If you want to understand why Trump got elected in 2016, you have to read this!
Learning Objectives:
1. Understand Memes, their evolution, their political base, their role in the 2016 election, and the ever growing Meme War.
2. Understand that the psychological complexity of social media as being “one mind” or as Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious.
3. Understand Pepe
4. Understand the role social media mediums have in directing the collective unconscious specifically through comparing Reddit with Facebook.
5. Understand the direct connection between your social circles, politics, social media, and underground extremist groups (Anonymous).
Learning Objective 1: — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
“As trivial as it may seem, The Great Meme Wars and the chaos it wrought on social media likely had a very real effect on the 2016 election. By weaponizing their memes, berating their targets with aggressive rhetorical strategies, and generally acting as outrageously as possible, the so-called alt-right gained the acknowledgement of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, hijacked the mainstream media, and dragged the national Overton Window toward their extremist views in the process — all from the safely removed distance of their crusty keyboards.”
“They may have won the battle, but according to their opposition — some of which is located in the Northwest — the Great Meme Wars are far from over.”
Learning Objective 2: — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
“When you log into the Internet, you’re plugging your brain into millions, billions of other brains,” Addy says. “The Internet is a giant brain, just like a neural network.” She claims her most popular memes have come to her in visions not unlike those of religious mystics. “Sometimes I feel like the Internet wills me to make certain memes, like I’m plugged directly into the zeitgeist.”
“Now with the Internet, we’re all sharing one collective mind, so to hurt any part of that collective is to hurt the whole collective — to harm me. The 13-year-olds typing the n-word on YouTube don’t understand how much they’re hurting themselves.”
Learning Objective 3: — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
All of this, of course, was “just about having fun,” as alt-right media platform Breitbart wrote in March. Then Clinton declared that Pepe the frog was a white nationalist symbol, akin to a swastika. In one fell swoop, she both legitimized a band of trolls and officially handed it sole ownership of a powerful meme. “Everything has been weird since the day Hillary talked about Pepe,” Bustamante says. “I think that was a very dark time for memes. From that point on, everything the alt-right did was validated.”
“It’s Pepe, he’s become kind of a symbol … ” Smack!
“In less than 24 hours, the clip had been remixed hundreds of times and shared by millions. In various iterations of the clip, the audible thud of the punch synched to the snare hits in “Born in the USA,” “Blue Monday,” and others. Still images of the violence were Photoshopped alongside images of Captain America and Indiana Jones punching Nazis, an activity memers presented as “American as apple pie.” “I’m afraid this is going to become the meme to end all memes,” Spencer later said on Periscope. “That I’m going to hate watching this.”
Learning Objective 4: — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
[Summary: Reddit was smart enough to change their algorithms to decrease Trump and the Alt-rights fame. Facebook changed its algorithms to censor a fake meme of a burning goose and still thinks it doesn’t need to change it’s algorithms.]
“The domination was so intense that Reddit decided to change the algorithm on June 15 in an attempt to present its general users with some semblance of variety.”
“Bustamante’s one reservation is Facebook’s own algorithm — which itself caught flack last summer for its seemingly arbitrary censorship of “inappropriate” memes and the pages that host them. The flashpoint for the criticism was a popular meme featuring a photo of a goose whose head appeared to be on fire — in reality, it was simply an illusion, created by a campfire in the background. Regardless, Facebook censored the meme, deeming it “graphic content.” Many follow-up memes highlighted the absurdity that mainstream-media images of bloodied Syrian children and the bodies of drowned refugees were allowed on the site, but this goose with a fake flaming head wasn’t. A 100-page strong “Meme Alliance” emerged to challenge Facebook’s policy and the algorithm.”
“Yet even without the alliance, it seems foolish to think Facebook could ever truly quash the flow of memes. Thanks to the masses, and Weird Facebook’s leaderless, collectivist structure, the memes will always find a way. But if there comes a need to go further underground, Addy, for one, has an idea.”
Learning Objective 5: — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
“We need to start a hacktivist group called Unanimous,” [Addy] says, “and all wear Guy Fieri masks.”
http://www.seattleweekly.com/arts/seizing-the-memes-of-production/
