallon of horse seamen with
Speaker 3: this meme originating from a fake screenshot of an AP
Speaker 3: fact check posted by the Twitter account National Conservatism.
Speaker 4: See.
Speaker 2: Uh, I'm sure you're going to get into it, but
Speaker 2: there's so many reasons why this was always destined not
Speaker 2: to work.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, Almost immediately this was seen as like a
Speaker 3: massive misfire.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, it made it immediately clear. Oh, you guys
Speaker 2: don't understand why what you used to do, like what
Speaker 2: you were doing was working. Yeah, like you never actually
Speaker 2: understood the principles behind what you were playing around with.
Speaker 3: And I think crucially, most of the attacks from these
Speaker 3: like weird online figures never actually caught that much traction.
Speaker 3: The only ones that succeeded were ones that were just
Speaker 3: pairting stuff that Trump was talking about, because I think
Speaker 3: Trump actually understands this line of attack much better than
Speaker 3: most of these like right wing posters do. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it was very clear that this was this was a failure.
Speaker 3: Some of the first horse Seamen posts got immediately ratioed
Speaker 3: by replies and quote tweets, deeming the meme a manufactured
Speaker 3: and desperate attempt to respond to the natural growth of
Speaker 3: the couch hooks from a random twitter ship post to
Speaker 3: the Democratic vice presidential candidate's opening speech.
Speaker 2: With a guy like Walls, you don't go with horse
Speaker 2: com you do something like you you start spreading a
Speaker 2: rumor that like he uh cooked a bunch of well
Speaker 2: done t bone steaks at a barbecue or totally like that,
Speaker 2: totally like something that really hits to the center of
Speaker 2: his dad core thing.
Speaker 3: It has to it has to line up with his vibe.
Speaker 2: Right right right, and his vibe is like you know
Speaker 2: that nice Midwestern dad who's a dog shit cook, right like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is something that Walls has actually been able
Speaker 3: to like utilize himself with his like white guy tacos
Speaker 3: the stuff right like right exactly.
Speaker 2: He's leaded into it very smartly.
Speaker 3: He lead into it and then it becomes a strength
Speaker 3: that then the right also gets upset about accusing him
Speaker 3: of quote unquote anti white racism.
Speaker 2: That was quite a moment for American political history.
Speaker 3: The other thing with like this horse semen thing is
Speaker 3: like you simply just can't force these things to happen.
Speaker 3: Like a crucial part of the success of a political
Speaker 3: meme like this is that it must have a degree
Speaker 3: of un ironic spread by people who genuinely believe it
Speaker 3: to be true. Now, the horse semen meme was also
Speaker 3: intended to counter the Republicans or weird talking point that
Speaker 3: picked up steam this summer, and for some reason they
Speaker 3: chose to go about this by making an escalatory and
Speaker 3: just grossly bizarre claim about Tim Wall's guzzling animal semen
Speaker 3: masterful gambitzer not a weird thing to say at all. No,
Speaker 3: in doing this, the Right displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of
Speaker 3: why the JD. Van's couch story was successful. The reason
Speaker 3: why it caught on the easily verifiable fact that Jadvance
Speaker 3: did not write about pleasuring himself with the couch as
Speaker 3: a teenager is that JD. Vance seems like the kind
Speaker 3: of guy to have used a couch to masturbait as
Speaker 3: a teenager in rural Ohio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know that adolescence was awkward as shit.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, like it wasn't successful just because it was like
Speaker 3: a weird sex story. It evoked a genuine feeling of
Speaker 3: something a sort of like white trash young guy might do.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, swallowing a gallon of horse seamen,
Speaker 3: it's such an outlandish jump into fantasy by comparison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nobody has done that, right.
Speaker 3: Well, well, Tim Walls is no mister Hans. The vibes
Speaker 3: simply do not match.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, Garre said, mister Hans wasn't swallowing it.
Speaker 2: That was part of the problem. That is true.
