69, which everyone knows is “the sex number,” has, until this morning, been reliably, innocently funny. You write it on something and it looks like two people engaged in wholesome, egalitarian, mutual oral sex. You type it on the internet and others respond “nice” in a linguistically solidified form of appreciation. It’s a good time. It hurts nobody.
It’s also one of the few things that has made a successful transition from being scrawled on lockers with Sharpie to the modern social media landscape. And now, after bringing us all together, 69 jokes are fucking done.
Aside from Trump’s tweet using a vaguely worded bit of optimism too speculative to actually matter, the real issue at hand here is the proximity of both “69%” and “Nice!” in this message. Something we all took for granted has been spoiled by association.
The loss is already being felt across the internet.