Our couch sex memes, ourselves
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The JD-Vance-couch-sex meme is finally dead. I think. Or at least, it’s dying. People say social media news cycles move hyper-quickly, but I’m pretty sure Twitter stayed on the couch sex longer than the mainstream media stayed on the Trump shooting.
Now that it’s on its way out, let’s reflect. The most important thing to know about the rumor that JD Vance fucked a couch is that it’s not even a little bit true. Or at least, it’s unproven. It’s really not something anyone could prove. Someone misread a line from Hillbilly Elegy and tweeted that they weren’t voting for a man who had sex with a couch. It went viral right away because – to be honest – it seemed true. It could be true. You know it, I know it, JD Knows it. We all know it. And then, once the mainstream media started writing about it, it blew up. As of Friday, there were more Google searches for “JD Vance couch” than “Trump assassination.” It took the world by storm. Or, the internet. Same thing.
But I have a lingering sense of guilt; as much as I enjoyed and partook in the couch memes, the story is false. And I know it right away because unfortunately, I’ve read Hillbilly Elegy. Was it wrong to contribute to a rumor that JD Vance fucked a couch? Was it wrong for the internet to gang up on poor little JD over a couch that he didn’t fuck? (at least, not that we know of?).
JD is our first millennial candidate on a major party ticket. And on behalf of millennials everywhere, I apologize.
In the past two weeks, I’ve heard people of my generation express outrage about JD Vance that I don’t even hear about Trump. In part, we’ve burnt through so much of our Trump-outrage already that there’s not much left to say. But in part, it’s because we don’t want Vance to represent us. Mostly, though, it’s because he’s just awful.
Vance runs counter to so many millennial stereotypes: we’re (unfairly) accused of entitlement, while Vance famously pulled himself up by his bootstraps via writing a book trashing poor people. We’re accused of apathy towards traditional institutions like religion, patriotism, and marriage. Vance converted to Catholicism in his 30s (creepy), he’s one of the loudest and most annoying voices of the America First movement (creepier), and he’s said women shouldn’t leave abusive marriages (creepiest). We’re bucking the trend of becoming more conservative as we get older, Vance headed straight in the opposite direction when he went from declaring “I hate the police” to asserting that without a national abortion ban, George Soros would fly Black women to California for abortions in the span of about five years (what is wrong with people?).
He doesn’t represent millennials, and it’s never been more true than it was past week. The couch rumor wasn’t Vance’s only negative news cycle. It was start-to-finish Vance pummeling. He was on defense the whole time, which is actually probably good for him: he’s no better on offense, considering that his main policy positions are that Mexicans are rapists and Ukrainians deserve to die.
In the same week as couch-gate, JD suffered the fall-out from his childless cat ladies comment, his Diet Mountain Dew gaffe, and his dolphin-porn search. A quick summary of each, for those fortunate enough to be less online than I am:
the childless cat ladies comment was one Vance made in 2021. He said the problem with the Democratic party is that it was run by “childless cat ladies” like Harris, Buttigieg, and AOC (Harris & Buttigieg are parents, not that it’s relevant). It got worse, though, on Friday, when he doubled-down and told Megyn Kelly: “Sometimes it’s the truest and most important points that cause them to attack you the most.” He apologized to the cats, but not the women.
The Diet Mountain Dew gaffe was a stupid joke Vance made at a rally last week. He said Democrats probably thought Diet Mountain Dew was racist. No one laughed, so then, he laughed. It was awkward.
The dolphin-porn search was a screenshot he posted months ago making fun of a woman who was getting pleasured by a dolphin. The problem is that the words “dolphin” and “woman” were highlighted in the screenshot, so it was clear Vance had searched for the image.
All of these were distinct: the cat ladies one mattered as it represented views Vance still holds about women. Diet Mountain Dew and Dolphin Porn were both true but didn’t matter. And the couch-sex one just wasn’t true (that we know of!), which might be my main regret. In spreading straight-up rumors, it’s easier to dismiss the more substantive critiques. To lump them all together in the category of “lies.”
