Take, say, the current president. When Donald Trump won the 2016 election, his online supporters liked to say that they memed him into the White House. All of their semi-ironic internet boosterism had sincerely paid off.

And this was not as unexpected a tactic as it seemed. Wider forces in American culture had been psychically Photoshopping Trump into the presidency for decades. He’d long been cast as a kind of novelty president: a totally ridiculous, not-realistic option, but an option nonetheless. Now those two, seemingly opposed roles — the fake president, and the real one — have aligned.

Perhaps it all began in 1988, when Spy magazine ran an article called “Nation to Trump: We Need You” and reported, “We have come to believe that a Donald Trump candidacy is viable.” That was meant to be a joke, but didn’t Trump’s critics treat his actual campaign like a joke, all the way until he seriously won? Long before Trump’s presidency was a reality, it was, for Spy, a dumb idea. Yet it was an idea: To be parodied as president, he had to be in some way plausible as president.

The magazine commissioned a multiple-choice poll asking, “Who are you most disappointed isn’t running for president?” It slipped in the name of one of its favorite objects of mockery. And it took the result — four percent wished he was running — as an opportunity to knock him again: “Look at these impressive figures Trump can build on (and how he can build!).” Twenty-eight years later, he finished the job.