I cannot even imagine what it must be like to be JD Vance right now or how much rage (and/or regret??) he must have to suppress on a minute-by-minute basis over the savaging he’s getting online. He must have to take an ketamine cocktail just to sleep.

A month ago he was a right-wing coded semi-populist Republican senator from Ohio that probably half the country had never heard of. Today he is known as a guyliner-wearing married incel who hides being a fat boy under his beard, wants to track teenage girl’s monthly cycles, and whose followers are carrying around semen-collection cups bearing his likeness.

The fact that none of those things are actually true (other than him being married and using his beard to hide his face), does not seem to matter. He is on track to be the most hated VP pick in history. And the worst part, for him, is that all of these attacks are targeted precisely to humiliate and infuriate him while forcing him to keep a shit-eating grin on his face and pretend to laugh it all off while seeming casual and normal. What a nightmare.

The black-arts meme game on Vance hit wizard level this weekend, with whoever came up with this jizz cup stunt. It seems fairly obvious that someone diabolical probably just got a bunch of dumb/drunk MAGA people at a Kid Rock concert or something to pose with those cups. I’m 99.9% certain it isn’t real. And yet once you see it, it’s now in your subconscious, and the implied image of Vance’s little pile of bodily fluid sitting in a sterile medical cup is so instantaneously revolting, that you could practically hear a CRACK across the land, as the collective American punanae dried up and snapped closed. A truly twisted and insane, yet effective stroke of diabolical genius.

(Yes, in case you were wondering, when every woman in the land’s legs snap shut and she turns into the Sahara desert at the same time, it makes a loud cracking noise, like an iceberg snapping off of a glacier, just in reverse).

is correct when he wrote that women and liberals are better at language games, and we are now witnessing the unleashed power of young women, the gays, and the smart-snotty urban liberal intellectuals, when they turn their sites onto their collective enemy: the incel. Which is now JD’s brand.

Nevermind that he’s married and not an incel. His followers seem to be, so he’s now the involuntary king of the incels.

This is a politically brilliant tactic because none of the Democrats or independents who are Boomer-age will even really understand what any of this is about, they’ll just be happy that no one likes JD, and the actual savagery of branding him this way will go over their heads — so no worries about a backlash there, for being too bitchy.

And among everyone online who DOES know…well, everyone who isn’t incel-adjacent hates these guys. Mostly because they’ve spent the past 20 years being mean and hostile to people on the internet and semi-glorifying school shooters. No one wants to claim being king of that orc army.

I’ll admit: I feel bad for Vance. At this point, he could rescue a bunch of puppies from a burning building, and I don’t think it’d be sufficient to overcome the memes. I mean, I don’t feel THAT bad — he chose to run — but a little bit I do. It’s brutal. I had 7 different unrelated people text me that jizz cup story yesterday — that is awful. Yet funny. Yet awful.

I have principled-Kate sitting on one shoulder telling me it’s unfair and cruel and undignified for anyone to be smeared in this manner….and mean-girl-Kate sitting on the other, telling me he’s a misogynist who deserves it, and besides it’s funny, so just give in and laugh.

No, this has nothing to do with policy, I’m just observing the psychological warfare that’s going on in the memeverse. I’m old enough to remember when “potatoe” was a harsh shred on Dan Quayle. Look how far we’ve come, and we haven’t even gotten to the deepfakes yet.

Though you sort of don’t need them, when this is (unbelievably) an actual photo from his high-school yearbook (!?!):