It Could Happen Here - The Current State of Meme Politics

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Garrison and Robert discuss how memes are being used in the 2024 election, from couch sex to racist bomb threats.  Sources:https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jd-vance-couch-sex-rumor-explained-1235068142/https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jd-vance-couch-cushions/https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/jd-vance-couch-cushion-story-hoaxhttps://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tim-walz-horse-semen-story-hoax/https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tampon-timhttps://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fell-out-of-a-coconut-tree#fn1https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/what-can-be-unburdened-by-what-has-beenhttps://x.com/herandrews/status/1817979762570375597https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1834790387883413592https://x.com/Esqueer_/status/1835321899116577206https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/19/day-by-day-how-jd-vance-tweeted-misinformation-about-springfield/https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/08/09/what-to-know-about-olympics-gender-debate-as-imane-khelif-faces-off-in-womens-boxing-final/https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/8/7/imane-khelif-and-western-delusions-of-white-innocencehttps://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/origins-haitians-eating-pets-claimhttps://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-vance-springfield-ohio-haiti-cats-rcna170934See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into Tex Elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley valley into a playground for billionaires from the chaotic world of generative ai to the destruction of google search better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose listen to better offline on the iheart radio app apple podcasts wherever else you get your podcasts from iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast that is recorded when I'm very tired. But you know who's not tired? Garrison Davis, our host for today. No, I'm probably more tired than you. I was up till...

Oh, I don't know about that. No, I was up till 9 a.m. EST writing this. Oh, geez. I went to bed by like five or six. I slept for three hours. I'm going right back to bed after this. Excellent. As is the grind, you know, rising grind.

Yeah. That's my motto. Yeah, I'm going to do the same thing. So, All right. Well, Garrison, what are we talking about today? What's our episode about? What's this sewed on? So it's been a while since we've done an update on what meme politics are up to.

I think that the last deep dive we did was like, I want to say like a year ago, when Ron De desantis then presidential hopeful meatball ron garrison meatball me sorry sorry my apologies putting ron just embraced the fast wave like a meme aesthetic for his then failing and dying campaign and that was kind of the last that we we did one of these big deep dives into like how meme politics currently operate. And it's been a long year. It's felt in some ways much longer than a year since then. And the meme landscape has changed significantly.

And that's kind of what I want to discuss today. Just go over the current state of meme politics in September of 2022. Great. It's like the state of the union but slightly dumber but for us yeah just for all for the the completely brain rot yeah the space of online politics people who have destroyed their minds by spending too much time on the internet yes exactly so now that most of these like jokes and references we'll be talking about are actually really old and not actually relevant anymore and are no longer trending. Now we can talk about how they worked, if they worked, and what they can tell us about

the changing landscape of meme politics in the year of our Lord 2024 and beyond. So let's start by going all the way back to Julyuly 15th which was just a lifetime ago yeah that was a thousand years ago yeah this was this was the first day of the rnc vance is announced as trump's running mate this was before biden dropped out of the race but when we were pretty sure that that he was probably going to hopefully that's interesting that you were pretty sure because i i i kind of thought he was going to like make us like fucking hoist his corpse back into the white house i mean we got a really good indication about five days later that his dropout was like imminent yeah yeah you're right and it happened it happened less than a week later so it was it was really

on the line but anyway it was it was a it was a very different world very different time meanwhile on the first day of the rnc after vance is announced as the republican vp candidate the twitter user rick runes calves posted this tweet quote i can't say for sure but he might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a new york times bestseller to an inside-out latex glove shoved in between two couch cushions. Vance Hillbilly Elegy, pages 179 to 181. So, this is the start of the couch meme. Sure. The next few days, the meme spread online with the help of liberals

who were unable to detect the fictitious nature of the claim. Now, unironic spread is crucial to the success of memetic attacks like this. And the couch fucking claims gained such widespread prominence on Twitter that on July 25th, the AP decided to do an official fact check of the claim, running the headline, no, JD Vans did not have sex with a couch now this had two problems by platforming this story in the ap the image of jd's couch coitus was propelled outside the confines of overly online twitter shit posters into the popular discourse now the topic was welcome on news shows talk shows and other respectable publications the other problem is that you can't definitively say jd vance has never had sex with

