Oct 19, 2016If you were the kind of person wanting to use the Harambe meme as an excuse to be offensive and juvenile in the name of whimsical fun, then the Harambe meme was all yours. If you were looking for an actual excuse to be racist, then the Harambe meme provided that as well.
↩︎ Vox
The memes are trying to tell us something
Memes have been good to Biden. Not so for Pence thus far.
For many, the recent election's shocks have been somewhat tempered by a deluge of memes celebrating outgoing Vice President Joe Biden as a merry prankster bent on messing with the incoming administration.
Biden: Hillary was saying they took the W's off the keyboards when Bush won!
— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) November 13, 2016
Obama: Joe put-
Biden: I TOOK THE T'S, THEY CAN ONLY TYPE RUMP pic.twitter.com/D6Vh7Zu429
Reflections of Biden and Obama's imagined relationship as impulsive scamp and responsible adult, respectively, appear in another currently popular meme: Kermit and Evil Kermit.
Me: "It's not even worth it. I'm letting it go."
— Vanecia (@vaneciaruiz) November 15, 2016
Me to me: "Get petty" pic.twitter.com/r8Q8R6Elsm
Inevitably, Biden's successor Mike Pence will get the meme treatment, but will anyone care? If the sad current crop of Pence memes is any indication, no.
Nov 11, 2016Never in our most ironic dreams did we the think that the spirit of our tired, lager-fueled pisstakes would end up leading to a resurgence of white nationalism and make the prospect of a fascist America faintly realistic. But the internet is weird like that.
↩︎ The Guardian
Mike Cernovich is having a moment
Though its (ostensible) efforts to promote Jill Stein's campaign may not have had much success (she's still polling fourth in a four-way race), a Facebook page dedicated to sharing "dank memes" about the Green Party presidential candidate has at least been good for a few laughs, a common feature in an election year rife with political memes. (See also Gary Johnson's "dank memes" page here.) But maybe no one seems to understand memes as a conveyor of political messaging as much as alt-right memester Mike Cernovich, who in his own view "create[s] compelling spectacles using conflict."
Nov 2, 2016In the past, I would’ve been tempted to say, about the Internet, that although everybody has a megaphone, in many cases it’s a quiet one. You can put up a YouTube video, but who’s going to watch it? Now, however ridiculous what you’re saying is, if you make it memetically successful, something really bad can spread through the culture.
↩︎ The New Yorker
Pity Ken Bone, aka Obi-Wan Kenboni
IZOD aficionado and former Christian drummer Ken Bone went from unknown to overnight celebrity, to stale joke in a matter of days due to the earnest energy policy question he raised in the second presidential debate. But his "memeification" followed a familiar arc. At least Halloween brought us some decent Photoshops of Obi-Wan Kenboni.
When tech companies and Skittles candies turn racist
Since Milo Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter for harassing Leslie Jones with a barrage of overtly racist tweets (and rightly so considering Twitter's rules), some Twitter trolls have decided to code their racially hostile language using the names of popular tech companies and Skittles candy. Much like the anti-Semitic (((echoes))) meme, Twitter's algorithm can't do much to stop it.
Skittles as a codeword for Muslims entered the lexicon after Trump Jr. tweeted a (now-deleted) meme unfavorably comparing refugees to the candy, to which Mars Inc., owner of Skittles, responded quickly and admirably.
Can a racist meme be rehabilitated?
Less than a month after the Anti-Defamation League added Pepe the Frog to its database of online hate symbols, the group teamed with Pepe creator Matt Furie in a campaign to #SavePepe using “a series of positive Pepe memes and messages.”
In an article he wrote for TIME, Furie mentions both his dismay at losing control of his creation, but also his hope for redemption in the the ever-changing nature of memes. Hopefully he'll have more success than #ImWithKer.
Where memes go to die
A Trump-supporting Pennsylvania mayor, Charles Wasko, faced calls for his resignation after he posted racist and misogynist memes to his public Facebook page. One of the memes featured an image of 2012 GOP convention speaker Clint Eastwood holding a noose in the film The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly with the words "Barry, this rope is for you." Wasko refused to apologize or resign, but on October 17 he was voted out of office. He is reportedly still posting awful memes to Facebook.
The Editors' Longreads Picks
- An excellent essay on poverty and writing by Starr Davis. Updated May 31, 2022
- Novelist Héctor Tobar tries to understand the 1992 Los Angeles riots through the experiences of a single high school.
- Steven Johnson with a long assessment of the current state of A.I. and language. (The illusion has gotten very good.)
Welcome to The Morning News Tournament of Books, 2017 edition.
- Our championship match is decided in the Tournament of Books, with news of a Rooster surprise debuting this summer. Updated Mar 31, 2017
- In Thursday's action, Reyhan Harmanci sets up a colossal final.
- The Zombie round opens with Buzzfeed's Isaac Fitzgerald reading The Nix and The Underground Railroad.
Все ваши Белый дом принадлежит нам.
- "Will Putin expose the failings of American democracy or will he inadvertently expose the strength of American democracy?" Updated Mar 3, 2017
- Wilbur Ross just wanted to make some money in ethically gray areas (that should've prevented him from taking office).
- Jeff Sessions's spokeswoman can't help but continue to lie.
The oceans are under assault, and not just from the White House and friends.
- Trump's assault on the environment begins with American headwaters. Updated Mar 1, 2017
- Don't just blame the oil companies for destroying the oceans—blame sushi restaurants.
- Nothing escapes the deepest trenches of the ocean floor. Not light, not nutrients, not pollutants.