Speaker 3: And like, meanwhile, Vance has the exact vibe of like
Speaker 3: a gross little teen gremlin who fucked it inside out
Speaker 3: rubber gloves shoved between two couch cushions. So the horse
Speaker 3: even meme failed to reach outside the confines of the
Speaker 3: niche right wing Twitter, but conservatives had another meme up
Speaker 3: their sleeve. Chronically online far right influencers cat turn to
Speaker 3: chaiai Check aka Limbs of TikTok, and Ian Miles Chung
Speaker 3: led the charge in branding Tim Walls as tampon Tim
Speaker 3: in reference to a bill Walls assigned requiring menstrual products
Speaker 3: be provided in schools. Oh the horror the Babylon b
Speaker 3: wrote JD. Vance is weird, says guy who signed bill
Speaker 3: to put tampons in boys' school bathroom unquote. So similar
Speaker 3: to the horse thing. This attempt to frame Tim Walls
Speaker 3: is Weird just didn't work that the meme never caught
Speaker 3: on beyond its initial posts. I think part of the
Speaker 3: reason why the overly online right is so focused on
Speaker 3: painting Walls is Weird is not just revenge for the
Speaker 3: couch joke, but because Tim Walls is often credited with
Speaker 3: popularizing the quote Republicans are just plain weird line of attack.
Speaker 3: Something that's really caught on this past summer. Now, the
Speaker 3: oldest clip I can find if Tim Walls pause this
Speaker 3: message comes from December of twenty twenty three. I'll include
Speaker 3: that clip here.
Speaker 6: And you said, basically, there's no such thing as a
Speaker 6: generic Republican.
Speaker 2: These guys are weird.
Speaker 7: Once they start running, their weirdness shows up.
Speaker 2: What do you mean, Well, that's weird?
Speaker 4: Stand by that.
Speaker 8: Well, look just the strange things they become obsessed with
Speaker 8: demonizing our children, becoming obsessed with people's personal lives in
Speaker 8: their bedrooms, restricting freedoms.
Speaker 4: I'm surrounded by states.
Speaker 8: Who are spending their time figuring out how to ban
Speaker 8: Charlotte's Web in their schools. Why we're banishing hunger from
Speaker 8: ours with free breakfast and launch. That's what the public's
Speaker 8: looking for, That's what they're trying to get to, and
Speaker 8: they will weirdly obsess with everything to be mean and
Speaker 8: cruel and small in their ideas. And I didn't hear
Speaker 8: anything last night that did anything different to that, so
Speaker 8: I'll stand by that.
Speaker 4: I just think Americans know this is just weird stuff
Speaker 4: to be focused on now.
Speaker 3: We on nickod appen here and behind the Bastards have
Speaker 3: similarly been advocating for the type of framing for the
Speaker 3: new Right for quite a long while, Like Robert, I
Speaker 3: know you've been like really pushing for this as a
Speaker 3: tactic like for years now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, if they'd made me the vice presidential candidate
Speaker 2: three years ago, I really could have made some progress
Speaker 2: on this, but I had to see what they've got up.
Speaker 3: Like we decided on the name for Molly's new show
Speaker 3: like very early this year, Like this was way way before,
Speaker 3: like the weird attacks went viral.
Speaker 2: It's really the only name we ever considered was weird
Speaker 2: little guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because that's how we like internally refer to these freaks.
Speaker 3: Because these are all unhinged, anti social freaks, and many
Speaker 3: of them revel in being this antagonistic force. I think
Speaker 3: part of their self image is the idea that liberals
Speaker 3: find them dangerous. And the weird attack is very disempowering
Speaker 3: for these people. It reframes them from this like scary
Speaker 3: existential threat to being more akin to your just off putting,
Speaker 3: creepy uncle. Here's a clip of Wals himself kind of
Speaker 3: explaining the methodology behind this attack.
Speaker 7: You've gotten some attention this week for calling Trump advance
Speaker 7: and Republicans in general weird. And I think that you're
Speaker 7: the one that set this tone, and there's this shift
Speaker 7: the Harris campaign seems to be following your lead, echoing
Speaker 7: this language. Why do you think weird is a more
Speaker 7: effective attack line against Trump than what Democrats have been
Speaker 7: done previously, which is argue that he's an existential threat
Speaker 7: to democracy?
Speaker 8: Yeah, And it's an observation on this and you, being
Speaker 8: a school teacher, I see a lot of things.
Speaker 4: But my point on this was is people.
Speaker 8: Kept talking about, look, donald Trump is going to put
Speaker 8: women's lives at risk. That's one hundred percent true. Donald
Speaker 8: Trump is potentially going to end constitutional liberties that we have,
Speaker 8: end voting. I do believe all those things are a
Speaker 8: real possibility, but it.