a couch no no i swear i would never say that you can say it's untrue he wrote about sofa sex in his memoir right but not that he's 100 never made love to a love seat yeah so making matters worse hours later the ap removed their fact check, leaving a webpage that just read, quote, this story did not go through our standard editing processes and has been removed. I gotta know. I do desperately want to know what actually happened in the background there. It's quite funny. It's quite a big fuck up now this led people to reasonably conclude that if the fact check was taken down that really only leads us to believe one thing

is that this is a true claim which at this point many people knew that it's not i think interestingly jd vance has refused to comment on this claim, which is probably smart, but his continued refusal to even deny the claim adds a bit to the humorous nature. So, the retraction of this fact check became a news story itself and gave a whole new life to a meme that had kind of been reaching the end of its cycle. of its cycle. The people created doctored pages of Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy, where he reflected on tales of his youth in Ohio, where it was commonplace for young boys rejected by girls to turn to couch cushions for sexual pleasure. The fake pages were framed as a limited first edition of the book before Pierre Thiel found it and revised the book for a secondary, wide-released copy. The next week, the meme continued to proliferate, having completely broken out of the Twitter shitposting bubble it was birthed in.

But the peak of the meme was still to come. On August 6th, Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, and the two appeared together at a rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During Walz's first speech, he made a very safe kind of dad joke style reference to his vice presidential opponent's viral sticky sofa situation. Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, J.D. studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community. Come on!

That's not what middle America is. And I got to tell you, I can't wait to debate the guy. That is if he's willing to get off the couch and show up. So, you see what I did there? you see what i did there so due to the references kind of like explicit sexual context this was this was a bit of an unexpected move yeah you could say that but for those already familiar with the meme the bit served as a humorous yet tame in joke and for those unfamiliar the huge crowd reaction prompted others to inquire about the context for the whole jd vance couch thing once again boosting its popularity as a trend now i think this was a bit of a gamble from walls definitely as acknowledging a viral meme often leads to its impending death where recognition and participation of viral trends from the mainstream establishment

signal that something is no longer cool and is now instead cringe. Now, part of the long-lasting presence of the coconut tree meme is the Harris campaign's wise unwillingness to make continuing coconut tree references or capitalize on its imagery. The White House going all in on Dark Brandon

using the imagery for merch and Biden increasingly making references to the meme in interviews and speeches. Oh, just killed a dead, nuked it. Exactly. Ultimately led to this meme's death long before the death of the Biden campaign itself. But this could be like a delicate balance. Before Biden made a dark Brandon, one of the early core aesthetic images associated with his 2024 reelection campaign, the first few dark Brandon references from the White House actually increased the memes spread. And I think this is where Walls' joke was able to succeed. The couch reference was

vague enough and disconnected from the more explicit aspects of the meme and paired with Walls' goofy facial expressions and his kind of dad joke refrain of, see what I did there, it made what could have been a cringe and or crude moment into a charismatic and endearing one. I think the other thing that makes me lean towards Walls' invocation of the couch helping more than hurting is that the meme had already begun to be legitimized by the establishment when it's the subject of an article in every major publication and steven colbert is making couch jokes on tv then it is already broken containment and hit the mainstream yeah i would also add i think there's a degree to which like the the dark brandon stuff was cringy so fast because it was very clearly the biden campaign

jumping onto a meme that biden himself certainly didn't understand absolutely not whereas i think walls got a little bit of the kind of energy trump used to get in part because it was it was like such a i can't believe this is happening in American politics. The VP candidate for the Dems just accused the Republican VP candidate of having sex with the couch. Like it was such a wow. This is like the breaking of a seal kind of moment, which normally the Republicans have kind of had to themselves. These like, yes, line crossing moments. And I think that does get attention and energy to you. It was it was interesting to see them do it and have it

actually work yeah well we'll talk about that a little bit later how how this sort of tactic has been almost entirely monopolized by the right to the past decade and and just now we're starting to see some of that change i think tim wall's making a single couched reference i believe did very little to hurt the inevitable trajectory of the J.D. Vance couch meme. In the days after the speech, searches for J.D. Vance couch reached an all-time high, and as is the nature for Peaks, was followed by a gradual fall off during the month of August. But crucially, the spirit of the meme never really fully went away. I think one aspect that separates the couch meme from

