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I’m not sure how many times by now that I’ve written about our boy J. Divans, I mean JD Vance, and his big love for all things furniture, but couch-fuckery is the gift that keeps on giving.
(“Allegedly!” — my lawyers.)
So today I’m writing this to correct a really interesting misconception that certain people seem to be having this week, which is that saying “JD Vance loves to make sweet love to sexy futons down by the fire” is “disinformation.”
Which — come the fuck on. People who have never uttered that word before even once are now calling couch-fuckery “disinformation” with their whole chests?? That isn’t how this works! This isn’t how any of this works, you assholes, you ding-dongs, you utter potatoes (derogatory)!
Here’s how disinformation and propaganda actually work. Listen up potatoes, because this is important. I’m also going to tell you how that cycle can be interrupted.
First of all: Disinformation has a specific meaning, which you’ll miss if it’s used interchangeably with misinformation. Misinformation is just bad or wrong information, right? It can sometimes be harmful, but isn’t always. It’s just wrong. It can be leveraged, but its intent isn’t necessarily harmful.
Disinformation is about intent. It’s always intended to be harmful — my personal mnemonic is that the “D” stands for “Deliberate.” Outrageous stories are used to harness our emotions and use them to win out over our reasonable, rational selves. It’s also why you can’t be too smart to fall for disinformation; intelligence (or lack thereof) has nothing to do with it, and honestly, education doesn’t have as much to do with it as you might think, either.
The reason disinformation is effective enough to be nearly invisible to a whole lot of highly educated and presumably at least moderately intelligent people is that they haven’t done the work on knowing themselves. Which I totally get! Self-awareness is balls! I hate everything about it! The good news is, you don’t have to know all of yourself in order to be successful at resisting disinformation, so you’re off the hook there, you freakie-deekie (complimentary).
But what does help is identifying your triggers. Yes, I said triggers. What really sets you off? What is your strongest emotional tether? What are your deepest concerns? What drives you, as a person? Which emotional response feels most authentic to you? Is it fear, or anger, or disgust, or shame? Something else?
It doesn’t have to even be a negative thing. I’ll share my own disinformation-believing trigger, the thing that gets me to believe just about anything, even against my better judgement: schadenfreude. I just love when something bad happens to somebody I hate! I can’t get enough of it! I’ll gloat all day long and revel in it. I’ll roll around in it like a dog rolls around in disgusting smelly shit and walk around covered in my glee. It’s the bee’s knees. It feels great right down to the very tips of my toesie-woesies.
I know this about myself too: This wave of profound pleasure I feel when something bad happens to an entity I despise can lead me astray if I don’t double- and triple-check my sources, because it feels so good that I don’t want anything to ruin it. This is my weak spot. Do I feel great reading a story? Better check my sources and check `em twice.
So what’s yours? What emotions can short-circuit your logical and rational brain? You don’t have to tell anybody what it is, because no one has to hold yourself accountable but yourself. But it’s important work. Identifying it goes a long way toward inoculating yourself against it.
It’s really difficult to do so when you’re being firehosed with a daily heaping dose of horrible shit — both real and unreal — for years on end, as we were with the Trump administration. But while we’re still getting news updates and changes at a dizzying speed, it’s a far cry from the bloody spirals that started to really get going in 2017.
This is a major advantage for non-fascist people, and a boon to democracy everywhere. We the people have always had a gigantic advantage over the soulless ghouls currently trying to grab up all the power that is ours by right, and it’s this:
We’re way funnier.
It was easy to forget this during the years we all lived through over the last month or two, and even more difficult to remember during the despair that the Trump administration brought us every single day, but it’s true. And humor is important for fighting disinformation, because it cuts through all those things that trigger people into believing utter nonsense. Yes, even you.
Which brings me back to the Journey of JD the (alleged!) Couch-Fucker, and how this couch-fucking meme isn’t disinformation, as some people who don’t know what they are talking about would have you believe, but counterdisinformation.
