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official-elmo · 5 years

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2016 was the most important year in Memes yet!

As a person who has spent a considerably long time on the internet browsing memes in the past years, I have come to the conclusion, that 2k16 was probably the most important year for memes.

The memes and events of this year not only revolutionized the format of memes but also changed the way memes were perceived by the general public. 2016 was the year in which the power of memes was finally recognized, which ultimately led to the commercialization and weaponization memes aswell.

Changing Formats

The memes of 2016 are the very foundation of present-day memes (2019) as far as format is concerned. Before 2016, memes were usually simple: a funny picture or standard template with top and bottom text in the Impact font (all caps). I am not saying that all memes were like this, but the majority was using the format we came to love on 9gag.

The changing of formats was the immediate result of the two big shifts in social media platforms.

Changing Social Media Landscape

The first big shift was the result of the 2016 presidential campaigns and elections. Twitter would have not turned into the political force it is today if it weren't for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders. Trumps endless, unbearable yet entertaining tweets ultimately led to more memes being tweeted in response to the situation. Memes somewhat became more relevant, because they mocked or favored a certain candidate and thus were used or criticized by supporters, voters, campaign people, candidates, old school media and news outlets and thus the general public. This is when shit hit the fan: Memes were no longer on Tumblr and 9gag but on Good Morning America and the New York Times. Pepe was hijacked by right-wing assholes and Hillary danced the whip and nae nae. I mean even Brexit resulted in gazillion memes too. Meme culture sorta flourished in reaction to the scary circumstances. I've read an interesting article recently on how meme culture is similar to the Dada movement, which “consisted of artists who rejected the logic and reason of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality, discontent with violence, war, and nationalism.” Most of 2016s memes have this kind of sentiment tbh.

The other big shift was the death of Vine. Although Vine died at the end of 2016 in December, big Vine personalities urged their fanbases to migrate with them (after the announcement in October) to other platforms such as YouTube and Instagram. Content creators such as Lele Pons, Jake Paul, Curtis Lepore, and others who were making 6-second videos up to then had to migrate to platforms that required more creativity and talent. Unfortunately, the migration to youtube and Instagram resulted in terrible content and memes and memes about how terrible they were.

Commercialization

I think the increasing commercialization as the result of baby boomers being aware of memes became clear when Ellen invited Damn Daniel to her show. It was a somewhat funny meme that should have died down quick, but the fact that Ellen put him on the show led to a total misinterpretation of memes and meme culture

The Positive

Until now I have only listed or talked about the bad things that happened to memes and meme culture but contrary to your belief: 2016 was the best year in memes because of the memes themselves. Let me list them for you so you can understand:

If a ... wore Pants

Dabbing Squidward

Kazoo Kid

Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer

Bee Movie

Panicking Mr. Crabs

Dat Boi

Angry Spongebob

Harambe

Arthur Fist

Nut Button

Hugh Mungus

Kevin Bone

Doorman

Evil Kermit

We are Number One

Meme Calendar

2016 the year of realizing things

Clowns

Pokemon Go

Michael Phelps and Pathetic

Joe Biden

Chewbacca Mom

Brexit

Skai Jackson

The list goes on and on. (There is obviously a shitty buzzfeed recap fiy)

