“Chewbacca” is trending because of one of the D.C. rioters

Are we ready to laugh about the incompetent terrorists who tried to occupy the Capitol Building the other day? Let’s see.

Yesterday, while Congress was debating whether to certify Joe Biden’s win as president of the United States, a mob of pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. after being whipped into a frenzy by a speech from the president, who has been spreading baseless conspiracy theories about the election results for months. Security at the capitol was surprisingly low considering the number of people outside and the level of anger. Overall, it sucked a lot.

Honestly, it may be too soon to try and laugh about this, but consider this a test case: “Chewbacca” is trending on Twitter at the moment, not because of anything related to Star Wars, but because one of the ding-dongs in the mob was dressed in some kind of Davy Crockett-meets-Krampus cosplay. Writer Yousef Munayyer dubbed him “the guy in the chewbacca bikini,” and it caught on in a big way:

Suddenly, everyone had something to say about the Chewbacca guy, and about Chewbacca himself:

Is it working? Is it funny yet? Or do we need more time to process the fact that a bunch of conspiracy theorists in dumb outfits were able to storm the center of American government and delay the certification of a presidential election?

Probably more time. While we wait, we’ll see if the Chewbacca discourse changes:

Raawwrr.

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