Speaker 4: Gives him way too much power. Listen to the guy.
Speaker 8: He's talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and just
Speaker 8: whatever crazy thing pops into his mind, and I thought,
Speaker 8: we just give him way too much credit. I think
Speaker 8: one of the things is is when you just ratchet
Speaker 8: down some of the the scariness or whatever and just
Speaker 8: name it what it is. I got to tell you
Speaker 8: my observation on this is, have you ever seen the
Speaker 8: guy laugh? That seems very weird to me that an
Speaker 8: adult can go through six and a half years of
Speaker 8: being in the public eye. If he has left it's
Speaker 8: at someone, not with someone. That is weird behavior. And
Speaker 8: I don't think you call it anything else. It is
Speaker 8: simply what we're observing.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: An interesting side effect of the weird framing is that
Speaker 3: it's left these ultra conservatives utterly incapable of effectively combating
Speaker 3: this line of attack. They've been so used to being
Speaker 3: on the offense that they never really prepared for the
Speaker 3: position that they're now stuck in over a decade of
Speaker 3: they go low, we go high, conditioned to the rights
Speaker 3: to be completely unable to cope with being put on
Speaker 3: mimetic defense. Now, my favorite retort of the weird claim
Speaker 3: is from conservative pundent Helen Andrew, who wrote, quote, calling
Speaker 3: people weird is such feminine behavior. Text book sex difference.
Speaker 3: Men engage in open conflict, women police conformity. It's honestly
Speaker 3: disorienting to hear male politicians use the line.
Speaker 2: I love too that we're talking about how men are
Speaker 2: naturally drawn to open, honorable conflict when talking about a
Speaker 2: bunch of people who never log off, like everything you
Speaker 2: do is find the keyboard, motherfucker.
Speaker 3: It's amazing that they're combating this by saying the weirdest
Speaker 3: things imaginable.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, I think this one's only one upped by a
Speaker 3: reply to this very post by the author of the
Speaker 3: self published Kingmaker trilogy named Airy Mendelssohn Christ, who posted
Speaker 3: a meme featuring a crowd of NPC wojacks all saying
Speaker 3: the word weird, which which I find actually be a
Speaker 3: very powerful image depicting all the masses having agreed upon
Speaker 3: that Republicans are weird. But Mendelssohn wrote, quote, it's both
Speaker 3: feminine behavior and heard behavior. We all started calling them
Speaker 3: weird at once. It was obviously planned, cooked up by
Speaker 3: a sophisticated wordsmith, and then distributed by their network.
Speaker 2: Yes, only only the most sophisticated of wordsmiths knows the
Speaker 2: word weird.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 2: You've got to dig deep into the dictionary to hit
Speaker 2: that one.
Speaker 3: Truly, truly, truly, this must be the work of a
Speaker 3: sophisticated word smith. It's phenomenal.
Speaker 2: That's fucking funny.
Speaker 3: So, in trying to combat the weird accusation, the right
Speaker 3: has mostly opted for either responding with escalation, like in
Speaker 3: the case of the horse seamen meme, which only makes
Speaker 3: them seem kind of more off putting, or just going
Speaker 3: for the classic Uno reverso right, I'm not weird, you're weird.
Speaker 3: This is the ultimate sign of desperation and impending defeat.
Speaker 3: I am rubber, you are glue. Whatever you say bounces
Speaker 3: off me and sticks to you. On top of being
Speaker 3: a strategy that often signals one has already lost wing
Speaker 3: this tactic, you make the very basic error of repeating
Speaker 3: the enemy's claim against you, thus continuing to amplify and
Speaker 3: spread the original attack. Here's a clip from Trump.
Speaker 9: There's something weird with that guy. He's a weird guy.
Speaker 9: JD is not weird. He's a solid rock. I happen
Speaker 9: to be a very solid rock. We're not weird. We're
Speaker 9: other things, perhaps, but we're not weird.
Speaker 4: But he is a weird guy.
Speaker 2: He walks on the stage.
Speaker 9: There's something wrong with that guy, and he called me weird.
Speaker 9: And then the frank news media picks it up. That
Speaker 9: was the word of the day. Weird, weird, weird. They're
Speaker 9: all go now.
