If you’re a “citizen of the Internet”, or one of the “Twitterarti” — in other words, if your job is so short on actual work that you can spend your day on your phone or computer keeping up with the latest tempest-in-a-teapot — then you’ve no doubt heard about the “Gorilla Channel”. If you haven’t, here’s the story in a nutshell. The author Michael Wolff has written and released a book about President Trump, whom he calls “aberrant” although he sang a different tune when he was writing the book. Although I haven’t read the book (and probably won’t, I don’t care for detailed psuedo-insider portraits of things that happened just months ago) it is being widely reported as being thoroughly critical of Trump, often to a degree that worries pundits on both sides of the aisle.
Yesterday, a Twitter humorist who goes by the handle of @PixelatedBoat decided to publish a fake “excerpt” from the book. It’s far from the first time he has done something like this, as you’ll see. But this time was special — because his parody page, which claimed that Trump spent 17 hours a day kneeling in front of a television and talking to gorillas, was taken as absolute gospel by a variety of heavy-duty left-wingers, including a few writers at the New York Times.