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A Newsweek writer kept owning himself after tweeting out some porn
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A Newsweek writer kept owning himself after tweeting out some porn

Jay Hathaway—
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hallenger Photo via kurteichenwald/Twitter (Fair Use) Illustration by Jason Reed

Was this guy looking at cartoon porn, or what?

Kurt Eichenwald, centrist Newsweek columnist and 2016’s shittiest Twitter user, is a favorite target of Weird Twitter jokesters because of his seemingly infinite capacity for self-owns. He just can’t stop making himself look bad, and his response is often to dig the hole deeper. Which is why, on Thursday, Eichenwald went on a tweetstorm about tentacle porn.

The fun began around 10pm Wednesday when Eichenwald tweeted out a photo of some hateful anti-Semitic propaganda he’d been sent. It didn’t have the effect he intended, though, because his browser window was visible in the background of the photo, and there was a big ol’ cartoon porn tab open there.

https://twitter.com/memealchemy/status/872680972990402561

“Hentai” is the Japanese term for x-rated comic art, and Eichenwald had seemingly exposed himself as being deeply into it. The tab he had open [NSFW] is from a site called Hentai Rules, and it features a cartoon panel of a young-looking anime girl spreading her legs and saying “Make sure you pop it in and out slowly.”

For the Venn diagram of Weird Twitter and Leftist Twitter that loves dunking on Eichenwald, this was like Christmas in June. The jokes came hard and fast, all night long and into the morning.

https://twitter.com/red_destin/status/872695195112017921

Eichenwald didn’t respond until Thursday afternoon, and his explanation of the errant hentai tab was even more of a gift to the internet than the original goof. He claimed he wasn’t actually masturbating to the cartoon porn, he was actually trying to prove something to his wife. Here’s his tweetstorm about “tentacle porn”:

So, to sum up, Eichenwald’s explanation is that his wife did not believe tentacle porn existed, so he and his sons endeavored to prove it to her by opening a hentai comic that apparently doesn’t include any tentacles.

https://twitter.com/libbycwatson/status/872861790060806145

And in the process of verifying his story to the world, he posted a text with his wife where he asks “were our (adult) sons and i trying to prove to you that tentacle porn exists?”

This only exacerbated the weirdness of his explanation, and it also invoked the “large adult sons” meme, which was at one time hugely popular on Weird Twitter. Honestly, he couldn’t have made a better joke if he’d meant to.

Rather than resolving anything, Eichenwald’s tweetstorm only brought more attention to the hentai flub. Even if you take him at his word, his defense is a truth funnier than any fiction.

And Eichenwald’s “cartoon parn” typo has also taken on a life of its own, giving Donald Trump’s “covfefe” a run for its money:

https://twitter.com/BillionDeadCops/status/872879578674601984

On a day where the rest of the news highlights intense political divisions, it’s nice that the internet can come together to agree on one thing: mocking Kurt Eichenwald.

Jay Hathaway

Jay Hathaway

Jay Hathaway is a former senior writer who specialized in internet memes and weird online culture. He previously served as the Daily Dot’s news editor, was a staff writer at Gawker, and edited the classic websites Urlesque and Download Squad. His work has also appeared on nymag.com, suicidegirls.com, and the Morning News.

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