De Historia Criminis Mimematis (On the History of the Memecrime)
“This is the best thing and also the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” – Bryan Winter
The memecrime: God's (1) perfect fever dream. Eight feet of malice meets ten feet of irreverence to create eighty square feet of unreality. To look upon it is to know both great joy and great revulsion, simultaneous and interwoven. To gaze into its lidless, vacant eyes is to know instinctively the fear struck into the heart of every couch in the nation. How could a mere mortal mind conceive of such a thing? Allow me to explain:
Our story begins on June 27, 2025. I wake up at the crack of noon. My first mistake is looking at the news: TSA insists that Norwegian tourist Mads Mikkelsen (no, not that Mads Mikkelsen) wasn't barred from entering the U.S. over JD Vance memes; it was definitely because he smoked weed in Germany. Ignore the part where the agent called the meme "dangerous propaganda." Nothing to see here. We don't live in a fascist nation.
Worse news follows: the Big Bullshit Bill has been stripped of all the shit the Republicans objected to and will advance to the Senate floor. The Republican-controlled Senate floor. Where the Republicans will vote for it. We are so, so fucked.
My second mistake is viewing the SCOTUS decisions released:
Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton: states can now require age verification on adult websites. Fuck.
Mahmoud v. Taylor: schools must allow parents to opt their children out of queer content. Double fuck.
FCC v. Consumers' Research: The FCC's Universal Service Fund does not violate the nondelegation doctrine. This one's okay, actually.
Kennedy v. Braidwood Management: PrEP coverage being mandatory under the ACA does not violate the First Amendment. The ruling is cool, but it reminded me that RFK Jr. exists, and that's a crime.
Trump v. CASA: lower-court judges do not have the authority to issue universal injunctions. Also, birthright citizenship no longer exists in some fraction of the country. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck. Fuck this shit. Fuck. Damn.
I tumble out of bed, stumble to the kitchen, and pour an unknown quantity of vodka into my Mountain Dew. It's my day off, which means I can immediately progress to my tried and true self-care technique: blasting Rage Against the Machine albums and screaming along to all the lyrics.
Three drinks and a couple albums later, I get a Signal ping:
https://somenewssite.com/article/the-couchfucker-is-coming-to-nantucket-to-grift?privacyviolatingtrackers=yes
[Insert local Indivisible group here] is organizing something for this. Anyone interested?
I am immediately consumed by a rage so white-hot that I start shooting lasers out of my eyes, Dark-Brandon-style. How dare the pissant tie-breaker of our useless fucking Senate step on our commonwealth's soil?? How dare Thiel's beloved blood boy beg for billionaire cash while children are being born stateless?
This anchor baby says Not today, Couchfucker. I'm gonna make ~dAnGeRoUs PrOpAgAnDa~ so huge, so obnoxious, that the Secret Service will have to deport me for meme crimes. Except they CAN'T, because I'm a birthright goddamn citizen, motherfuckers.
Artist’s rendition of the moment the author read that Vance was coming within memeing distance.
I set to work. The original meme is only 740 pixels high. At optimal printing resolution, that's not even an inch and a half. Trying to blow that up to fuck-off huge is gonna look like shit. Bald Vance's dead, vacant eyes need to be perfectly crisp to haunt dreams at top efficiency. I boot up my gaming rig and set it to AI upscaling that bitch. To 35,000 pixels tall.
An hour later I have created a new problem, and that problem is that my beautiful 35k UUUHD image file won't open properly. I check the JPEG standard: the theoretical limit is 65k. I check my file again: still 35k. I frown. I am fairly certain that 35 continues to be less than 65. I try opening the file again. Windows does not recognize it as an image. I send it to my laptop. Linux does not recognize it as an image. I try uploading it anyway. Vistaprint does not recognize it as an image. 35 is still less than 65. I am being oppressed by poorly coded, short-sighted file-handling routines.
After much indignant huffing, I give up and aim a little lower. 16,000 pixels. Finally my genius is recognized by standard image software. I upload it to Vistaprint. Vistaprint informs me that my image is below the recommended resolution for a towering monstrosity. I inform Vistaprint that it is a traitorous son of a bitch and will not survive the coming purge. I hit purchase and seal my fate.
I send a Signal message:
Two weeks later, a screech echos through the apartment at the unholy hour of 7AM. The memecrime has arrived, and my roommate does not appreciate it.
“I was just trying to go to the bathroom!” – My roommate
The next phase of my masterwork requires me to build the boy a frame and deliver the whole thing to Nantucket. The problem to overcome is two-fold: one, I can't drive. I don't even have my license. And two, even if my roommate helps, ten feet of memecrime will not fit in a Smartcar. Which is how I ended up press-ganging my roommate into helping me carry four ten-foot-long, two-inch-diameter PVC pipes through the streets of Boston.
After quickly realizing that no part of my apartment had a clear 8'x10' space, I set up in the driveway behind our illustrious triple-decker. Two of my four ten-foot pipes have to be cut down to eight feet. I roll my horrible son out flat and build a C-shape around him with three of my four pipes.