Speaker 3: Similarly, I found a Megan Kelly video titled Tucker Carlson
Speaker 3: explains why JD. Vance is actually normal?
Speaker 2: Great should Tucker notes the most normal man alive.
Speaker 3: And Trump supporters have brought signs to his rallies that
Speaker 3: read Donald Trump is not weird. My I Am not
Speaker 3: weird shirt. As people asking a lot of questions are
Speaker 3: already answered by my shirt. It's it's a very basic mistake. Now,
Speaker 3: there has been some pushback among certain swasp people on
Speaker 3: the left who have historically associated themselves as like societal
Speaker 3: outcasts and have found comfort in embracing words like weird
Speaker 3: and freak. And on a certain level, I understand this,
Speaker 3: but I think this point of view is making the
Speaker 3: same fundamental error as the conservative right when they try
Speaker 3: to flip around the weird accusation onto Democrats, progressives, and
Speaker 3: people on the left by primarily using homophobia and transphobia.
Speaker 3: We're using the same word to refer to two very
Speaker 3: different things. Do they call drag Queen's weird for being transgressive? Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Trump Advance and the far right are weird because they
Speaker 3: are oddly reactionary. They're trying to resurrect a long dead
Speaker 3: world by forming an authoritary movement behind a reality TV
Speaker 3: star who sounds like you're rambling conspiracy theorist uncle. It's
Speaker 3: a battle over the terrain of normalcy as a shifting category,
Speaker 3: and while I sympathize with some's hostile to the hegemony
Speaker 3: of normalcy, how I often follow outside of that category.
Speaker 3: I believe it's also paramount that we sabotage reactionary efforts
Speaker 3: to gain any territory. So that's kind of the cycle
Speaker 3: of weird And we will be back to talk about
Speaker 3: this kind of final new stage of meme politics. After
Speaker 3: this break, okay, we are once again, so back now,
Speaker 3: I believe this election will truly be characterized by the
Speaker 3: complete pliferation of meme style politics. Now, even without like
Speaker 3: the use of a meme image, I think politics, especially
Speaker 3: this year, has itself functioned and spread like a meme.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: This is something that's been happening for the past like
Speaker 3: eight years, certainly, but the way it's happened this summer
Speaker 3: I think has been slightly unique. The weird attack is,
Speaker 3: you know, the ideal example of this. But even if
Speaker 3: you just look back a few months ago, we were
Speaker 3: in a very different position. It was a very different story,
Speaker 3: and I'll let Stephen Colbert demonstrate that.
Speaker 1: So the Biden campaign wants to build on the new
Speaker 1: viral trend of handground pa the phone, because reportedly they're
Speaker 1: looking for a meme page manager. So look forward to
Speaker 1: some hot new Biden social content like Irmager, Trumper's hurtler
Speaker 1: I can't has youth votes, and of course for the
Speaker 1: very online skibbitty Biden.
Speaker 6: Gvd Biden ged git Biden.
Speaker 3: Okay, I I really want to play more of that, Cliff,
Speaker 3: but I'm afraid I already included a little too much.
Speaker 3: What a dire situation that is, that is that that
Speaker 3: is the peak of the liberals, mimetic attacks just truly episcopal.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I've become obsessed with skibbety Biden just
Speaker 3: because it demonstrates such like an inevitable like self defeat
Speaker 3: that that was like the best thing these people had,
Speaker 3: like cooking. As it's kind of obvious by the clip.
Speaker 3: This led towards the death of the Biden campaign. They
Speaker 3: really had nothing in the tank. Biden was a shambling
Speaker 3: old man. And then like two months later, Kamala kicked
Speaker 3: off her campaign by embracing the Kamala is Brat Summer,
Speaker 3: which he has to may have killed Bratt Summer, but
Speaker 3: it did help secure the vibe shift, skyrocketing her popularity.
Speaker 2: Quite frankly, I was ready for Bratt Summer to.
Speaker 3: Death, yes, sure, but I think her weaponization of that term,
Speaker 3: endorsed by Charlie XCX, I think did help skyrocket her
Speaker 3: early popularity and showed an early embrace of online culture.
