April 10, 2023

Deplorable fakery or typical internet humor that anyone with a brain is supposed to get?

46 comments:

robother said...

The law of sink holes? When de Santis fills 'em in Florida, they reappear in Michigan.

MadisonMan said...

Things that are never needed: Corrections to something you see on the Internet.
Any thinking person can see that the trees in the background are not native to Michigan. So why the compulsive need to correct? This is the worst thing about Twitter.

Quaestor said...

g whiz inadvertently makes my earlier point regarding solemnity rather well, doncha think?

rehajm said...

..to our current leftie thought leaders it is sophisticated humor when they do it and an imprisonable offense when their enemies do it.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Some Walmart and Waffle House fights are… not real.

Can’t tell if the clearing out of a major store like Target is also a… not real?

This, however has to be fake

Do most fake videos tap into the part of the brain responsible for racist thoughts?

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

I met with a local friend at the Farmer's Market. Haven't seen each other since Market ended in the fall. In any case, she told me her husband is in Florida right now, visiting family. A town or suburb of Tampa. I want to say Lutz?
anyway - his reports back are -- > the weather is lovely, everything is green and the roads are in great shape. No pot holes (unlike back home where our roads are in bad condition)
Both Democrats. For what it is worth.

btw - I know exactly where the Gov of CO lives downtown, and that street is re-paved. Seriously.

tim maguire said...

Sinkholes might be a Florida thing, but there are other ways to get a pothole big enough for a car to full into. But only a fool would think a hole that big is a normal state of affairs in any state. Of course it would be fixed, and quick since the street is shut down until it is.

Yancey Ward said...

This was obviously meant to be humor with a point.

Wince said...

Either way, strategically not the best way to channel anger about a widespread failure of government service.

RideSpaceMountain said...

Typical internet humor. Par for the course. What I would like to know is more about the people who are angered by this. Why would they be angry at the repurposing of a photo? The message is broad enough it doesn't matter that the photo isn't from the right place. Would it make them any less angry if they found a legit photo from Michigan, of which a slightly less casual search could probably come up with numerous examples? Perhaps even better examples?

The only time this would matter is if someone tried legitimately to pass off the photo as a specific example needing resolution. Everything else is storm in a teacup.

dwshelf said...

It's just a poor technique, expecting a negative fake to be recognized as satire when there is some chance it could be real.

What it does is to illustrate that the poster of such stuff has no interaction with the other side, and thus doesn't likely understand the other side at all.

Leland said...

So when the FBI faked the kidnapping of Whitmer, was that humor that anyone with a brain was supposed to get? Or was that fakery for the entrapment of deplorables?

Heartless Aztec said...

Compete fairly common reality in Central Florida. Less so in Michigan - but still mirthful.

Daniel12 said...

You left out the usual third option: "Ok fine this photo isn't from Michigan, but it could have been!"

rcocean said...

I suppose that it says "MI House Republicans" is a clue.

Static Ping said...

Your jokes are lies.

Our lies are the truth.

traditionalguy said...

Internet age political cartoons. Everybody knows it’s not really what the caption says. Except for the Government Censorship Industrial Complex that pretends we have an IQ 50 like them.

gilbar said...

what's the saying?
No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.

Will Cate said...

This is a well-circulated internet image, is it not? Probably decades old. That would be the basis of the inside-joke.

Chuck said...

FYI; the MI House Republicans Tweet now has a big Twitter-sponsored warning on it. The warning itself is pretty wonderful. (Not seen in the Althouse screen-shot.)

Chuck said...

Btw, Althouse. While "anyone with a brain" might be a useful marker in most cases, you need to remember that we're talking about much of the current base-support in the MI-GOP. Those were the people who lost the Michigan House, lost the Michigan Senate, and who nominated Big Lie proponents like Tudor Dixon, Kristina Karamo, and Matt DePerno for statewide office only to see them get humiliated in the general election. And now, the MI-GOP cannot even pay the bills on a Lansing building that was essentially gifted to the Party a decade or more ago.

Today's TrumpWing MI-GOP isn't just losing elections; it's headed toward bankruptcy. Their new mailing address -- I am not kidding -- is a P.O. Box in a strip mall shipping store outside of Grand Rapids.