Thank you for coming to my ted talk

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j057g769 · 5 years

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Blog Post 4/13

Something that I know for fact is that the more you consume a certain type of content, the more likely you are to see similar content advertised to you. I see it in literally everything; if you search for face wash, all of the sudden you get a million advertisements for different kinds of face wash. I’ll talk about something with my friends and a day or two later, an ad for it will pop up. I also consume a lot of liberal media, so all of my Facebook and Twitter feed is almost exclusively liberal articles or statements. I’m never really exposed to right wing rhetoric unless I actively seek it out or my one conservative family member posts something about it. I thought the idea of being fed things that you are actively exposing yourself to was interesting and was thinking about it in the context of comedy. Whenever I see things from the left condemning people on the right, it is always very professional. Whether it is a full length article or just a reply to a tweet, it always seems to very factually driven and intellectual. However, almost everything I see about the right condemning the left is in the form of memes. And even the content that I see that is meant to be factual, professional, and intelligent is still made fun of. An example that I often think of is Tomi Lahren. All of her segments are meant to be taken seriously but I mostly just see people making fun of it. The only conservative content that I am exposed to are just terrible memes that have no real political value. The only memes that I am exposed to on the liberal side is mostly people making fun of conservatives’ attempts to be serious. If I am constantly consuming liberal media, then where are my memes against conservatives?? The only thing I can think of were all the memes about Ted Cruz being the zodiac killer, and the occasional twitter meme about Donald Trump, but it really is nothing to the extent that the right puts out about liberal politicians

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yesmediablog-blog · 6 years

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Week 5: Digital citizenship 1: political engagement

The introduction of new media platforms and the ever-changing media landscape has had a dramatic impact on the way we engage with politics. There are many ways to interact politically online, such as staying informed about political issues through #auspol; following politicians on social media; or sharing a Getup! campaign to your Facebook.

The most interesting form of online political engagement that I have witnessed through my social media use is by the use of memes - primarily during “The Great Meme War of 2016”.

The Great Meme war refers to the internet based war that involved people from either side of the political spectrum. Throughout the election, social media users would create, distribute and share memes in order to influence American internet users to vote for their preferred candidate.

This enabled people to have a greater interaction with the political landscape, controversies, and news surrounding the candidates involved. Unlike traditional news platforms, such as television, newspapers and radio, social media allows the users to directly interact with content by commenting, liking and sharing information. This accessibility allowed the community to have a greater influence on the development of the election. “For the first time in a US election cycle, community-generated memes have grown to play a significant role in political discourse, similar to the classic printed cartoon." (Alexander, 2016)

Leigh Alexander expressed how powerful the influence of the memes were by demonstrating how memes contributed to the collapse of Ted Cruz’s political failure during the 2016 election. This vine of Ted Cruz failing to clasp hands with his running mate Carly Fiorina has been viewed over 8 million times. The vine overemphasizes the failed hand grab, painting an awkward and clumsy image of the two politicians. The influence and attention the video accumulated was greater than any video produced by Ted Cruz’s own campaign. To put it into perspective, Ted Cruz’s most popular youtube video has 7 million fewer views than the vine.

“Skewered by social media memes” is the intrinsic story of the Cruz campaign. The online community played a role in exaggerating his strangeness, portraying Cruz as a grotesque figure vulnerable to his rivals, and even a “mock conspiracy” which compared his likeness to the unidentified Zodiac killer.

This meme war demonstrated how both the left and right can transform the political landscape and use social media as a rallying point for people - as more memes were shared and created, their subjects would gain traction and become news points for discussion. It not only a “meme war”, but an information and culture war.

#mda20009 #zodiac #memes

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nickyschneiderus · 6 years

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This photo from Kavanaugh’s hearing creepily mirrors ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

If you were looking for a real-life incarnation of Hulu hit The Handmaid’s Tale, the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing involving Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford on Thursday might have been the perfect parallel.

The Handmaid’s Tale, based on the 1985 novel of the same name, is a dystopian tale in which women’s rights have disappeared into a haze and where a class of women, called handmaids, are ritually raped and impregnated. Women in the show are second-class citizens, and after the 2016 presidential election, many pointed out that it’s perhaps more relevant than the creators ever could have imagined.

During Thursday’s hearing, a tweet from Aaron Fullerton made the comparison even more creepy—and for many, even more real.

