Earlier this month, Joe Jonas filed to divorce Sophie Turner. They had been together for seven years.
Amidst previous speculation, an abrupt and unsubtle flurry of “reports” came out.
There was more to these headlines than run-of-the-mill misogyny. Many noted that it was a Sophie Turner smear campaign.
Fans have seen this same divorce narrative play out again and again. It’s an old PR strategy.
Maybe too old of a PR strategy. It certainly didn’t go over well on social media.
Take a look at the resulting memes, below:
It’s over!
In the days leading up to Joe Jonas’ divorce filing, and even more prominently in the days that followed, various headlines began to come out. Many portrayed Sophie as some sort of “party girl,” while presenting Joe as a devoted dad and long-patient husband. That seemed to fly in the face of the couple’s previous image and statements in interviews. Many suspected that Joe’s team, whether it was his high-powered celebrity divorce attorney or others, was behind this apparent smear campaign.
It seemed so obvious
We have to point out that this particular tweet is a hit-and-miss. On the one hand, misogyny is a rot within our society and it distorts people’s views in many ways. At the same time, TMZ was not the only tabloid reporting these conspicuously skewed headlines. In terms of reliability and due diligence, TMZ is one of the most reliable sources of insider info on the planet. (No tabloid is perfect, but if TMZ were reporting that I had died, I’d start checking to see if I could walk through walls like a ghost) We have no reason to doubt that TMZ’s sources were legit. But that doesn’t mean that the sources were right — or unbiased.
Then things became even more transparent
The same week that Joe filed for divorce, people “suddenly” started spotting him out in public. With his kids. Being a doting dad. That’s very sweet and all, but also incredibly suspicious. Especially since cameras happened to spot them. Sure, that can happen organically. And sure, sometimes someone close to a star will rat them out (there are infamous cases of this) to photographers. But it doesn’t look organic. Whoever’s behind it, it looks calculated and clownish.
The facts don’t match this narrative
For years, the world has seen Sophie Turner step back from acting — after appearing in blockbuster superhero films and, obviously, growing up before our eyes on eight seasons of Game of Thrones. Now we’re suddenly supposed to believe that she’s some wild party girl (as if that would be damning even if it were true) while Joe is her long-suffering husband who can’t stand to see her tearing the family apart anymore? It’s just not realistic. (Again, we cannot confirm and honestly doubt that Joe is personally feeding any of this to TMZ or other tabloids)
The memes
This is when a bunch of genuinely FAKE headlines began cropping up on Twitter. This time, they weren’t from Page Six or aggregated from entertainment news accounts. Instead, tweet after tweet emerged from fan accounts who were making fun of the coverage.
Like so
Instead of repeating the often laughable headlines about ways in which Sophie had allegedly failed Joe in their marriage, these memes invented new squabbles.
Some were lyrics
Many were petty nothings, like “because Sophie didn’t keep the water pitcher filled in the fridge.” Others were more inventive, from quoting lyrics to famous films.
And a lot of them repeated the same joke
Sophie is not what we’d call “extremely” tall. It is our understanding that she is 5-foot-9. However, given the volume of photos in which she towers over her erstwhile husband, cracking jokes about this height difference came to mind.
Ouch!
Their height difference is only a few inches, but under patriarchal cultural values, many men suffer needless insecurities over their height. In other words, it’s an easy target.
Clearly, people were feeling some kind of way
Simply put, people wanted to mock the headlines but also roast Joe in the process. And some of these tweets were absolute bangers. A few seemed a little mean-spirited … as in, more than they needed to be.
Okay, but listen
Body-shaming is not okay. That doesn’t mean that the image of Sophie Turner — beautiful and beloved by millions — holding something in the air while Joe tries to jump up and reach them isn’t VERY funny. Fictitious, but funny.
The underlying message was clear
Even if Joe wasn’t the culprit behind these heavily skewed stories, he was the beneficiary. So people mocked the headlines, mocked him, and mocked the entire PR strategy — one that’s worked for men like Brad Pitt and countless others.
Don’t worry; they weren’t all height jokes
Imagining the absolute pettiness of an over-the-top bully tightening jars to torment their spouse is either very funny or part of a very upsetting psychological thriller. Likely airing on Lifetime. Thankfully, this is the former.
STOP!!
These are so funny. If these two ever reconcile, we’d love to see them reenact some of these. What an amazing photoshoot that would be to announce that they’re back together. But … is there a chance that Joe is behind the real stories? Whether or not that’s the case, it looks like widespread mockery did its job. Especially since we know that the Jonas Brothers are extremely aware of meme culture and keep track of social media rends. If Joe didn’t see these jokes, his brothers certainly did.
Look at this
After relative silence in public, Joe and Sophie not only put out a short statement reminding people to ignore stories, but Joe spoke about it to his audience. Even if this is a worse-case scenario — that is, if Joe was complicit in a PR campaign like this that attempted to smear Sophie — he clearly thought better of it. And honestly? A better chance might be that someone who thought that they were helping him, either through social ties or on his payroll, started badmouthing Sophie. Again, it backfired, and Joe has not had a PR crisis this bad since Taylor wrote songs about him. Whoops!