dark Brandon and even coconut tree to some degree is that it's not based on trying to prop up a political figure like positively, but is instead attacking a widely disliked figure with slanderous disinformation. And though the couch meme is well past its peak, there's been no shortage of ways to make fun of JD Vance. the overall momentum against him specifically has continued on utilizing memes with a true untrue and semi-true basis whether that be his inability to order donuts or his legitimately possible interest in dolphin sex as evidenced by his twitter searches uh do you know who also likes dolphin sex ro Robert? I mean, I could be convinced, but I guess let's check out these ads anyway.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run

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from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each Thank you. for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast,

and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google Search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are so back. So the right did not take kindly to Wells' acknowledgement of the whole sofa spectacle they were so pissed they were really pissed and it's funny it's like as if their main guy has not spent the last 10 years making up wild and spewing all sorts of like offensive lies about his opponents yeah yeah that's why they're pissed yeah we're supposed to be the ones doing this so in response the online rights finest

posters cooked up a memetic counter-attack against tim walls and what they decided on is that tim walls once had to get his stomach pumped from drinking a gallon of horse semen with with this meme originating from a fake screenshot of an AP fact check posted by the Twitter account National Conservatism. See, I'm sure you're going to get into it, but there's so many reasons why this was always destined not to work. Yeah, absolutely. Almost immediately, this was seen as like a massive misfire.

Yeah, yeah. It made it immediately clear. Oh, you guys don't understand why what you used to do like what you were doing was working yeah like you never actually understood the principles behind what you were playing around with and i think crucially most of the attacks from these like weird online figures never actually caught that much traction the only ones that succeeded were ones that were just parroting stuff that trump was talking about because i think trump actually understands this line of attack much better than most of these right-wing posters do. But yeah, it was very clear that this was a failure.

Some of the first horse semen posts got immediately ratioed by replies and quote tweets, deeming the meme a manufactured and desperate attempt to respond to the natural growth of the couch hoax from a random Twitter shitpost to the natural growth of the couch hoax from a random twitter shit post to the democratic vice presidential candidates opening speech with a guy like walls you don't go with horse come you do something like you you start spreading a rumor that like he uh cooked a bunch of well-done t-bone steaks at a barbecue or something like that totally like something that really hits to the center of his dad core thing it has to it has to line up with his vibe right right right and his vibe is like you know that nice midwestern dad who's a dog shit cook right like yeah which is

something that waltz has actually been able to like utilize himself with his like white guy tacos and stuff right like right right exactly he's leaned into it very smartly he leaned into it and then it becomes a strength that then the right also gets upset about accusing him of quote-unquote anti-white racism that was quite a moment for american political history the other thing with like this horse semen thing is like you simply just can't force these things to happen like a crucial part of the success of a political meme like this is that it must have a degree of unironic spread by people who genuinely believe it to be true now the horse semen meme was also intended to counter the republicans are weird talking point that picked up steam this summer and for some reason they chose to go about

this by making an escalatory and just grossly bizarre claim about Tim Wall's guzzling animal semen. Masterful gambit, sir. Not a weird thing to say at all. No. In doing this, the right displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of why the J.D. Vance couch story was successful. was successful. The reason why it caught on, despite the easily verifiable fact that J.D. Vance did not write about pleasuring himself with a couch as a teenager, is that J.D. Vance seems like the kind of guy to have used a couch to masturbate as a teenager in rural Ohio. Yeah, you know that adolescence was awkward as shit.