Speaker 3: And I believe the Harris campaign actually owes a lot
Speaker 3: more to memes. In a ironic twist of fate, there
Speaker 3: is a compelling argument to be made that Kamala Harris's
Speaker 3: rise to the top of the presidential ticket can at
Speaker 3: least be in part tracked back to Republican attacks which
Speaker 3: spawned memes. Last year. The account RNC Research ran by
Speaker 3: the GOP posted multiple clips and edits attacking Kamala Harris
Speaker 3: for what they saw as odd phrases and awkward moments.
Speaker 3: Earlier this year, some of those videos from RNC research
Speaker 3: went viral outside of right wing Twitter, which led to
Speaker 3: an ironic or post ironic embrace of Kamala Harris among
Speaker 3: liberal and leftist posters. Now the biggest one was the
Speaker 3: Coconut Tree video, which spawned memes that started to pick
Speaker 3: up steam in January and didn't peak until July. Another
Speaker 3: one of RNZ Research's videos, a four minute compilation of
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris saying what can be unburdened by what has been,
Speaker 3: provided the inspiration for the title of a document that
Speaker 3: spread around political circles, postulating Kamala Harris as the best
Speaker 3: successor to Biden if you were to drop out of
Speaker 3: the race instead of a messy last minute primary or
Speaker 3: open convention. And I think these memes did a lot
Speaker 3: to increase Kamala's favorability in the first half of this year.
Speaker 3: Kamala prior to this was a relatively kind of disliked
Speaker 3: figure nationally. She was one of the first drop out
Speaker 3: of the twenty twenty presidential race.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she wasn't I wouldn't even say disliked as much
Speaker 2: as like not a figure like the big The number
Speaker 2: one thing people said about her is that she's been
Speaker 2: a non entity as a vice president.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And she certainly wasn't popular.
Speaker 2: Yes, definitely not popular.
Speaker 3: So although the GFP may have inadvertently helped to improve
Speaker 3: the public profile of Kamala Harris and have failed to
Speaker 3: effectively combat the weird attacks, they have not totally failed
Speaker 3: on the me medic warfare front. The past two months,
Speaker 3: the right has landed on a somewhat effective memes style
Speaker 3: politics by utilizing a combination of disinformation and AI images
Speaker 3: to create fake news stories that rile up their base
Speaker 3: on certain key issues so far, mainly trans people and immigration.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 3: A few months ago, I did an episode on how
Speaker 3: the right's been using memes to create this fake epidemic
Speaker 3: of transgender mass shooters, and then in July, a new
Speaker 3: anti trans syop went super viral. False claims that the
Speaker 3: Algerian Olympic boxer Iman Khalif is transgender or in some
Speaker 3: kind of unverified way quote unquote biologically male spread around
Speaker 3: online with the help of British newspapers and went just
Speaker 3: completely viral for a whole week, with the disinformation subsequently
Speaker 3: becoming a new story itself. This fake story caught traction
Speaker 3: after an Italian boxer quit a match forty five seconds
Speaker 3: into a fight after receiving a single hard blow to
Speaker 3: the face. Anti trans memes are a well worn part
Speaker 3: of this type of disinfo ecosystem, and there was no
Speaker 3: shortage of trans sports memes now using Khalif. I'm going
Speaker 3: to quote from Ruby Hammad in Al Jazeera quote. Khalif's
Speaker 3: subsequent match was against Hungarian Anna Hamari, who in the
Speaker 3: lead up posted and deleted an image that I believe
Speaker 3: to be among the most significant of the entire affair
Speaker 3: because of how it lays the subtext bear. In this
Speaker 3: AI generated image that Hamari sourced from Instagram, Khalif was
Speaker 3: not merely represented as a man towering over a dainty,
Speaker 3: vulnerable white woman, but was denied humanity altogether and drawn
Speaker 3: as a supernatural mythical beast unquote. Many other AI images
Speaker 3: of Khalif spread throughout this viral trend, some with just
Speaker 3: Khalif having like a stereotypical like male body that were
Speaker 3: AA generated and others with this like similar like like
Speaker 3: kind of like monster ish look. And I think beyond
Speaker 3: the actual use of these like AI memes and kind
Speaker 3: of anti trans memes using Khalif, I think the way
Speaker 3: the actual story spread was like a meme. I think
Speaker 3: that's how I was able to gain such like a
Speaker 3: viral traction in just like a few days. I think
Speaker 3: the next version of this is the eating Cat's story,
Speaker 3: which started with a post to a Springfield crime watch
Speaker 3: a Facebook group from someone who shared a fourth hand
Speaker 3: account based on a rumor from a neighbor who claims
Speaker 3: to have heard the story from a friend who heard
Speaker 3: the story from an unnamed source. Now NewsGuard attracted down
Speaker 3: the woman who told the Facebook poster about the story,
Speaker 3: and she told them quote, I'm not sure I'm the
Speaker 3: most credible source because I don't actually know the person
Speaker 3: who lost the cat. I don't have any proof.
