Consider this: A parody account pretending to be an imaginary cow owned by Representative Devin Nunes, the California Republican, is more popular on Twitter than the congressman, a day after he sued the account (and Twitter) for $250 million.

This is how politics and humor now play out in the strange world of social media.

The parody account @DevinCow had only 1,200 followers on Monday, but it ended Wednesday afternoon with 467,000, surpassing Mr. Nunes’s account with its 395,000 followers.

And the count was still growing. By Thursday evening, after news coverage, the gap had widened, with the fake cow at 600,000 followers.

But there’s more. A website now sells Devin Cow T-shirts. Twitter users have been celebrating with cow-themed items and jokes. Even Mr. Nunes’s fellow legislators showed their support for the errant beast. Ted Lieu, a Democratic congressman from Southern California, told Mr. Nunes on Twitter to “lighten up, dude.”