“‘For me, Trump is not only the new president,’ Ferréol said. ’He’s the new Slender Man’” (Spencer)

 

 

Of all the sentences included in this module’s readings, and there were plenty that caught my attention, that is the one that sent prickles through my skin and made my eyes go wide.

Since Trump will be making appearances throughout the post, not for his politics, but for his station in the spells of meme magic, I’ll establish my biases up front.  My name will not be found on any rosters for his fan club. I did not vote for him in 2016 and will not vote for him in 2020, but I also didn’t cry the day after the election and was puzzled when people asked me or each other “are you okay?”  I generally find Trump gross, incorrigible, ludicrous, creepy, and flabbergasting. Now that I’ve read about meme magic, I’ll add terrifying to the list–but that terrifying isn’t because of him personally; it’s because of the ones making the magic happen and worshiping him as their god.  I’m left slightly haunted by the image of shadowy creatures winding their way from brains, into screens, through cyberspace, out of screens, and back into brains–kind of an exercise in post-human reflexivity.

Slenderman–a myth that became an unfiction that became (in an infinitely tragic way)an episode of non-fiction when placed into the hands and minds and souls of two young girls who were swallowed by the magic surrounding him.  Slenderman wasn’t really to blame of course; his followers were. In the case of Trump being the new Slenderman, I think the same holds true. Trump’s magic doesn’t exist in his own power; he himself has become the meme, the “unfiction”–the image and result of that exercise in post-human reflexivity.   These followers took someone real and created a mythology, whether called Kek or Pepe, that in return has generated real-world results, and then “reflexed” again in an ongoing loop (Trump is Kek is Pepe is Kek is Trump!), gaining strength and power and reinforcing belief in itself; this belief is frighteningly confirmed in Alt-Right leader and White Supremacist Andrew Anglin’s explanation for a teen using an Alt-Right hand symbol when meeting Trump:  “‘the only possibility here is that this is an example of Carl Jung’s synchronicity—seemingly acausal factors culminating to create an event based on its meaning. But it is not really acausal–it merely appears that way to the non-believer. It is our spiritual energies, channeled through the internet, that caused this event to manifest.’” (SPLC). And every and any occurrence of this perceived synchronicity feeds the magic and in turns feeds the belief in that magic, “Pepe’s followers look for synchronicity everywhere, building up a mythos from something that began as an innocuous cartoon character,” extending to randomly assigned double-digit codes on 4-Chan (Spencer) and beyond.

Does Anglin’s true-believer devotion extend to all who have supported the flood of Kek/Pepe meme magic? Likely not– and I’m sure Poe’s Law (Milner) is at work here too.  Many who do believe but don’t want to admit their level of devotion can pass off their participation as for the “Lulz.” Or, they might really just be along for the thrill of what seems to be a very adolescent thrill ride (can you believe we did THIS?).  But even if the latter is the case, the results are far from adolescent: “lurking behind all the clownery is an idea that Alt-Righters actually seem to take seriously: Namely, that by spreading their often-cryptic memes far and wide on social media and every other corner of the Internet, they are infecting the popular discourse with their ideas” (SPLC). 

(image from Theodor)

In his article Spencer asks, “Is meme magic real, or pure delusion?”  He goes on to answer his own question explaining that in either case it has the power to fulfill needs in humankind and impact politics.  As to whether it’s dangerous, he relies on input from meme “expert” Adam Curtis who offers that it is, though I don’t think we need an expert to connect those dots.   I wonder–just as the ancients lived by mythologies governed by their own created deities, will these cyber mythologies deified through meme magic seize more and more governorship over our lives?  And where will those results lead?

 

Milner, Ryan. “FCJ-156 Hacking the Social:  Internet Memes, Identity, Antagonism, and the Logic of Lulz.”  The Fibreculture Journal.           Issue 22, 2013

Spencer, Paul. “Trump’s Occult Online Supporters Believe ‘Meme Magic’ Got Him Elected.” Motherboard (Vice), Nov. 18, 2016.     https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pgkx7g/trumps-occult-online-supporters-believe-pepe-meme-magic-got-him-elected

SPLC Southern Poverty Law Center. “Explaning the Alt-Right ‘Deity’ of their Meme Magic.” Intelligence Report, 2017 Fall Issue (August 8,   2017).

Theodor. “Meme Magic is Real, You Guys.”  Medium.  11 Nov. 2016