Let’s start with something positive about last night’s vice-presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris.

It was less of a hot mess than the presidential debate, which left the world wondering how a population well in excess of 300 million people ended up with two men well past their sell-by dates as their choices.

Still, we know who Mike Pence really is (a bigot and a snitch, among other things), and he had to spend much of the debate defending his master, Donald Trump, which is a pretty tough gig.

If you want a serious look at the vice-presidential debate, you’ll find a video summary here, and a breakdown of the key moments here.

Suffice to say both sides think their candidate won.

Let’s leave all that behind and focus on the most viral moment of the evening, which involved a fly landing atop Pence’s head.

Watch from the 20-second mark. Bang, there it is:

The obvious joke here is that flies are attracted to shit, which is exactly what was coming out of Pence’s mouth for most of the debate.

Also, the fact that the fly could sit still for a full two minutes means it has a greater attention span than the president himself.

Devoid of the ugliness of the presidential debate, the fly really did steal the show, reports the BBC:

The phrase “the fly” has been tweeted and retweeted more than 700,000 times since it appeared during the debate.

The Joe Biden campaign has taken full advantage of this, registering the domain “flywillvote.com”, while a picture of the candidate holding a fly swatter has been liked more than 500,000 times at the time of writing.

The fly has united people on both sides of the aisle, with one person labelling it “an American hero” and another calling it “probably the most memorable thing that happened”.

Former senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway called for the fly to be given a mail-in ballot, while Republican Senator Rand Paul joked it was evidence of spying as “the deep state planted a bug” on Mr Pence.

Here’s Biden trying really hard to be down with the kids, yo:

Pitch in $5 to help this campaign fly. https://t.co/CqHAId0j8t pic.twitter.com/NbkPl0a8HV

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 8, 2020

The Twitter account below has, at the time of writing, close to 90 000 followers.

A sample of the fly’s tweets:

lord of the lies pic.twitter.com/crmdtRNjlT

— Mike Pence’s Fly 🏳️‍🌈 (@MikePenceFly___) October 8, 2020

to be clear: mike pence is a bigot who will do anything to remain in close proximity to power — including defending the avoidable deaths of 210,000 americans.

bzz

— Mike Pence’s Fly 🏳️‍🌈 (@MikePenceFly___) October 8, 2020

wait do i have covid now

— Mike Pence’s Fly 🏳️‍🌈 (@MikePenceFly___) October 8, 2020

These really are strange times we live in.

There are many, many memes, with CNET compiling a bunch here.

You can find more here and here.

That’s surely enough now.

Seriously, stop. I think you might have a problem.

[source:bbc]