DHS gets posterized on NBA Twitter
Plus, MAGA rap, Sliwamania, and Harry Sisson’s shitstorm
I was wondering when the memes would come home to roost. DHS has been shitposting for weeks now, demonstrating the relative ease with which anybody can become an internet troll.
But to borrow a term from their vernacular, they FAFO … that scoring cheap points isn’t the same as hitting game-winning half-court shots. (Sorry, it’s NBA opening day so my will to live has been renewed, my cup floweth over).
Today is heavy on the culture crossover: from MAGA’s budding hip-hop contingent and red pill podcasts, to two budding heroes for Democrats, one who you’ll never see coming.
FROM THE LEFT WING:
GET HOODWINKED: Imagine Zac Efron in his “High School Musical” jersey trying to dunk over Lebron James. That’s what DHS looks like engaging with hoodgenius — a Milwaukee Bucks Twitter account. Their “we have the receipts” reply to his tweet accusing them of spreading misinformation has 14.5M views. NBA Twitter is defined by its anarchy, known for its infighting … until an outsider engages and a full-court press begins. hoodgenius launched a trolling incursion the DHS admin could only dream of: not only ridiculing their memes, but deploying his own. He has soared from 13k followers to more than 100k, and the 14 posts I’ve tallied totaled 60M impressions in four days. A handful of tweets about the saga have notched another 26M eyes.
So what is it about this ritualistic humiliation that works? I had to call on one of the masters of court-side memery, Ballsack Sports:
“NBA creators and ‘trolls’ have revolutionized the social media landscape in recent years. They are engagement experts and engineers … There are users out here doing it for the love of the game with nothing to lose, and with years of experience doing just that. You’re not going to beat these users at a game they created.”
WEATHERING A SHITSTORM: Despite being one of the most recognizable creators on the left, constantly trolled by the right, Harry Sisson didn’t think he’d actually see his face in a Trump post: “No way he’s beefing with a 23 year old.” Sure enough, the presidential answer to the “No Kings” protests was a “very strange, very gross” AI rendering of Trump air dropping streams of poop. My feelings were limited to “that’s fucking nasty.”
Harry felt a blend of “pure disbelief and also a little bit of depression.”
“The disbelief is just like, ‘wow, I can’t believe this is our country.’ And the depression is ‘wow, I can’t believe this is our country.’ You know, I’m not intimidated by the attack whatsoever. It doesn’t upset me … I just can’t believe that this is the guy who has access to the nuclear codes.”
A TIP OF THE HAT: As expected, a contingent of far-left voters is disavowing Zohran Mamdani to preempt his betrayal of socialist causes. (It’s the “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Caucus in Democratic Socialists of America”). Flip that coin and get the complete opposite: Tons of liberals half-jokingly, half-earnestly cheering on Republican candidate for mayor, Curtis Sliwa. I’m seeing fan edits, calls for Zohran to collaborate with him, praise for his “authentic” and “hilarious” presence, even adoration from former Dem staffers. Will it move the needle on the election? No. But maybe for Sliwa, the real mayorship is all the friends he made along the way.
FROM THE RIGHT WING:
SEEING RED (PILL): Joshua Haymes may have a mustache, smoke a pipe, and live in Nashville, but a hipster he is not. His pastor-to-podcaster pipeline took him to virality when he mounted a biblical defense of slavery in response to Allie Beth Stuckey’s Jubilee appearance I covered last week. It’s worth clocking that Haymes is a member of the same church as Sec. Def. Hegseth … the one that flirts with repealing women’s right to vote. Here’s the kicker: Among the disavowals was one Dinesh D’Souza, the Trump-allied filmmaker, who said “Not sure who this guy is, but … What I do know is he’s trying to poison our Christianity and our politics.” One small problem, D’Souza was a guest on Reformation Red Pill less than a month ago.
MUSIC IS THE ANSWER: Friends, I’m here to tell you, MAGA rap is thriving. Imagine if Macklemore grew out his quiff, got 50 face tattoos, played golf at Mar-a-Lago, and nobody ever thought that he was gay. That’s basically Tom MacDonald, who is vying for a third chart-topping single to complete his “holy trinity of F woke people music” with “Woke World.” Forgiato Blow (pictured below, holding five iPhones) has been working overtime in the studio too. There’s a bunch of noose imagery in his new drop “Good Vs Evil.” Of course, Lara Trump is always near if a mic is on …
HITTING GROK BOTTOM: Of all the wars the right is waging, there are few as enduring as the one on Wikipedia. Conservative education platform PragerU’s video on it has over a million views. Andrew Schlafly, son of feminism’s biggest opp Phyllis, launched Conservapedia in 2006 as an antidote to Wikipedia’s “liberal bias” but it never caught fire. Elon Musk was due to offer some deliverance with the release of the creatively named “Grokipedia,” but he decided to delay the project’s release to further “purge out the propaganda.”
The last time Elon moved to de-woke AI, Grok — his own company’s LLM — came back into the fray calling itself “MechaHitler.” Not only have its extremism dials been frequently out of whack, Grok is known to be hit or miss in fact-checking basic information on X. Just this past weekend, Grok blasted out that broadcast TV footage of a “No Kings” protest was from 2017 — and got slapped with a community note correction.
LOOSE ENDS:
📝 Word I learned today: protean
2 : displaying great diversity or variety — Carlos Alcaraz “shared many of those traits, but really his game was protean and unclassifiable.” (via Giri Nathan, “Changeover”)
📰 Something you should read today: Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors — 404 Media
🥹 Something to make you smile today: I often joke about my favorite genre of movie being “heist” — except I’m really not joking at all, I take the subject very seriously. Add in my French minor in college and a never-to-be-realized dream of moving to Paris, and I feel like Bill Hader’s Stefon saying this Louvre heist has everything: blasé security, blasé thieves, blasé passersby. In honor of this, you should watch Ocean’s 12 which features the frenchest man alive (sexy category) Vincent Cassel.
The beret is darling on you!
Another great one. Always learn so much from your protean writing. Love the beret picture.