But lies or not (mostly not), they all shared a through-line, which is that Vance isn’t good at being a millennial. Specifically, he isn’t smart online. Like all American millennials, he had every indication that everything he’d ever said would come back to haunt him, and he didn’t act with caution. In fact, he’s the exact same age as Mark Zuckerberg, whose excellent biopic (like, a million times better than Vance’s) featured the iconic line: “the internet isn’t written in pencil, Mark.”
Unlike more seasoned politicians, he created himself online before his first run for office. And he didn’t do a good job covering his tracks. His Spotify and Venmo were both subjects of public debate in the last few weeks; he wasn’t smart enough to lock them. Many of his incriminating quotes are ones he himself put in Facebook messages or on social media. That’s how we got the cat ladies story, the George Soros comment, the “I hate the police” comment, and his now-infamous line that Trump might be “America’s Hitler.”
He didn’t watch what he said; he didn’t understand what all other millennials do: the internet takes things out-of-context. The Dolphin Porn story demonstrates a lack of understanding of how Twitter works. The Diet Mountain Dew gaffe made him look like a corny boomer. And while the couch-sex thing really isn’t his fault, if he were more adept at online mockery, he could easily have spun it to make himself look funny and chill while making liberals look mean. Because honestly, it was a little bit mean of us.
But he didn’t. He didn’t try to spin it. JD Vance lacks all chill. He’s the opposite. Rather than brush off attacks and focus on himself, he’s a voyeur. He’s excessively concerned about what other people do with their lives. In many ways, this voids Trump’s greatest advantage, which is that he only seems to care about himself. How many moderates have expressed some form of the following Trump-apology: “maybe he’ll just play golf his second term, and it won’t be so bad. Maybe he just wants to stay out of jail.” I disagree (or, I would say, the risk that he doesn’t just want to play golf is too great), but nonetheless. JD Vance is different. He has a vision for America. A misogynistic, pro-natalist one, where he cares a lot that other people reproduce as much as they can. It’s so embarrassing for him.
And so, because of his lack of online intuition and chill, the We The Internet were able to bully Vance. To remind him that he’s not as good at this as we are. The all-out couch-meme assault was the internet’s way of saying to Vance “you’re not from here,” which is fitting, since that’s the tone he’s tried to stick to in his campaign. That his family, with their seven generations in the same graveyard, belongs here, while immigrants should get the fuck out.
Which is to say, I don’t feel that bad about making fun of JD Vance for fucking a couch. Ultimately, he deserves it, and we deserve any scrap of fun we can find this election season. If he’s allowed to talk about what’s going on in my home, I can discuss what’s going on in his. If he’s allowed to tell others they don’t belong in America, we’re allowed to tell him he doesn’t belong on Twitter. If he calls childless women, why wouldn’t we throw stones at that glass house? What’s more loser-like: choosing not to have kids, or searching for dolphin porn?
But most importantly, the reason I think it’s okay is because it’s effective. I best understand Vance and men like him via a passage from Max Chafkin’s “The Contrarian,” a biography of Peter Thiel. When Trump’s Access Hollywood tape was released, and we heard him proclaim that men needed to grab women “by the pussy,” the responses I saw were exclusively horror and outrage. But what Chafkin explained is that among MAGA supporters, the video was also embarrassing. Because Trump was revealing himself to be a beta. He was acknowledging that he’d been rejected.
It left me with the sense that for a certain type of man, one way to undermine their support is to mock them. I don’t want to overstate the importance of this—it would only work on a very specific type of man, and there are other, more effective ways to undermine a leader’s support, like to vote them out of office or perhaps put them in jail. But while we’re talking about the fact that Vance is a racist, and a misogynistic, and a nationalist, and a techno-authoritarian, and an isolationist, let’s never forget: he’s also a loser.
We all have a role to play in keeping these freaks out of power. And if mine is couch-memes, I will rise to the occasion.