Credit: Musicwala.

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.

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.

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 18, 2016

Never 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.

Memes are the most effective means of political messaging, which isn't necessarily a good thing.
↩︎ The Guardian
Nov 11, 2016

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, 2016

In 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.

Richard Dawkins, coiner of "meme," makes a guest appearance in a profile of the alt-right's master troll.
↩︎ The New Yorker
Nov 2, 2016

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.

Oct 19, 2016

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.

Oct 19, 2016

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.

Oct 19, 2016
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