One of these is from today’s hearing. The other is a still from The Handmaid’s Tale. pic.twitter.com/SXJ3d8XqAH

— Aaron Fullerton (@AaronFullerton) September 27, 2018

In case you’re having trouble figuring out which photo is from Thursday’s hearing and which is from The Handmaid’s Tale, the top image—picturing, from left to right, Republican senators John Kennedy, Jeff Flake (who had his own problems on Friday), Ben Sasse, Ted Cruz, and Michael Lee—is from the Senate.

Twitter users, though, weren’t fooled.

unfortunately the zodiac killer being in one of these pictures is a dead giveaway

— Colin McInerney (@ColinMcInerror) September 27, 2018

If people are going to copy books and movies like this (we're all being forced to enact 1984 as well), probably high time for some new books and movies, with some better futures in them.

— Dancer in the Void (@Cabbidges) September 28, 2018

Why is Ted Cruz on both panels?!?

— Scott Bass (@ScottiWanKenobi) September 28, 2018

All fiction is based in reality

— Nikki_Mags (@KneKoLi_MgLari) September 28, 2018

Actual same person pic.twitter.com/G6Y6Nq6KzG

— Rae Master (@DesignSellout) September 28, 2018

pic.twitter.com/UDuZX9nQgD

— MomoKu (@TheMomoKu) September 28, 2018

Remember when the Handmaid’s Tale was fictional? #KavanaughHearings

— Savannah Rayne (@savannnaaahhh) September 27, 2018

Fullerton wasn’t the only one to notice the similarities.

A snapshot from today's Senate hearing / a scene from The Handmaid's Tale: pic.twitter.com/QLz68Xmisq

— Hamza Shaban (@hshaban) September 27, 2018

Some Twitter users also mentioned that Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona prosecutor hired by the Republicans to question Ford, reminded them of Aunt Lydia, the character on The Handmaid’s Tale that works in the re-education school that teaches women how to be handmaids.

Rachel Mitchell – the GOP's very own Aunt Lydia pic.twitter.com/bZZQn5149D

— Claudia Lamb (@ClaudiaLamb) September 27, 2018

I've gotta admit, unveiling this new casting of Aunt Lydia in the middle of these hearings was an inspired choice.

— Greg Greene (@ggreeneva) September 27, 2018

The third season of The Handmaid’s Tale has already been announced. It seems the show’s the writers are really going to have rack their brains to come up with a storyline as chaotic as the scene from the Senate on Thursday.

Twitter makes fun of Brett Kavanaugh yelling during his testimony

Women sitting behind Kavanaugh become a meme—for the wrong reasons

33-tweet rant wildly alleges Alyssa Milano was trying to harm Kavanaugh

from Ricky Schneiderus Curation https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/brett-kavanaugh-hearing-the-handmaids-tale/

#Ricky Schneiderus Curation

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turtlecomposer · 5 years

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Politics + Memes

Gubbay, Makayla. “Memes Are Reshaping Politics in America.” Teen Vogue, TeenVogue.com, 2 Nov. 2018, www.teenvogue.com/story/the-rise-of-political-memes-could-have-a-major-effect-on-america.

This article talks about how internet memes have evolved in the past few years and how they’ve become intertwined with politics and how they have influenced voters in the campaign process. From Hillary gaining a following for tweeting “delete your account” to Donald trump to citizens of the United States believing and creating conspiracy theories over the popular meme – Ted Cruz as the Zodiac Killer. Politics and popular media have become like a science in how they relate to millennial generation of voters and affect who they chose to lead the country. Sometimes popular magazines can be difficult to trust information-wise. But I do believe there is a correlation with memes and politics. My generation can make a meme out of anything. When reflecting back on the 2016 election, I wonder how large Cruz’s campaign would’ve been if he wasn’t considered a meme. Would I even have known he was a candidate? Nevertheless, this article did hold some information and less opinion, which I would have expected from a tween magazine company. This is another big point I’d like to bring up in my podcast – how have memes affected politics? Similar to the social media question, I expect people of my generation to have thoughtful answers and their own experiences when dealing with the mixture of meme culture and the political world.

#annotated bibliography #annotation 1

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