Absolutely. Like, it wasn't successful just because it was like a weird sex story. It evoked a genuine feeling of something a sort of like white trash young guy might do on the other hand swallowing a gallon of horse semen is such an outlandish jump into fantasy by comparison yeah nobody has done that right well well tim walls is no mr hands the vibes simply do not match and and to be to be clear gare said mr hands wasn't swallowing it that was part of the problem that is true um and like meanwhile vance has the exact vibe of like a gross little teen gremlin who fucked it inside out rubber gloves shoved between two couch cushions so the horse even meme failed to reach outside the confines of the niche right wing twitter

but conservatives had another meme up their sleeve. Chronically online far-right influencers, Cat Turd, Chaya Raichek, aka Libs of TikTok, and Ian Miles Chung, led the charge in branding Tim Walls as Tampon Tim in reference to a bill Walls signed requiring menstrual products be provided in schools. Oh, the horror.

The Babylon Bee wrote, JD Vance is weird, says guy who signed bill to put tampons in boys' school bathroom, unquote. So similar to the horse thing, this attempt to frame Tim Walls as weird just didn't work. The meme never caught on beyond its initial posts. I think part of the reason why the overly online right is so focused on painting Walls as weird is not just revenge for the couch joke, but because Tim Walls is often credited with popularizing the, quote, Republicans are just plain weird line of attack, something that's really caught on this past summer. Now, the oldest clip I can find of Tim Walls positing this message comes from December of 2023. I'll include that clip here.

And you said, basically, there's no such thing become obsessed with, demonizing our children, becoming obsessed with people's personal lives in their bedrooms, restricting freedoms. I'm surrounded by states who are spending their time figuring out how to ban Charlotte's Web in their schools while we're banishing hunger from ours with free breakfast and lunch. That's what the public's looking for. That's what they're trying to get to. And they will weirdly obsess with everything to be mean and cruel and small in their ideas. And I didn't hear anything last night that did anything different to that. So I'll stand by that. I just think Americans know this is just

weird stuff to be focused on. Now, we on It Could Happen Here and Behind the Bastards have similarly been advocating for this type of framing for the new right for quite a long while. Robert, I know you've been really pushing for this as a tactic for years now. Yeah, yeah. If they'd made me the vice presidential candidate three years ago, I really could have made some progress on

this, but I'm glad to see they've caught up. We decided on the name for Molly's new show very early this year like this was way way before like the weird attacks went viral it's really the only name we ever considered was weird little guys yeah because that that's how we like internally refer to these freaks because these are all unhinged anti-social freaks and many of them revel in being this antagonistic force. I think part of their self-image is the idea that liberals find them dangerous. And the weird attack is very disempowering for these people.

It reframes them from this like scary existential threat to being more akin to your just off-putting creepy uncle. Here's a clip of Wallace himself kind of explaining the methodology behind this attack. You've gotten some attention this week for calling Trump and Vance and Republicans in general weird. And I think that you're the one that set this tone. And there's this shift. The Harris campaign seems to be following your lead, echoing this language. Why do you think weird is a more effective attack line against Trump than what Democrats have been done previously, which is argue that he's he's an existential threat to democracy? Yeah, and it's an observation on this. And, you know, being a school teacher, I see a lot of

things. But my my point on this was is people kept talking about, look, Donald Trump is going to put women's lives at risk. That's 100 percent true. Donald Trump is potentially going to end constitutional liberties that we have in voting. I do believe all those things are a real possibility, but it gives him way too much power. Listen to the guy. He's talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind. And I thought we just give him way too much credit. And I think one of the things is, is when you just ratchet down some of the, you know, the scariness or whatever, and just name it what it is. I got to tell you, my observation on this is, have you ever seen the guy laugh? That seems very weird to me that an adult can go through six and a half years of

being in the public eye. If he has laughed, it's at someone, not with someone. That is weird behavior. And I don't think you call it anything else. It is simply what we're observing. Now, an interesting side effect of the weird framing is that it's left these ultra conservatives utterly incapable of effectively combating this line of attack. They've been so used to being on the offense that they never really prepared for the position that they're now stuck in. Over a decade of they go low, we go high, conditioned the right to be completely unable to cope with being put on memetic defense. Now, my favorite retort of the weird claim is from conservative pundit Helen Andrew, who wrote, quote,

calling people weird is such feminine behavior. Textbook sex difference. Men engage in open conflict. Women police conformity. It's honestly disorienting to hear male politicians use the line. I love, too, that we're talking about how men are naturally drawn to open, honorable conflict. We're talking about a bunch of people who never log off. Like, everything you do is behind the

