The JD Vance rumor shows how easily misinformation spreads, with or without AI

The Mandela Effect is when people vividly remember something differently from how it actually happened. The Streisand Effect is when someone takes great pains to suppress information, inadvertently drawing further attention to it. And after this week, a brand-new phenomenon will sit comfortably in the same cushy section of the lexicon as its predecessors.

I’m speaking, of course, about the Vance Effect, which combines elements of those other terms, throws in some vulgarity, and gives the whole shebang a 2024 social media twist. You’ll probably want to be, uh, seated for this.

JD Vance had likely just experienced one of the best weeks of his youngish life. Last Monday, Donald Trump named the freshman senator his running mate, anointing him as the future of the GOP, and giving him a prime speaking spot at the Republican National Convention. It was the kind of week a MAGA politician dreams about. Unfortunately for Vance, it was promptly followed by what may very well be one of the most nightmarish weeks of his life.

First, President Joe Biden dropped out of the election last Sunday, upending the entire race and leading Trump to reportedly second-guess his VP selection. Then, a resurfaced Tucker Carlson interview with Vance widely shared his description of Kamala Harris as a “childless cat lady.” (Harris has co-parented two stepchildren with husband Doug Emhoff for more than a decade.) Vance’s denigration of childless adults provoked a backlash, even among conservative women. But the worst was yet to come.

It all started with a tweet. On July 15, a protected account with the handle @ricksrudecalves posted on X (formerly Twitter), a made-up incident, claiming it was from Vance’s mega-bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy. The poster mentioned a passage, supposedly located between pages 179-181, in which a teenage Vance defiles a couch for kicks. It was an evocative image, and Vance’s many detractors ran with it. By the time Vance had also earned the ire of childless cat owners everywhere, the internet was awash with jokes and lurid, fan-edited videos about Vance’s upholstered proclivities.

As much as tech media, including Fast Company, has sounded the alarm on how deepfakes would spread misinformation in this election, it turns out a successful campaign sometimes requires no AI whatsoever. All it took, apparently, was the credible specificity of alleging the steamy couch occurred between “pages 179-181.” (It is very funny to think of Vance—or anyone, really—devoting three entire pages to this anecdote in their memoir. Then again, Kristi Noem devoted extensive space in her recent book to her murder of an ill-mannered puppy.)

Much like the Mandela Effect, several people “misremembered” what actually occurred in Vance’s book. The situation only veered into Streisand territory, though, when the Associated Press got involved.

On Wednesday around lunchtime, right at the moment when the couch gags seemed to have crested, the AP put out a story denying that any such incident had ever taken place. Although the piece originally bore the relatively dry headline: “Posts spread baseless rumors about vice presidential pick JD Vance having sex with a couch,” most people saw the story with the cheekier headline: “No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch.”

Greatest example ever of "if you're explaining, you're losing" pic.twitter.com/xgYlrB7DtO— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) July 24, 2024

Greatest example ever of "if you're explaining, you're losing" pic.twitter.com/xgYlrB7DtO

Unlike the first version, this headline is practically begging to go viral, which it swiftly did. Much like the Streisand Effect, the more people knew they were not supposed to believe that Vance had been unchaste with a chaise longue, the more they wanted to believe it. A wave of memes soon followed, delivered with the kind of glee that suggests they will continue for a long time.

we cannot let JD Vance near the oval office pic.twitter.com/aKEAnaoLBB— Amy A (@lolennui) July 24, 2024

we cannot let JD Vance near the oval office pic.twitter.com/aKEAnaoLBB

“When I get that feeling I want sectional healing” 🎶🎵🎼 pic.twitter.com/L1i0XvXQvV— Joe G (@EastEndJoe) July 25, 2024

“When I get that feeling I want sectional healing” 🎶🎵🎼 pic.twitter.com/L1i0XvXQvV

Just met J.D. Vance’s high school girlfriend pic.twitter.com/yfluKUlQeS— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) July 24, 2024

Just met J.D. Vance’s high school girlfriend pic.twitter.com/yfluKUlQeS

my favorite throuple pic.twitter.com/4CDkg9zHR7— scotty🥥🌴 (@plathiandc) July 25, 2024

my favorite throuple pic.twitter.com/4CDkg9zHR7

If it seems like the AP should never have run such a story to begin with, the AP is in agreement. As of Thursday morning, the article had been removed. No explanation existed in its place; instead, clicking on a link to it simply led to a “Page Unavailable” screen. Of course, the fact that the article denying the rumor had been taken down proved to be further joke fodder.

Did the Associated Press retract its fact-check article denying JD Vance had sex with a couch? pic.twitter.com/P4nI6mqd4o— Jacob Shamsian ⚖️ (@JayShams) July 25, 2024

Did the Associated Press retract its fact-check article denying JD Vance had sex with a couch? pic.twitter.com/P4nI6mqd4o

Later on Thursday, Semafor’s media editor Max Tani posted an explanation on X: “A spokesperson for the AP tells me this story didn’t go through the wire service’s standard editing process, and the AP is looking into how it was published. The spokesperson also emphasizes that the piece did not go out on the wire to AP customers.”

Regardless of AP’s eventual containment efforts, though, the damage is already done. That’s just how social media works sometimes: Share even outrageously fake stories with enough force and they eventually take on a life of their own, becoming impossible to retract. Neither Vance nor the AP has any way of sweeping this one under the rug anymore.

The best they can hope for now is that, for some news readers, it will slip between the, uh, cracks.