Most of us were taught at a young age: “Don’t scratch it, you’ll only make it worse.” Rep. Devin Nunes apparently did not heed that lesson.
A few days ago, a Twitter parody account called “Devin Nunes’ cow” had only about 1,200 followers. You can be forgiven if you hadn’t heard of it, not many people had. All it really did was relentlessly mock Nunes, a California Republican and staunch ally of President Donald Trump.
Nunes sure had heard of it, though, and it bugged him enough that the account was included in a high-profile lawsuit filed Monday seeking $250 million from Twitter Inc. TWTR, +4.16% , claiming defamation, among other things.
So of course — because this is how the internet works, as Nunes is finding out — by Wednesday, “Devin Nunes’ cow” had more than half a million followers, and can now disseminate its Nunes insults and allegations on a massive scale that it previously could not have dreamed of (assuming cows can dream, of course). As of Wednesday night, the cow had 528,000 followers — that’s a 41,000% increase in two days — while Nunes’ own verified account had a mere 396,000.
As one tweeter pointed out, the parody account has more followers than Nunes had votes in November’s election.
More people follow the Devin Nunes' Cow account than voted for actual Devin Nunes in 2018. pic.twitter.com/sKhVQ1bcbL
— John in Mpls (@johninmpls) March 19, 2019
The cow (it’s a reference to Nunes’ family dairy, BTW) got a little help from signal-boosters as varied as late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, conservative pundit Bill Kristol and ‘Star Trek” actor George Takei, but it appears the mooovement has struck a chord.
It’s unclear if Nunes has learned a lesson from this, but it seems clear that there is one — sometimes, it’s best to just leave a mooing cow alone.