keyboard motherfucker it's amazing that they're they're combating this by saying the weirdest things imaginable yeah now i think this one's only one upped by a reply to this very post by the author of the self-published kingmaker trilogy named airy mendelsohn christ who posted a meme featuring a crowd of npc wojaks all saying the word weird which which i find to actually be a very powerful image depicting all the masses having agreed upon that republicans are weird but mendelsohn wrote quote it's both feminine behavior and herd behavior they all started calling them weird at once it was obviously planned cooked up by a sophisticated wordsmith and then distributed by their network yes only only the most sophisticated of wordsmiths knows the word weird it's amazing you've got to dig

deep into the dictionary to hit that one truly truly truly this must be the work of a sophisticated word smith it's it's it's it's phenomenal that's fucking funny so in trying to combat the weird accusation the right has mostly opted for either responding with escalation like in the case of the horse semen meme which only makes them seem kind of more off-putting, or just going for the classic uno reverso, right? I'm not weird, you're weird. This is the ultimate sign of desperation and impending defeat. I am rubber, you are glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you. On top of being a strategy that often signals one has already lost, by employing this tactic, you make the very basic error of repeating the enemy's claim against you, thus continuing to amplify and spread the original

attack. Here's a clip from Trump. There's something weird with that guy. He's a weird guy. JD is not weird. He's a solid rock. I happen to be a very solid rock. We're not weird. We're other things, perhaps, but we're not weird. But he is a weird guy. He walks on the stage. There's something wrong with that guy. And he called me weird. And then the fake news media picks it up. That was the word of the day. Weird, weird, weird. They're all gone. Now, similarly, I found a Megyn Kelly video titled Tucker Carlson explains why J.D. Vance is actually normal. Great. I'm sure Tucker knows. The most normal man alive. And Trump supporters have brought signs to his rallies that read Donald Trump is not weird.

My I am not weird shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt. It's a very basic mistake. Now, there has been some pushback among certain swaths of people on the left who have historically associated themselves as like societal outcasts and have found comfort in embracing words like weird and freak. And on a certain level, I understand this, but I think this point of view is making the same fundamental error as the conservative right when they try to flip around the weird accusation onto democrats progressives and people on the left by primarily using homophobia and transphobia we're using the same word to refer to two very different things they call drag queens weird for being transgressive meanwhile trump v, and the far right are weird because

they're oddly reactionary. They're trying to resurrect a long dead world by forming an authoritarian movement behind a reality TV star who sounds like your rambling conspiracy theorist uncle. It's a battle over the terrain of normalcy as a shifting category. And while I sympathize with some's hostility to the hegemony of normalcy, how I often fall outside that category, I believe it's also paramount that we sabotage reactionary efforts to gain any territory. So that's kind of the cycle of weird. And we will be back to talk about this kind of final new stage of meme politics after this break. the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests

and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know,

follow and admire, join me every week for post run high. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy and very fun. Listen to post run high on the I heart radio Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again. The podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters. This is the podcast for you.

We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season wherever you get your podcasts. unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists

in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

everywhere. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year,

you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15 percent I'm not saying you're gonna get 15 percent every single year but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight that is actually a true raise listen to this week's episode of let's talk offline on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we are once again so back. Now, I believe this election will truly be characterized by the complete proliferation of meme-style politics. Now, even without the use of a meme image, I think politics, especially this year, has itself functioned and spread

like a meme. Now, this is something that's been happening for the past like eight years, certainly. But the way it's happened this summer, I think, has been slightly unique. The weird attack is, you know, the ideal example of this. But even if you just look back a few months ago, we were in a very different position. It was a very different story. And I'll let Stephen Colbert demonstrate that. So the Biden campaign wants to build on the new viral trend of hand grandpa the phone because reportedly they're looking for a meme page manager. So look forward to some hot new Biden social content like Irmgard Trumpers Hkler i can has youth vote and of course for the very

online skibbity biden okay i i really want to play more of that cliff, but I'm afraid I already included a little too much. What a dire situation that is. That is the peak of the liberals' memetic attacks. Just truly abysmal. Oh my God. I've become obsessed with Skibbity Biden just because it demonstrates such like an inevitable,

