Poop and pee plague the presidential race for Republican candidates online
Political potty art may be gross, but Americans are eating it up ahead of 2016's presidential election
With all of the potty-mouthed politicking among U.S. presidential candidates lately, rants about how "America is going down the toilet" are starting to make more sense.
Actual, literal sense.
A free mobile game called 'Trump Dump,' in which players drop feces on Republican front-runner Donald Trump until he himself turns into a pile of excrement, hit number 2 (no pun intended) on the iOS app charts last month, just days after its launch in both Canada and the U.S.
More recently, a British bar launched a "piss poll" in which patrons can urinate into the mouths of giant Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz cut-outs to weigh in on which Republican candidates they like least.
Nightclubs in Winnipeg and Paris have similarly installed Trump heads behind their urinals, and just this week an Ohio farmer made headlines for using cow manure to spell out the billionaire businessman's name across his land.
For whatever reason, aspects of human life usually reserved for the bathroom are coming front and centre in conversations surrounding the 2016 presidential election, particularly in the context of Republican candidates.
Some might argue that this steady stream of toilet-humour has been inspired by what America is seeing on the campaign trail – like Rubio suggesting that Trump wets his pants, or Trump suggesting that Hillary Clinton does "disgusting" things in the bathroom, or Trump calling Cruz a "pussy" during a televised speech.
"Can America's political discourse get any cruder?" asked CBC News correspondent Neil MacDonald in January, well before the size of candidates' genitals became a matter of public debate.
The answer appears to be yes. Yes it can.
Context-free quote from <a href="https://twitter.com/CNN">@CNN</a> guest just now: "Marco Rubio is the dog poop"
—@SimonHernandezHere are just a few more of the many ways people have been using crap to express their crappy feelings about the upcoming election online – because as gross as political poop-art may be, the internet is eating it up right now.
The 'Politicians to Poop' browser extension
This free Chrome extension replaces the names of 2016 U.S. presidential candidates with the infamous poo emoji (💩) for those who install it while they browse the web.
"Options allow you to 'poopify' the names of Democrats, Republicans, or both," reads the extension's description on GitHub. "Any major third-party candidates that emerge will also be added to the list."
The 'Donald Trump as poop' mural
Street artist and Banksy parodist 'Hanksy' installed this mural of Trump as a pile of poop, complete with buzzing flies, on the side of a building in Manhattan over the summer.
The online world adored it, as did locals according to CBS News. Those in the neighbourhood reportedly nicknamed this piece "Donald Dump."
The 'Ted Cruz Pooping His Pants' Tumblr
Simple in its concept and execution, this Tumblr consists solely of pictures of Canada-born U.S. Senator Ted Cruz making faces that, to some, may fit its tedcruzpoopinghispants.tumblr.com URL.
The Marco Rubio 'bae' shirt
In February, team Rubio debuted a shirt that fans could buy to support the "babyfaced thirst-machine" (as Jezebel calls him) Republican candidate. Playing on the slang word "bae," which is used as a term of affection among some English-speaking youth, the shirt reads "RU(BAE)O."
It didn't take long for the people of Twitter (and several blogs) to point out that "bae" also means "poop" in Danish.
Someone should tell him bae means poop.<a href="https://t.co/cg6YbWPjiv">https://t.co/cg6YbWPjiv</a>
—@betaporterLiteral 'Pieces of shit for Trump'
A smear campaign called 'Pieces of Shit for Trump' emerged online a few weeks ago, complete with its own website, Instagram account and printable signs.
"For too long, pieces of shit in this country have sat idly by as the current administration has made a mess of things," reads the website, created by the San Francisco advertising agency barrettSF. "It's time to be changed."
"From his political views to personal convictions, Donald J. Trump is a leader who not only understands the values of the common piece of shit, but who has the strength to push those values through Washington," the spiel continues. "A candidate who is truly for us, because he is."
The site encourages people to order a campaign kit and "turn every pile into a patriotic monument" by decorating their dogs' droppings with tiny Trump flags.
To date, there have been 59 posts on the campaign's Instagram hashtag.
For those interested, you can also order a separate company's branded Donald Trump dog poop bags. Or follow Triumph The Insult comic dog's quest to poop on as many presidential candidates as possible. Or watch a bull predict which candidates will get nominations... by pooping.
Or not.