this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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[–] TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world 53 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

This is extremely simplistic and reductive, but essentially, after JD Vance was named Trump's VP, someone made a shit post saying 'Wow, I can't believe he said he had sex with a couch, that's wild'. To their slight credit, the same person commented like an hour later admiting it was all a lie (they just posted the Arthur meme of "You think someone would do that? Go on the internet and tell lies?"), but that didn't really matter and it got shared around a lot, mostly by people who knew it was fake news but still thought it was funny anyway.

Later that week, AP News did a fact check on it (because, sadly, they have to do A LOT of false-fact debunking) and they essentially said "JD Vance did not have sex with a couch". HOWEVER, they have an internal policy that says their fact-checks must say only the truth, even if they have to be extremely specific in their wording. Since they originally said "No, he has never had sex with a couch" but, technically speaking, unless they've been spying on him for his entire life, there's no way to actually PROVE that, so they had to take it down. Lots of people saw it get taken down and jumped on that fact as a 'Well, then he must have done it, obviously' and the memes continued.

Fast forward to today, and some FOX host who probably still uses Yahoo as their search engine and has no connection with meme culture is demanding the video proof that they presume to exist despite no one EVER saying that there's proof.

Hope that answered most of your questions

Edit: slightly wording fix

[–] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

My favorite part was that Vance, supposedly, wrote about it in Hillbilly Elegy. Reading the book would easily solve the issue once and for all, but no one wanted to.

It's also why the AP article was retracted. They could obviously prove that it's not in the book, but like you said, it would be impossible to prove that he never, at any point in his life, when no one was around, fucked a couch.

...but also, the AP article didn't even involve reading the book. They just used Ctrl+F on key terms because, again, no one wants to actually read that book.

[–] the_crotch@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

tl;dr version: the left has learned to meme

[–] Tja@programming.dev 19 points 3 months ago

And right is weird

[–] warbond@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

I didn't even know it was a story until I read about the retraction. Like, "What do you mean they retracted their story saying he didn't tuck a couch...? Does that mean...?"

[–] Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Is yahoo search even a thing still? I used it like a week ago and it said powered by Bing. I wouldn't be surprised if they took down their search engine and just use a version of Bing instead of an amalgamation.

[–] PythagreousTitties@lemm.ee 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yahoo search was killed years ago by the guy that now runs Google search.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This should be the most insane sentence in the thread, except that we're in a thread about a vice presidential candidate possibly fucking a couch.

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

There's only one way out. The VP candidate now needs to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that he has never fucked a couch.