Here’s why. Just about everybody knows that the JD as a lover of nubile, curvaceous couch cushions thing is bullshit. It started out life, as so many great things do, as an absurdist shitpost, made the rounds as people appreciated the humor, and then was cemented into the annals of electoral fame by some of the most hilarious series of decisions I’ve ever seen made by major news organizations.
I mean, if you’re going to just ignore the careful research and measured recommendations made by experts in fighting disinformation, might as well make it funny so we can all laugh through the tears! LIKE SO:
After all, did we not all witness the extremely hilarious Associated Press headline, as they bravely stepped up and demonstrated why you don’t try to prove negatives in fact-checks?
This image will live in my phone forever. I’m never deleting it. I like taking it out and looking at it, at least once or twice a day. I’m looking at it right now.
Anyway, sorry, I nearly forgot the point I was making, because I was so lost in all that delicious schadenfreude. You see how it is? You see? Anyway, the point is that the couch-fucking thing is counterdisinformation, because the disinformation is all that nasty shit that’s being circulated out there in the info-sphere to give bad entities with power and a ghoulish agenda permission and plausible deniability to take still more civil rights from all of us.
That’s the only reason disinformation exists. The “D” is for “deliberate,” remember? And it does this by cutting through rational thought using emotional manipulation, by keeping everybody fearful, or so enraged they can’t function, or at the very least so distracted and exhausted that they don’t have the energy to fight back.
That’s where the couch-fucking comes in!
That original tweet and its follow-ups have now achieved Shitpost Nirvana. The idea of JD going at it with his mom’s velour sofa has transcended its original purpose and become something far more than it once was. It has changed the course of history. It has become a full-blown meme.
This is important, because memes are a lot more than the silly images or ideas they appear to be on the surface. What makes memes special and gives them staying power (and why they can be so difficult to explain) is that they are able to contain layers of meaning all folded up together, and those meanings can reference other memes and all of their meanings. Some of them contain multitudes of references that are so rich and textured that a single meme could be unpacked into an entire dissertation.
So this meme, the couch-fucker meme, isn’t saying that JD Vance literally fucked a couch. We all know we can’t prove that he did. He also can’t prove that he didn’t, which means he probably did!
(“Allegedly!” Yeah, yeah, yeah.)
I mean, if anybody looks like he’s right about to lube up the ol’ latex glove and stick it between a pair of filthy, stained cushions in a family basement somewhere, it’s every single member of these Silicon Valley far-right chuds currently yammering about blood quantums and accelerationism.
And who is the apotheosis of said group, for years now? It’s JD, of course, the most couch-fuckerish guy of all. He’s a weird little dude with a weird voice who says really weird and creepy things, which are also super racist and misogynistic, and also total lies, and anyone who utters them has no business anywhere near power.
But all of that takes way too long to say, so couch-fucking it is.
Here’s why it’s also counterdisinformation. It takes that same emotional weight that has been so abused to distract and upset the public and flips it around on the fascist far-right assholes who inflicted it on the rest of us to begin with. It shows, in one simple yet disgusting mental image, exactly what kinds of creeps we’re dealing with, and showcases how deeply and profoundly weird they all are, and we all know it’s fake but we can all agree that it’s incredibly plausible. I mean, just look at those guys. Just look at them!
LIKE THESE ONES!
Also, it’s really, really, really funny. That cuts straight through the bullshit that far-right operatives are trying to muster in return and goes right for their deepest and most primal fear, which is that they will be revealed as abnormal.
Which it does. Because they are.
LIKE THESE ONES TOO.
Use couch-fucking in good health, my friends. Don’t let the finger-waggers keep you from your glorious shitposts and your beautiful owns. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last 10 years, it’s that we’re in a war, and only the best trolls will win.
Wonkette is trying to throw work at every magnificent out of work journalist in the world. Feed the unemployed journalist fund kitty!
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