like self-defeat that that was like the best thing these people had like cooking as it's kind of obvious by the clip. This led towards the death of the Biden campaign. They really had nothing in the tank. Biden was a shambling old man. And then like two months later, Kamala kicked off her campaign by embracing the kamala is brat summer which yes may have killed brat summer but it did help secure the vibe shift skyrocketing her popularity quite frankly i was ready for brat summer to die yes sure and uh but i think her

weaponization of that term uh endorsed by charlie xdx, I think did help skyrocket her early popularity and showed an early embrace of online culture. And I believe the Harris campaign actually owes a lot more to memes. In a ironic twist of fate, there is a compelling argument to be made that Kamala Harris's rise to the top of the presidential ticket can at least be, in part, tracked back to Republican attacks which spawned memes. Last year, the account RNC Research, ran by the GOP, posted multiple clips and edits attacking Kamala Harris for what they saw as odd phrases and awkward moments. Earlier this year, some of those videos from RNC research went viral outside of right-wing Twitter, which led to an ironic or post-ironic embrace of Kamala Harris among liberal and leftist posters.

Now, the biggest one was the coconut tree video, which spawned memes that started to pick up steam in January and didn't peak until July. Another one of RNC researchers' videos, a four-minute compilation of kamala harris saying what can be unburdened by what has been provided the inspiration for the title of a document that spread around political circles postulating kamala harris as the best successor to biden if you were to drop out of the race instead of a messy last minute primary or an open convention and i think these memes did a lot to increase Kamala's favorability in the first half of this year.

Kamala, prior to this, was a relatively kind of disliked figure nationally. She was one of the first to drop out of the 2020 presidential race. Yeah, she wasn't, I wouldn't even say disliked as much as like not a figure.

Like the number one thing people said about her is that like she's been a non-entity as a vice president. Yeah, yeah. And she certainly wasn't popular. Yes, definitely not popular. So although the GOP may have inadvertently helped to improve the public profile of Kamala Harris and have failed to effectively combat the weird attacks, they have not totally failed on the memetic warfare front. The past two months,

the right has landed on a somewhat effective meme-style politics by utilizing a combination of disinformation and AI images to create fake news stories that rile up their base on certain key issues. So far, mainly trans people and immigration. Now, a few months ago, I did an episode on how the right's been using memes to create this fake epidemic of transgender mass shooters. And then in July, a new anti-trans psyop went super viral. False claims that the Algerian Olympic boxer, Iman Khalif, is transgender or in some kind of unverified way, quote unquote, biologically male, spread around online with the help of British newspapers and went just completely viral for a whole week, with the disinformation subsequently becoming a news story itself. This fake story caught traction after an Italian boxer quit a match 45 seconds

into a fight after receiving a single hard blow to the face. Anti-trans memes are a well-worn part of this type of disinfo ecosystem, and there was no shortage of trans sports memes now using Khalif. I'm going to quote from Ruby Hamad in Al Jazeera, quote, Khalif's subsequent match was against Hungarian Anna Hamari, who in the lead-up posted and deleted an image that I believe to be among the most significant of the entire affair because of how it lays the subtext bare. In this AI-generated image that Hamari sourced from Instagram, Khalif was not merely represented as a man towering over a dainty, vulnerable white woman, but was denied humanity altogether and drawn as a supernatural mythical beast.

Unquote. Many other AI images of Kalief spread throughout this viral trend, some with just Kalief having like a stereotypical like male body that were AI generated and others with this like similar, like kind of like monster-ish look. And I think beyond the actual use of these like AI memes

and kind of anti-trans memes using Kalief, I think the way the actual story spread was like a meme i think that's how i was able to gain such like a viral traction in just like a few days i think the next version of this is the eating cats story which started with a post to a springfield crime watch facebook group from someone who shared a fourth-hand account based on a rumor from a neighbor who claims to have heard the story from a friend who heard the story from an unnamed source. Now, NewsGuard tracked down the woman who told the Facebook poster about the story, and she told them, quote, I'm not sure I'm the most credible source because I don't

actually know the person who lost the cat. I don't have any proof, unquote. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there. I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio, and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community. Well, I've seen people on television. Let me just say here, this is the people on television say my dog was taken and used for food. So maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.

