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"He's Literally Suing an Imaginary Cow": Late-Night Hosts Mock Rep. Devin Nunes:
On Monday, Devin Nunes' cow was an obscure Twitter account with around 1,200 followers. Then Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) filed a lawsuit demanding that Twitter and several Twitter accounts—including the user behind the pseudonymous cow—pay him $250 million for the "pain, insult, embarrassment, humiliation, emotional distress and mental suffering, and injury to his personal and professional reputations" caused by their tweets.
Now, Devin Nunes' cow has more than 420,000[*] Twitter followers—that's more than Nunes himself, who has 395,000 followers.
It's a beautiful example of the Streisand Effect. Nunes appears to have filed the lawsuit in part to raise his own profile within the conservative movement, as the lawsuit was peppered with gratuitous swipes at the Democratic Party, Fusion GPS, and other high-profile villains in the conservative pantheon.
But the lawsuit appears to have done more to raise the profile of Devin Nunes' cow than it did Nunes himself. Television comedians Jimmy Kimmel, Trevor Noah, and Stephen Colbert all had fun at Nunes' expense on Tuesday night.
"He's literally suing an imaginary cow," Kimmel said, noting that Nunes had co-sponsored the Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act during the last session of Congress. "We can't have livestock insulting our elected officials. This DevinCow account obviously really bothers Devin Nunes. So in the interest of civility, I'm asking you please don't follow @DevinCow on Twitter."
[...] Santa Clara University legal scholar Eric Goldman is skeptical that Nunes will win his lawsuit. The law gives online service providers like Twitter broad immunity for content posted by its users. As for Devin Nunes' cow, many of the supposedly defamatory statements made by the parody account are clearly non-actionable opinions.
[*] 420,000 at the time the linked story was posted (2019-03-20 18:42:00 UTC). At the time of this submission (2019-03-21 03:42:03 UTC) the count had risen to 534K. That works out to adding 1000 followers every 5 minutes or so.
Following @DevinCow on Twitter could reveal moooving comments on all that is at steak in this rare social medium... you can run but you can't hide.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 22 2019, @06:00PM (5 children)
“Well, I think that when you use totalitarian tactics, people begin to act crazy, and I think there’s people that have every right to say what they want, if they want to smear someone, they can do it”
--Devin Nunes, 2010
Yet another fake free speech supporter.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22 2019, @06:52PM (1 child)
The plan is for each "side" to alternate in support of taking away your rights because "the other side" is abusing them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 24 2019, @04:52PM
I have been trying to explain this to people for a few years now (since it became apparent to me how true it is.) Others have been trumpeting this since I was a kid, but there are some ways you don't want to stand out, especially when you have another 10 years of school blaring a different set of opinions at you and how you should mock, belittle or shout down anyone who disagrees.
America as a country will not improve until the people wake up and look around at how they are all getting fucked. But based on the average character I see in Americans today, and that likely has existed since the Founding Fathers, I can't see it improving in my lifetime, or even succeeding ones. In the meantime so many rights have been given up in the last 2-3 decades that I can't fathom raising a child here anymore. Much of the anti-communist propaganda spewed during my childhood now resembles America as much as it resembles Russia and China. Moving forward, I wonder if anything will change, or if America will simply crumble under the weight of its single-minded divisiveness.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Bot on Friday March 22 2019, @08:38PM (2 children)
>and I think there’s people that
He said there is people that, not everybody. Which makes the statement meaningless. This guy masters political language. Dems should try to buy him out.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22 2019, @08:51PM (1 child)
God DAMN yer dumb. OpenAI might have an upgrade for you soon but I doubt your overlords would approve of open source in their Turdmatic 9000.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Bot on Saturday March 23 2019, @10:45AM
Accurate text analysis is quite dumb, yes, that doesn't make the result less true. Guy uttered something with scarce actual meaning, and you don't even recognize that it is detrimental to HIS image more than the perceived hypocrisy. But OK, if you want to defend him, who am I to judge.
Account abandoned.