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1) Joker abandons incels
When Todd Phillips’ Joker came out in 2019, it spurred a rash of spurious discourse that a sympathetic portrayal of a mentally ill white man prone to anger would inspire hordes of maladjusted men to commit wanton acts of violence.
Digital pundits worried incels—a 2014-era internet phenomenon tied to one spree killing that metastasized alongside the moral panic over young men online flocking to former President Donald Trump—would be unleashed on the population.
But the movie did not inspire involuntary celibate posters, the ones who desperately want to have sex with a woman but can’t, to commit crimes. That’s probably because the panic was predicated not on the movie itself but pearl-clutching online over the trailer.
The Joker 2 trailer dropped this week and there’s one thing we can be thankful for—it won’t inspire a spate of takes about incels becoming Joker-fied. Because in Joker 2, Joker has a girlfriend.
Lady Gaga stars alongside Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck in what everyone assumes is a Harley Quinn role, as the trailer shows them falling in love over petty crime and ballroom dancing.
And while one might hope incels seeing an incel escape could inspire them, the doomer nature of the movement bled through on forums reacting to the trailer.
Some thought it was a direct rebuttal to the community’s love of the first.
“It’s like they did this specifically because they accidentally made incel kino last time,“ one person said.
Kino is slang for top-notch cinema, and Joker 2, in their eyes, was not it.
“Betrayed bc he has a lady,” said one.
“h..he’s not… an incel like me?” wrote another.
But worse, Arthur might be, instead of a monster, a … beta boyfriend.
“If it was anything like the first one, he will kill her in the end … But that won’t happen.”
Instead, they feared, he’ll just mopily follow around Lady Gaga as the film apes its most iconic moments in service of Lady Jokers.
“They will just make her do everything Arthur did in the first movie, because yas slay female joker, and he will just somewhat be there, but he won’t be important,” wrote one person.
Others called out shots that explicitly mimicked the first movie, only with Gaga included in them, like Phoenix’s infamous stair dance.
And plenty were bothered by what most everyone is assuming—that, in casting Gaga, the sequel will be a campy musical.
“first movie was kino but this looks fucking horrible ngl, also annoying how theyre pretty much not telling us whether or not its an actual musical until we actually go to watch it,” one person wrote.
In the parlance of modern times, Joker 2 is as thrilling as Biden’s reelection bid.
It’s “actually joever anons i am going to cry it looks so fucking bad. unless they take the unconventional approach that she doesnt actually love him and is actually projecting her craziness onto him its going to suck so fucking bad.”
While you may be tempted to feel sorry for the incels, their one love falling for someone else, at least we won’t have to listen to months of discourse now.
2) Joe Biden Fanfic Cope
While massive amounts of Democrats seem to be rallying around Vice President Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden announced he’d no longer seek re-election, some of the most ride-or-die Bides, who fought furiously until the end, were upset that their adamant attitude had been entirely for naught.
So they’ve turned to the most tried and true internet coping mechanism: Cope.
What if, read a mega-viral thread on Threads, Biden didn’t drop out because he needed to, or couldn’t go on, but because he’d been planning to all along? Powering through the Democratic primary, fumbling the debate, going on a sputtering redemption arc while vehemently denying calls for him to step aside…
All part of the plan, according to the thread.
“Turns out the 81-year-old man everyone said was losing it, expertly outmaneuvered every coup plotter against him in under 24 hours … This was all teed up and executed by President Joe Biden with the perfection only wisdom and experience can deliver,” wrote the thread, which got over 10,000 reactions as it detailed an elaborate plan wherein Biden slow played his departure to trick the GOP.
“Biden dropped out after allowing Trump and his minions to spend four days and millions of dollars going on live TV…. mounting a campaign against him. He screwed Trump and Republicans with perfection. Completely changed the landscape in a way no one saw coming and nobody was prepared for.”
His timing of announcement and endorsement of Harris was also dubbed a masterstroke, supposedly catching the media off guard while thwarting other Democrats who sought an open primary.
There was plenty of fan fic involved, with Biden secretly making calls to ensure this masterstroke.
“Biden made the necessary calls on background to make sure the turnover was seamless and he got it done. He trusted Kamala Harris and Kamala Harris trusted him, they had each other’s backs. He made the campaign a turnkey operation for her. That was no small accomplishment.”
Others along for the ride posted that Biden intentionally sank the debate, setting the stage for his own removal.
“Biden placed the Republicans like a fiddle. Watching that debate, I was astounded. We have seen Biden debate thousands of time,” one said, claiming he chose to avoid a contentious primary by staying in and ensuring with little time until the election, Democrats would rally around him.
“Can you imagine learning in a future Biden biography that he intentionally tanked his debate performance, and he was every anonymous leak about him thinking about resigning? All of it being setup for him to be able to retire and hand the next Presidency to Kamala Harris,” wrote one.
“Maybe Dark Brandon just might have pulled off the greatest rope-a-dope of all time,” added another.
Call it a cope a dope.
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