Speaker 6: In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came
Speaker 6: in they're eating the cats, they're eating they're eating the
Speaker 6: pets of the people that live there.
Speaker 10: I just want to clarify here. You bring up Springfield, Ohio,
Speaker 10: and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there.
Speaker 10: He told us there had been no credible reports of
Speaker 10: specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by
Speaker 10: individuals within the immigrant community.
Speaker 4: All I've seen people on telligence.
Speaker 2: Let me just say, this is.
Speaker 6: The people on television saying my dog was taken and
Speaker 6: used for food.
Speaker 4: So maybe he said that, and.
Speaker 6: Maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.
Speaker 4: I'm not taking this from television.
Speaker 6: I'm telling you was eaten by the people that went there.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, the Ohio Division of Wildlife told TMZ that the
Speaker 3: main photo of an alleged Haitian immigrant carrying a debt goose,
Speaker 3: presumably on the way to eat it, was in fact
Speaker 3: a random black man removing roadkill from a street in Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 3: with no evidence to suggest he is from Haiti, he
Speaker 3: is an immigrant, or was intending to eat said goose. Still,
Speaker 3: jd Vance particularly spent a lot of work boosting this
Speaker 3: fake news story.
Speaker 2: Also, if he was what's wrong with eating a.
Speaker 3: Goose, Yes, exactly, like there's there's so many, so many
Speaker 3: problems with the Haitians are eating at pets and wildlife meme,
Speaker 3: and we don't we don't have time to like fully
Speaker 3: get into it. It's just kind of one anecdote in
Speaker 3: this kind of series of mimetic attacks. And I think
Speaker 3: one of the guys who was spearheading this was jd Vance,
Speaker 3: who spent a lot of effort trying to push the
Speaker 3: story into the national spotlight, either the day of or
Speaker 3: before the posential debate of ants tweeted quote. In the
Speaker 3: last several weeks, my office has received many inquiries from
Speaker 3: actual residents of Springfield who have said their neighbor's pets
Speaker 3: or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. It's possible,
Speaker 3: of course, that all these rumors will turn out to
Speaker 3: be false. Do you know what's confirmed that a child
Speaker 3: was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right
Speaker 3: to be here unquote, And now I think the last
Speaker 3: thing that he's referring to was an unfortunate car accident,
Speaker 3: and the Haitian man was a legal immigrant, not an
Speaker 3: illegal immigrant, and the father of the child who died
Speaker 3: has been advocating that people stop using his child's death
Speaker 3: as this like racist ammunition in this weird culture war debate.
Speaker 2: God, it's bleak.
Speaker 3: Which is really hard to see a man pleading that
Speaker 3: these like unhinged racists stop using the death of his son. Yeah,
Speaker 3: to further like they're just extreme, gross and like transparent agenda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of the more disgusting things that's happened.