I'm not taking this from television. I'm taking it from the city manager. The dog was eaten by the people that went there. Meanwhile, the Ohio Division of Wildlife told TMZ that the main photo of an alleged Haitian immigrant carrying a dead goose, presumably on the way to eat it, was in fact a random black man removing roadkill from a street in Columbus, Ohio, with no evidence to suggest he is from Haiti, he is an immigrant, or was intending to eat said goose. Still, J.D. Vance particularly spent a lot of work boosting this fake news story. Also, if he was, what's wrong with eating a goose? Yes, exactly. Like there's so many problems

with the Haitians are eating pets and wildlife meme. And we don't have time to fully get into it. It's just kind of one anecdote in this kind of series of memetic attacks. And I think one of the guys who was spearheading this was J.D. Vance, who spent a lot of effort trying to push the story into the national spotlight. Either the day of or before the presidential debate, Vance tweeted, quote, in the tweeted, quote, in the last several weeks, my office has received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who have said their neighbor's pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants.

It's possible, of course, that all these rumors will turn out to be false. Do you know what's confirmed? That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be false do you know what's confirmed that a child was murdered by a haitian migrant who had no right to be here unquote and now i think the last thing that he's referring to was an unfortunate car accident and the haitian man was a legal immigrant not an illegal immigrant and the father of the child who died has been advocating that people stop using his child's death as this like racist ammunition in this weird culture war debate god it's bleak which is really hard to see a man pleading that these like unhinged racists stop using the death of his son yeah to further like they're just extremely gross and like transparent agenda, it's one of the more disgusting things

that's happened. Part of the spread of the eating a pet story has been the use of AI images, particularly of black men kidnapping and eating pets, as well as images of Trump rescuing cats from what I would describe as a horde of immigrants, which is what I would assume the prompt would be now these images aren't necessarily meant to like be passed off as real but in the absence of actual evidence they serve an important purpose of providing a visual justice to people's minds and i think that that's crucially what's going on with all of these ai images whether they be of of trump like saving cats or holding cats,

or they just be like very racist depictions of like black men trying to like eat or kidnap people's pets. Earlier this year at the RNC, I know me and Robert went to this panel produced in part by Microsoft talking about the use of like AI images in politics and how they're advocating to like not be using AI depictions of candidates, which is something that Trump has consistently been doing, posting or retracing AI videos of Kamala Harris, of people like Taylor Swift endorsing him, which then led to Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala Harris, which seemingly upset Trump greatly. Now, to me, if you look at the trans Olympics debacle,

as well as the Springfield incident, it feels like this like endless series of new disinfo trends is designed so that individual confrontations just don't matter that much. Like pointing out the whole trans Olympics thing is fake, just doesn't matter because then they're going to move on to Haitian immigrants are killing people's pets. Each individual lie is so flimsy, but the constant sequence of them builds a structure that has a degree of stability for conservatives. And this is a project that they've been working towards for a long, long time. I know, Robert, we've talked about this. Yeah, this this i mean i i saw the start of this as as like a kid right like this is kind of what what guys like limbaugh were always doing on sort of the ground floor level you know you could you could look at i think one of the first big like

cleavage points in our realities was the the whole clinton death count thing which if you're unaware is this list conservatives started spreading in like 1993 or four of all of the people that Bill and Hillary had supposedly had murdered, right? And it was like guys like Vince Foster who'd killed himself, who worked for them and whatnot.

Like it was all bullshit, but it was kind of the start of this, like when you get enough of these things, it doesn't matter that each of them takes seconds to debunk they form a sort of like like a cushion if you exist within that reality you can kind of slide along without touching the ground definitely now yeah it forms like a like a mesh like net structure yeah that where each individual piece is very weak, but together it provides an actually like pretty,

pretty resilient, like resting place for these people's alternate version of reality. Yeah. Now Vance is kind of somewhat admitted in some ways to having manufactured this media story. This was interesting to me. Yeah. And I'm going to put that clip here uh and i'm gonna include a bit of a

longer clip than what's usually used in soundbites just because uh during this interview just vance's behavior and his like pauses are very odd so there's gonna be a few seconds like dead space but that is like in the actual interview american media totally ignored this stuff until donald trump and i started talking about cat memes if i have. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do, Dana. You just said that you're creating a story. We ought to be talking about public policy. Sir, you just said that you're creating the story. What's that, Dana?

