The Right Is Starting to Get Better at Comedy — Blonde woman in blue top beside Paul Joseph Watson tweet about the right getting better at comedy

The Right Is Starting to Get Better at Comedy

2018reaction imageclassic

Published October 2, 2026

A July 2018 tweet by InfoWars contributor Paul Joseph Watson praising a conservative parody video got flipped on its author almost immediately1. Critics started pasting the caption over unfunny right-wing content, and the line became a durable sarcastic reaction tag for conservative humor that lands with a thud2.

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Overview

The Right Is Starting to Get Better at Comedy is an ironic reaction image built from a sincere Paul Joseph Watson tweet from July 20181. The joke flips Watson's confidence back on him: critics pair his caption with conservative comedy bits they consider unfunny, so the sentence reads as self-indictment rather than praise3. The format works whether the pairing is a crude edit, a cringe cosplay, or a Fox News monologue.

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Two common patterns show up. In one, people quote-tweet or screenshot Watson's original post as a header above a fresh example of right-wing humor flopping4. In the other, they Photoshop the embedded video thumbnail inside the tweet itself, swapping Allie Beth Stuckey's clip for something else that undercuts the claim2. Both versions keep Watson's wording intact because the whole point is that the sentence does the work on its own.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter
Creator
Paul Joseph Watson
Date
2018

On July 24th, 2018, InfoWars contributor Paul Joseph Watson tweeted a short video by conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey, in which Stuckey edited herself into an interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez1. Watson captioned it, "The right is starting to get better at comedy and it's making lefties nervous"1. The post pulled in thousands of retweets and likes over the following months5.

Watson meant the line as a sincere endorsement of Stuckey's edit, but the phrasing, confident, self-congratulatory, and tied to a specific contested example, made it easy for critics to turn around5.

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How It Spread

The flip began the day after Watson posted. On July 25th, 2018, Twitter user @classiclib3ral shared a Photoshopped version of the tweet that replaced the Stuckey video with an image of Alex Jones dressed in a dog costume, picking up more than 490 retweets and 4,000 likes over the following six months2. That edit set the template: keep Watson's caption, swap the attached media.

Through the rest of 2018, the sentence worked as both a reaction image and a thread opener. On October 25th, 2018, @nathanTbernard paired the tweet with a photo of a man dressed as the "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" meme, which drew more than 500 retweets and 3,800 likes within four months3. Around the same stretch, @vadimnewquist used it over a grid of images of men in wigs4. KYM documented the pattern as a running criticism of conservative comedy, with the caption acting as a sarcastic frame rather than a punchline on its own5.

Timeline

2018-07-24

Paul Joseph Watson tweets the Allie Beth Stuckey / AOC edit with the caption that became the meme[1].

2018-07-25

@classiclib3ral posts a Photoshopped version featuring Alex Jones in a dog costume, launching the swap template[2].

2018-10-25

@nathanTbernard pairs Watson's tweet with a photo of a man cosplaying the Attack Helicopter meme[3].

2018-11

@vadimnewquist posts the caption over images of men wearing wigs[4].

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Frequently Asked Questions