Human Males Engage in Odd "Humor" Ritual, a Baffled Media Reports, And It's Probably a Form of Vicious Attack

The suspicion that we’re turning into two different sets of wholly irreconcilable people who might as well be different species gets some anthropologically fascinating support today from The Atlantic, that relentlessly bizarre outpost of…the other kind of people.

This is not a joke, though it’s not a joke about jokes: They’re absolutely, authentically baffled that a bunch of people on the right are posting a ton of JD Vance memes like this….

….on social media:

Of course, people love making memes that portray their political adversaries as hapless and incompetent. That’s not exactly what’s happening with these images of Vance. The memes are going viral on the left-wing internet. But they are equally, if not more, popular on the right. Explicitly pro-Trump accounts on X that otherwise spend their time bashing liberals are posting embarrassing memes of their party’s second in command….

So why is the right willing to make fun of one of its own with memes? One user on X who goes by the name Aelfred the Great and frequently shares right-wing memes has been posting and reposting the unflattering viral images of the vice president. “They’re just funny,” he told me when I asked him about them.

So their actual interpretation of all the Vance images is that MAGA people are trying to humiliate and demean JD Vance by playing with his image. Pushing right past this alleged explanatory category of “just funny,” which is apparently too implausible to even consider as a real thing, the piece concludes that Vance is being mocked as a sign that his “slightly forced and unnatural” political performance has made him unimportant: “But for a vice president who was picked with widespread support in his party, Vance, at times, has almost seemed like a fringe figure in Trump’s second term.”

He’s seemed like a fringe figure? Really?

And so, like Kremlinologists parsing Pravda headlines, The Atlantic concludes that Donald Trump’s vice-president is being subjected to insider derision because “he has taken such a back-seat role in the administration.” He’s being tossed over the side, like a nobody, so everybody on the right is making fun of him.

This is…hold on, momentarily speechless.

Still recovering. Thanks for your patience.

I…nope, not yet.

Okay, start with the framing in which all of the Vance images are unflattering: The right is depicting JD Vance as Steve Irwin, for example, but it’s so embarrassing for a man to be compared to someone who…wrestled snakes and crocodiles. Personal to everybody at The Atlantic: Have you ever met any humans?

Some of the Vance images are unflattering….

….but the sudden massive wave of funny JD Vance images is still, brace yourself for this, affectionate. Dudes do to this to their friends. A couple years ago, when I was grumpy-old-man-worried about these kids today, and wondering if pandemic-era social isolation had broken them, I found myself walking behind a group of teenage boys at a shopping center near the beach. One of their friends was wearing skinny jeans, and they were saying things to him like, “Nice pants, dude — do they make a version for men?” and “Don’t listen to them, dude, I think they’re really nice.” (short pause) “But have you come out to your parents yet?” A bunch of teenage boys were joking with their friend, for which I spent the rest of the day saying OH THANK GOD to myself. “Nice pants, dude, they really flatter your vagina” is teenage boy for “you’re cool and I’m glad we’re friends.” That’s what’s happening to JD Vance right now. The thing being analyzed at The Atlantic means literally, actually, precisely the opposite of what they think it means. It means that Vance is in the ascendant, and very much so.

With perfect timing, recent thoughts from a man who spent his adult life in the Merchant Marine, at sea in harsh conditions with other men (click the link to play the video, if you must):

The man who men don’t bother to do this to are the men they don’t give a shit about. The fact that JD Vance is suddenly everywhere, and suddenly being joked about obsessively, is not a sign that he’s becoming marginal to the right. For crying out loud.

The Atlantic looks at the massive wave of foregrounded JD Vance images and concludes that “Vance, at times, has almost seemed like a fringe figure in Trump’s second term.” They do this in the aftermath of his massively important Munich speech and his knife-hand moment with the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office. I want to test these people on common household objects, like holding up a fork to see if they think it’s candle. “Let’s see, whiskers and a tail — is it a hammer?” Could they be from outer space? Should we be looking for the special sunglasses?

Do you trust these “journalists” to explain or clarify anything at all?