You just said that this is a story that you created so so then the eating dogs we are we are creating we are dana it comes from firsthand accounts from my constituents i say that we're creating a story meaning we're creating the american media focusing on it now vance has subsequently you know said no, no, no, I'm getting this information from firsthand accounts from my constituents. When I say that I'm creating stories, I'm creating a media story. But it's hard not to see this as a little bit of like a tactical slip on his part. Right. Now, this has all created a very odd situation for the Republican Party. As we've kind of talked about the past few months,

journalist and researcher Jared Holt wrote, quote, the Trump campaign seems to be doing the same failed dance as the DeSantis one at the moment. Pander heavily to terminally online weirdos and get mad when the general public goes, uh, what the fuck? Unquote. Yeah. And this is the thing. When you have someone on stage talking about eating pets,

that is a turnoff for many normal people because they immediately clock this as being probably complete bullshit. And we're in a very interesting moment in the Republican Party, considering the right wing's electoral losses in 2018, 2020, and 2022, and possibly going into 2024. This kind of weird culture war grievance, anti-woke strategy just might not be electorally viable when matched against a more normal alternative. And I think making matters worse,

the Trump team and the Republican National Committee have spent the past four years handing over a lot of their comms and outreach to just certifiable freaks like Laura Loomer, Ian Miles Chung, and Libs of TikTok.

People who are very disconnected from what regular people care about. People that are only liked by other really online freaks. And people who have no crossover appeal, right? Joe Rogan is such a powerful card in their hand because he has a lot of like normal dude appeal, right? And so when he starts parodying a talking point he can actually push it to people laura loomer does not right like like if you if you show a normal person

laura loomer they're like what the fuck is wrong with that lady's face and they're a very double edged sword because although they are very off-putting and that in some ways can like damage can damage Trump, they also carry a degree of very real harm. Oh, yeah. Whenever all these people hop onto a trend, a very consistent thing that has followed is bomb threats being called into whatever their target is.

They love doing that. Whether that be hospitals providing trans healthcare, abortion clinics, or in this case, just schools in springfield ohio which have now received multiple bomb threats and again like it is a very double-edged sword because obviously that's like very real harm being done and you could argue that you know that makes the situation worse for the trump campaign that the fact that their attacks that they're spreading are resulting in like bomb threats being called into schools but it also creates a degree of actual harm for like kids and many of the legal Haitian

immigrants in Springfield that are now seeing a very like unprecedented as of recent wave of like extremely racist attacks. There's a good article by Jared Holt in MSNBC that kind of goes into this topic specifically that I'll link in the sources below. So yeah, that kind of rounds up my update on the current state of meme politics. All of its various forms it's taken these past few months, from couch fucking jokes to bomb threats in Springfield. And it's a very dominant form. Like, I don't remember memes being this front and center at

least in the 2020 election yeah no i mean they in 2016 they kind of were um but it was it was like a much rougher and ruder attempt this there's like so much more buy-in by like large organizations and democrats have like finally jumped on board to this yes yes absolutely like they they have long rejected this line of attack as an illegitimate form of politics and they are not taking that stance anymore yeah they they picked the gun up off the table fucking finally well uh that that at least does it for me yeah here at it could happen here i will leave us with with one closing sound bit from J.D. Vance. Something that Governor Walz has called you and Donald Trump, and that is weird.

Sure. And it is taken off. The New York Times reports that when Donald Trump was asked about it, he said, not me. They're talking about J.D. Well, certainly they've levied that charge against me more than anybody else it could happen here is a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts you can can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance

to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German,

where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week we get deep and raw life stories,

combos on the issues that matter to us. And it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia. And that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into Tex Elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

wherever else you get your podcasts from. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast you get your for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.