I mark where I want to cut the first pipe. I own a circular saw, but the makeshift plywood table my dad set up to cut baseboard trim has been dismantled. Fuck that, I think. That wasn't even OSHA-compliant to begin with, I argue. It can't be that hard to cut PVC with a handsaw, right?
WRONG. I spend the next geological era discovering experimentally the sweet spot between speed and not melting the PVC. And then I get to do it a second time. Somewhere in the middle of all this, my upstairs neighbor walks out.
You’d never believe how hard it is to draw a stick figure squatting.
"Okay, you've made me curious. What is this?" I look up at her from my gremlin-crouch over one pipe, saw in hand.
"The hardware store doesn't sell eight-foot PVC," I say helpfully, brandishing my saw. "I'm making a frame." I finish my cut and begin the final assembly, knuckle-walking like a deranged orangutan to avoid the sort of up-and-down that makes you dizzy on a hot summer day.
"Oh." She blinks at me, then points at my horrible son. "Who's that supposed to be?"
"That's the vice president." I brace one corner of the frame on the house foundation and start kicking the press-fit joint into place.
"But JD Vance isn't bald?"
I stop kicking for a moment. It dawns on me that I have spent hundreds of dollars on an inscrutable meme whose full explanation cannot be made in polite company.
I decide that today is not the day I explain couchfucking to my middle-aged upstairs neighbor. I resume kicking.
"I made this to upset him. He's coming to Nantucket." I orangutan over to my last corner and begin to line up my shot. My neighbor quickly sends a picture to her "women's group" and beats a hasty retreat from the feral 30-something in the shared driveway.
A very dignified short while later, I have an entire memecrime strung up and framed in my driveway. Perfect, I think, standing upright for the first time in hours. Except JD Vance will not be in my driveway. This is because my driveway is not in Nantucket.
The name of the game is now "How to get the Meme onto Nantucket." And, come to think of it, how to get the Me onto Nantucket. Sure, I could tie the pipes to the roof and joust all the way down the Cape in the Smartcar, but I would also like to survive the trip.
Pictured: How not to get to Nantucket
And then there's the ferry. Maybe they do things differently on the Cape, but here in Boston, if I tried to board an MBTA vehicle with four obnoxiously long pipes, heavy-duty rope, a sledgehammer, and a disconcerting banner, the other passengers—if not the operators—would tell me to fuck right off.
So. Ferries with cargo space. The one ferry service that advertises storage space only guarantees space if you're a car, which I am not. That could be a problem with all the Republicans with Fuck You money and something to compensate for coming to see the couchfucker. Sending my horrible son ahead of me to lie in wait is my best option.
New problem: even if we rent a truck, my roommate does not love me enough to drive round-trip to the Cape twice. That's entirely fair. I, personally, love myself too much to do the same.
I look to Signal, hoping the tiny revolutionaries in my phone can help me.
After much debate regarding the possible safety concerns involved in wedging two PVC poles between the trunk and glove box of a minivan, we have a plan: I mummify the Boy in plastic wrap to keep all his parts inside the vehicle at all times. Another volunteer drives him from Boston to the Cape. A third party stows him on a freight ferry. A fourth human picks him up on Nantucket and defends him from predators until that day when we are destined to reunite.
As the minivan carrying my charge jets off into the distance, I feel the madness recede a little. Am I really going to scream at a politician and hoist eighty square feet of unflattering meme in his direction? Of course I am, another part of me says. What am I, a coward?
The grand finale of my plan was fast approaching. But for now, I could rest.
The aforementioned finale.
The date was July 22, 2025. I had been bracing my horrible son against the wind for what felt like hours as I lay in wait for the couchfucker's motorcade. Our hardy group of dissidents had grown quiet as the sun inched towards the horizon. It was getting cold.
The wind changed. Police and Secret Service alike started urging us onto the sidewalk; no toe could be out of line. No sound had come over their radios, but they had clearly gotten the signal: it was go time.
A parade of trucks, then an ambulance, then a certifiable onslaught of black SUVs streamed past me. I was focused on one thing: pinpointing the pope-smiter cowering in the murk of federal-issue window tint as he confronted the formidable reality of my horrible son.
There! In one obnoxious SUV I spotted six men in suits, seated three-and-three, facing one another. I could swear to you that each one was awkwardly looking at his shoes, as if unwilling to address the ten-foot-tall abomination in the room. As they flew past, I knew. He was in there. He had seen it.
Victory had never been so sweet. There are no words in the English language that can accurately convey that moment, but I will try:
Glorious. Succulent. Triumphal.
Rapturous. Exultant. Intoxicating.
Monumental.
Euphoric.
Soon, videos would go up. Redditors would laugh about the "barn door sized Vance meme." Denizens of Cotswold would reach out, asking if I was available for Vance's next vacation. My parents would see it on the evening news. But right now it was me, the wretched man one vanishing step away from the most powerful position in this hemisphere, and the knowledge that, while he may not have known my name or face, he now knew the malice I carry for him in my heart.
This was my moment.
And once it passed, I had to explain to the ferry service that the memecrime would fit in their cargo hold, on account of having already fit in there once before. Such is life under fascism.
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(1) The author is a professed atheist
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