Speaker 3: Part of the spread of the eating of pets story
Speaker 3: has been the use of AI images, particularly of black
Speaker 3: men kidnapping and eating pets, as well as images of
Speaker 3: Trump rescuing cats from what I would describe as a
Speaker 3: horde of immigrants, which is what I would assume the
Speaker 3: AA prompt would be. Now, these images aren't necessarily meant
Speaker 3: to like be passed off as real, but in the
Speaker 3: absence of actual evidence, they serve an important purpose of
Speaker 3: providing a visual justice stick in people's minds, And I
Speaker 3: think that that's crucially what's going on with all of
Speaker 3: these AI images, whether they be of Trump like saving
Speaker 3: cats or holding cats, or they just be like very
Speaker 3: racist depictions of like black men trying to like eat
Speaker 3: or kidnap people's pets. Earlier this year at the RNC,
Speaker 3: I know Me and Robert went to this panel produced
Speaker 3: in part by Microsoft, talking about the use of like
Speaker 3: AI images in politics and how they're advocating to like yeah,
Speaker 3: not be using ai AI depictions of candidates, which is
Speaker 3: something that Trump has consistently been doing, posting or retruthing
Speaker 3: AI videos of Kamala Harris of people like Taylor Swift
Speaker 3: endorsing him, which then led to Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala Harris,
Speaker 3: which seemingly upset Trump greatly. Now to me, if you
Speaker 3: look at the trans Olympics debacle as well as the
Speaker 3: Springfield incident, it feels like this endless series of new
Speaker 3: dis info trends is designed so that individual confrontations just
Speaker 3: don't matter that much. Like Yeah, pointing out the whole
Speaker 3: trans Olympics thing is fake just doesn't matter, because then
Speaker 3: they're going to move on to Haitian immigrants or killing
Speaker 3: people's pets. Each individual lie is so flimsy, but the
Speaker 3: constant sequence of them built a structure that has a
Speaker 3: degree of stability for conservatives, And this is a project
Speaker 3: that they've been like working towards for a long long
Speaker 3: time time. I know, Robert, we've talked about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this, I mean I saw the start of this
Speaker 2: as like a kid, right, like this is kind of
Speaker 2: what guys like Limbaugh were always doing on sort of
Speaker 2: the ground floor level, you know, you can look at.
Speaker 2: I think one of the first big like cleavage points
Speaker 2: in our realities was the whole Clinton death count thing, which,
Speaker 2: if you're unaware, is this list conservative started spreading in
Speaker 2: like nineteen ninety three or four of all of the
Speaker 2: people that Bill and Hillary had supposedly had murdered, right,
Speaker 2: and it was like guys like Vince Foster who'd killed himself,
Speaker 2: who worked for them and whatnot, Like it was all bullshit,
Speaker 2: but it was kind of the start of this. Like,
Speaker 2: when you get enough of these things, it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: that each of them take seconds to debunk. They form
Speaker 2: a sort of like like a cushion. If you exist
Speaker 2: within that reality, you can kind of slide along without
Speaker 2: touching the ground.
Speaker 3: Definitely now, Yeah, it forms like a like a mesh
Speaker 3: like net structure, yeah, where each individual piece is very weak,
Speaker 3: but together it provides an actually like pretty pretty resilient
Speaker 3: like resting place for these people's alternate version of reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, Vance is kind of somewhat admitted in some ways
Speaker 3: to having manufactured this media story.
Speaker 2: This was interesting to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'm going to put that clip here, and
Speaker 3: I'm going to include a bit of a longer clip
Speaker 3: than what's usually used in soundbites, just because during this interview,
Speaker 3: just Vance's behavior and his like pauses are very odd.
Speaker 3: So there's gonna be a few seconds of like dead space.
Speaker 3: But that is like in the actual interview.
Speaker 11: American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and
Speaker 11: I start talking about cat memes.
Speaker 4: If I have to.
Speaker 11: Create stories so that the American media actually pays attention
Speaker 11: to the suffering of the American people, then that's what
Speaker 11: I'm gonna do, Dana, because.
Speaker 2: Public policy.
Speaker 12: Sorry, you just said that you're creating the story.
Speaker 2: Is that data?
Speaker 12: Yeah, you just said that this is a story that
Speaker 12: you've created.
Speaker 2: So so then the eating dog.
Speaker 4: We we are creating, we are, Dana.
Speaker 11: It comes from first hand accounts from my constituents. I
Speaker 11: say that we're creating a story, meaning we're creating the
Speaker 11: American media focusing on it.
Speaker 3: Now Vance has subsequently you know, said that no, no, no,
Speaker 3: I'm getting this information from first hand accounts from my constituents.
Speaker 3: When I say that I'm creating stories, I'm creating a
Speaker 3: media story. But it's hard not to see this as
Speaker 3: a little bit of like a tactical slip on his part.