But they have time for this sort of shitposting on Twitter.

MrLiberty said...

If you aren't standing in front the scene, witnessing it with your own eyes, and hearing what is going on with your own ears, DON'T BELIEVE ANY OF IT!!

Just wait until AI starts creating images, videos, etc. to feed their narrative.

Tom said...

Oh that’s funny. And only a slight exaggeration…

It’s like the pic of the Kentucky Earthquake - Never Forget. Look it up.

Pippa said...

Satire. How does it work?

stlcdr said...

I think it's obviously humor using a stock (sic) photo to represent a standpoint. However, the watermark is a bit much, 'claiming' the photo...

The Vault Dweller said...

Reminds me of the kids in cages photo that circulated during the Trump administration that was actually a staged photo from a protest during the Obama administration.

Narayanan said...

who pounces on whom? for this!

Joe Bar said...

Well, I laughed.

M said...

Sinkholes in Florida are a symptom of the geological make up of the area. Act of G-d stuff. Not too much politicians can do about it other than make sure the aquifer isn’t over strained. That would require the ability to keep people from other states from moving here. So, nothing.

Sinkholes in most other states are the result of improper mining procedures or unmaintained sewage systems. Both of which should be regulated and over seen by the state bureaucracy. Blue states often have sink hole events based on massive negligence.

Svoboda said...

Both?
No one can think this is real, so if you are fooled you only have yourself have to blame. But the attempt at humor is lame and only appeals to the hur-hur Whitmer-so-bad crowd.

gadfly said...

Serious fakery is worse. Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (age 52) represents voters in Crossville, Tennessee but doesn't live there. He claims to live in a 1200 sf, 2 bedroom condo in a Crossville retirement community located 2 hours east of Nashville, but Sexton's youngest child is enrolled at Jonathan Edwards Classical Academy, a private Christian school in Whites Creek, a Nashville suburb. The Sexton family does not live at the Crossville retirement facility, so throw him out of the legislature.

n.n said...

Typical sociopolitical prop. Appearances can be deceiving.

farmgirl said...

Duh- explain to me how the same car in the same hole can be in Florida and Michigan at the same time, again?

Quaestor said...

Let's leave gross exaggerations to Joe Biden and his staff.

wildswan said...

The tweet sent out by the Michigan Republicans had no stock photo markings. So I don't see that the joke was obvious. I do see that "Shall we wait till Michigan potholes are as big as Florida sinkholes" might have been humorous but that isn't what was said.

Quaestor said...

@gadfly

Residency requirements of the Tennessee Legislature

As noted above, let's leave gross exaggeration to Joe Biden and his staff.

Quaestor said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
TheThinManReturns said...

been quite a ride, was here after a mention on BOTW.
knew you were throttling responses, but your house,
your rules. I’m sure others have already said it’s not
a good look. Me? I only dive into 100+ comment threads
I like the back and forth. libs have no forth.
Echo chambers are fine if you need support
for non-mainstream opinions. after 20+ years lurking,
and a dozen comments

Malesch Morocco said...

Probably on your way to Texas to visit your son.

MadisonMan said...

@gadfly, why should anyone outside of TN care about that?

Jupiter said...

I'm really not sure. Whose ox was gored? I don't think I have an ox in this fight.

Lurker21 said...

I think we all understand that it was a joke. But the "Meanwhile in Michigan" caption gave the "factcheckers" an opening.

Could the joke have worked with a different caption? Probably. But it seems silly to make a big deal out of it.

Marcus Bressler said...

"Deplorable..."
ISWYDT

MarcusB. THEOLDMAN

Christopher B said...

I'm fairly certain that if this photo had been tweeted out as an example of Florida becoming a shithole under DeSantis, our resident fake Republicans would have been coming up with excuses for why it's correct to blame him for a naturally occurring issue, and complaining about why Republicans can't take a joke.

Butkus51 said...

Was the Steele dossier parody?

Anybody besides Trump pay a price for that?

Temp Blog said...

"Meanwhile in [place]...." is a stock punchline for visual media gags. I am a pop culture illiterate and even I know that it's a gag line. The shitpost tweet is just another item in the catalog of Marxist "that's not funny" intentional misinterpretation of humor.