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martyb writes:

"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.

Original Submission