Speaker 3: Right now, this has all created a very odd situation
Speaker 3: for the Republican Party. As we've kind of talked about
Speaker 3: the past few months. Journalists and researcher Jared Holt wrote, quote,
Speaker 3: the Trump campaign seems to be doing the same failed
Speaker 3: dance as the Dessantus one at the moment, pander heavily
Speaker 3: to terminally online weirdos and get mad when the general
Speaker 3: public goes, uh, what the fuck? Un Yeah, and this
Speaker 3: is the thing when you have someone on stage talking
Speaker 3: about eating pets, that is a turnoff for many normal
Speaker 3: people because they immediately clock this as being probably complete bullshit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And we're in a very interesting moment in the Republican Party.
Speaker 3: Considering the right wings electoral losses in twenty eighteen, twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: and twenty twenty two, and possibly going into twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: this kind of weird culture war grievance, anti wilk strategy
Speaker 3: just might not be electorally viable. When matched against a
Speaker 3: more normal alternative, and I think making matters worse. The
Speaker 3: Trump team and the Republican National Committee have spent the
Speaker 3: past four years handing over a lot of their comms
Speaker 3: and outreach to just certifiable freaks like Laura Lumer, Ian
Speaker 3: Miles Chung and limbs of TikTok, people who are very
Speaker 3: disconnected from what regular people care about, people that are
Speaker 3: only liked by other really online freaks, and.
Speaker 2: People who have no crossover appeal.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Joe Rogan is such a powerful card in their hand
Speaker 2: because he has a lot of like normal dude appeal, right,
Speaker 2: and so when he starts parroting a talking point, he
Speaker 2: can actually push it to people. Laura Lumer does not write,
Speaker 2: like like, if you show a normal person Laura Lumer,
Speaker 2: they're like, what the fuck is wrong with that lady's face?
Speaker 3: And they're a very double edged sword because although they
Speaker 3: are very off putting and that in some ways can
Speaker 3: like damaged, can damage Trump, they also carry a degree
Speaker 3: of like very real harm.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Whenever all these people hop onto a trend, a very
Speaker 3: consistent thing that has followed is bomb threats being called
Speaker 3: into whatever their target is. I love doing that, whether
Speaker 3: that be hospitals providing trans healthcare, abortion clinics, or in
Speaker 3: this case, just schools in Springfield, Ohio, which have now
Speaker 3: received multiple bomb threats. And again, like it is a
Speaker 3: very double edged sword because obviously that's like very real
Speaker 3: harm being done, and you could argue that, you know,
Speaker 3: that makes the situation worse for the Trump campaign, the
Speaker 3: fact that they're attacks that spreading are resulting in like
Speaker 3: bomb threats being called into schools, but it also creates
Speaker 3: a degree of actual harm for like kids and many
Speaker 3: of the legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield that are now
Speaker 3: seeing a very unprecedented as of recent wave of like
Speaker 3: extremely racist attacks. There's a good article by Jared Holt
Speaker 3: in MSNBC that kind of goes into this topic specifically
Speaker 3: that I'll link in the sources below. So yeah, that
Speaker 3: kind of rounds up my update on the current state
Speaker 3: of meme politics, all of its various forms that's taken
Speaker 3: these past few months, from couch fucking jokes to bomb
Speaker 3: threats in Springfield, and it's a very dominant form. Like
Speaker 3: I don't remember memes being this front and center at
Speaker 3: least in the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean they twenty sixteen. They kind of were,
Speaker 2: but it was it was like a much rougher and
Speaker 2: ruder attempt this. There's like so much more buy in
Speaker 2: by like large organism stations.
Speaker 3: And Democrats have finally jumped on board to this.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3: They have long rejected this line of attack as an
Speaker 3: illegitimate form of politics, and they are not taking that
Speaker 3: stance anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they picked the gun up off the table, fucking finally.
Speaker 3: Well, that at least doesn't for me. Yeah, you're at
Speaker 3: It could happen here. I will leave us with one
Speaker 3: closing soundbit from JD.
Speaker 12: Vans something that Governor Walls has called you and Donald Trump,
Speaker 12: and that is weird. Sure, and it has taken off
Speaker 12: the New York Times reports. Then when Donald Trump was
Speaker 12: asked about it, he said, not me, They're talking about JD.
Speaker 11: Well, certainly they've levied that charge against me more than
Speaker 11: anybody else.
Speaker 2: It could happen.
Speaker 3: Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 2: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple podcasts.
Speaker 3: Whatever you listen to podcasts, you can now find sources
Speaker 3: for it. Could happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening,