How am I supposed to take liberals’ complaints about mass shootings seriously when half of them don’t even know what the “A” in AR-15 stands for?

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) October 26, 2023

I’m not going to be lectured about gun safety by people who think the “AR” in AR-15 stands for “assault rifle”.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) October 27, 2023

Writing good satire can be hard. Writing about good satire can be even harder. Some of us who might be pretty clever on some days find it exceedingly difficult on others to elucidate even the simplest description of the process or why the inspiration to produce it comes and goes like the weather. Which is to say when it rains it pours. Every so often some of us find the correct thread and follow it long enough to print something electrifyingly funny – especially in the MAGA era where a lot of this shit is more than absurd enough on its own that no thread need be pulled.

Satire can be easy too, paradoxically. Sometimes all one need do is just shift the context ever so slightly on a situation to properly demonstrate how stupid and/or outrageous it is. Or a prior situation. Whatever. We doubt the guy behind the New York Times Pitchbot account spends much time contemplating the nuts and bolts of the art however. He seems to just practice it, coasting rightfully on his talent at quick and concise burns of the political-media ecosystem with ease.

Pitchbot posted screenshots of both these tweets side-by-side a little while ago leading us to embed them above. He didn’t comment, so we have no insight into how he felt about his prophecy being unintentionally fulfilled by a frequent target of such mockery. We’ve been there too not long ago, and while it is funny on the surface, it can also somehow feel vaguely unsatisfying – even infuriating – underneath. Like a retroactive undermining of a good effort that makes one want to say “Hey fuck you asshole, get your own line!” as though Boebert had knowingly stole someone else’s joke. Or maybe Picthbot is just spiking the football like normal-ish people would do.