One of my coping strategies for surviving the current administration is exchanging JD Vance memes with my friends. Surely you know the images and videos I'm talking about — one iteration of the meme might have even recently played a part in last month's detention of 21-year-old Norwegian visitor to the United States, Mads Mikkelsen (not to be confused with Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen), who was denied entry at Newark Liberty International Airport after immigration officers found a chubby Vance image on his phone.
Matthew Gault, writing for Gizmodo, describes the JD Vance image depicted in the memes as "bloated" and "horrifying," with huge eyes and grotesque carnival features. He also gives some examples:
There's goth JD Vance, JD Vance with a giant lollipop, JD Vance as a dying Darth Vader, JD Vance as a nuclear explosion, and JD Vance as chicken McNuggets.
Whatever the Vance theme, the images in the memes depict a "grotesque and inflated JD Vance with cold, dead blue eyes staring out at the viewer with horrifying intensity."
Gault posits that Vance is 2025's equivalent of Pepe the Frog/Groyper, the beloved symbol used by alt-right white supremacists (and Trump!) in their racist meme wars. Gault explains that Bloated Vance resembles Groyper but is somehow even "less human." Gault continues, "Groyper stares at the viewer with a little smile and a twinkle in his eyes. Chubby Vance's huge eyes empty of everything but malice."
Gault states that, unlike Pepe/Groyper, he's seen the JD Vance memes being shared by people of all political persuasions, and speculates about why the memes are so ubiquitous:
I think the reason the memes are so popular and cut across partisan lines is that there is something uniquely alien and awful about Vance. He's been a public figure and the object of ridicule for more than a decade. A parody excerpt of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy led to the Associated Press reporting on a rumor that he'd fucked a couch. Something about us wanted that to be true so badly that the mainstream press reported on it.
The memes, somehow, reflect an essential truth about Vance. My favorite of the bunch, so far, is one that shows off a group of the Chubby caricatures. "And yet a trace of the true self exists in the false self," the meme reads. This is the heart of it. I imagine the Vice President's soul is putrid, a barren and vile thing. The memes show me a small fiction that speaks to a deeper truth.
Like Gizmodo's Matthew Gault, I also "love them all," and I definitely derive what he calls "grotesque pleasure" from them. Some of my favorites are Vice Predator, Sphere Vance, "Space"/Katy Perry Vance, and PennyVance. One of the best sources for JD Vance memes is the satire/parody Instagram page, "The Daily Vance," which provides a constant stream of, as the creator of the page calls it, "Vanceposting," which is kind of like shitposting, but better. Nostromocore also posts top-quality Vance memes if you want even more. If, in even the tiniest ways, JD Vance memes are helping you survive these awful times, you should definitely go check out The Daily Vance and Nostromocore, and send some to your friends and family, to let them know how much you care about them!
Previously:
• European tourist denied entry to US over JD Vance meme on his phone
• JD Vance becomes laughingstock when he mixes up slain American soldiers with the Beatles (video)
• The Late Show plays with JD Vance and vas deferens
• Trump campaign fails to spin JD Vance yelling at his son into a heartwarming story
