Memes have become an integral part of social media culture and every-day life. They have hugely impacted news, politics, culture, and social conversations. What may have started as simple images with text to create a laugh, has become an insane revolution amongst people. Ever since the raging politicized feuds of the Hillary-Trump election run, memes and their intent changed to a completely new level. This new level of meme culture became known as “meme magic”: ‘“Meme Magic’ is a slang term used to describe the hypothetical power of sorcery and voodoo supposedly derived from certain internet memes that can transcend the realm of cyberspace and result in real life consequences” (Know Your Meme). Like any terrorist, nationalist, supremacist, or occult group, there is some form of a following that believes in a “higher power” that is not necessarily real. If a strong enough belief is established amongst a group of people, then it will likely spread to others. Many believe “meme magic” had a part in Trump’s election, rather than the power of votes and politics. My take on this, not politically speaking, is that a meme itself is not powerful enough to result in such a major decision. The use of a frog as some form of a “higher power” or totem is only fueled by false beliefs. These false beliefs and ideas can be worded in such a realistic way that they can compel certain to people to fully listen.
The frog meme did not give Trump the win, but rather prompted followers to create a subculture that made his political game stronger. For example, “The technique involves charging a symbol, which will then act as a proxy for a clandestine plan” (“Trump’s Occult Online Supporters Believe ‘Meme Magic’ Got Him Elected”). The meme was not the key to his win; the meme was simply the vessel for his followers to fuel into a meme subculture. Many people, despite him not being in charge anymore, are strong followers of Trump. No matter what political side a person follows, violence will still be defined as violence. The memes that have been further manipulated by his followers have displayed prejudice, racism, sexist remarks, and culturally offensive ideals. I am not trying to display a political side here; I will always side with the welfare and care of humans, that is the side I take. Memes these days can be utterly offensive to many groups of people, and this is a result of the chaos that Trump followers ensued through memes and social media. Ergo, the use of technology and multimodal rhetoric in his political campaigns cultivated a now continuous culture of cruelty and discrimination. In other words, “Further, this logic is multimodal. It is expressed in both text and image, especially in the ‘image memes’ that are shared and remixed according to subcultural standards and individual creative expression on these sites” (“Hacking the Social: Internet Memes, Identity Antagonism, and the Logic of Lulz”). The frog meme utilized by Trump’s followers was manipulated and changed to display the subculture’s ideas and beliefs. As of today, while the frog may not be hopping between screens just as much, other memes have taken its’ place in some form.
Nevertheless, memes have had quite the impact on politics and culture. We look at memes every day, and many of the ones we see can be very offensive. These memes, such as the frog meme that exacerbated Trump’s campaign follower’s ideas, have no good intentions but to ensue chaos. I think that memes have become an unfortunate icon like others used in history to portray hateful agendas. They should be simple pictures with funny messages, but they have in several cases become so much more than that. While they do not actually have some magical ability to them, tons of people continue to believe they do. “Meme magic” is a concept that became something more, but that is because many people conceived what was simply a picture of a frog to be a divine icon.
Milner, Ryan M. “Hacking the Social: Internet Memes, Identity Antagonism, and the Logic of Lulz.” The Fibreculture Journal Issue 20 (2013): n.p.
Spencer, Paul. “Trump’s Occult Online Supporters Believe ‘Meme Magic’ Got Him Elected.” Motherboard (Vice), Nov. 18, 2016.
Know Your Meme.
Sarah! Great post on memes. I did not do my blog post on memes yet but I am definitely interested in meme magic. I agree with you, the amount of memes that have come out of political movements and/or events is insanity. I also don’t think, morally speaking, that a major decision should be based off wordless picture or a picture in general. I think memes should only be used for a good laugh or in order to communicate a specific emotion or feeling dramatically. I would agree that a lot of memes related to Trump are violent and/or extremely out of place. Unfortunately, some people go to extreme levels when trying to be “funny” and do not know when too much is too much. It is strange, however, to examine how one political parties memes were more harsh than the other. Or is it that we only viewed the extremely offensive/violent ones because they were talked about or publicized more. Again, I really enjoyed your blog post. It was very educating !
Hello Sarah
This “meme magic” concept is really wild! I have to admit, I had not heard the term before, but I’m certainly not shocked that it exists, especially in today’s charged social/political climate. I was especially impressed when you said, “Like any terrorist, nationalist, supremacist, or occult group, there is some form of a following that believes in a “higher power” that is not necessarily real. If a strong enough belief is established amongst a group of people, then it will likely spread to others. Many believe “meme magic” had a part in Trump’s election, rather than the power of votes and politics.” Your post provides insight into how some people wind up becoming part of an extreme group, or a cult for that matter.
Hi, Sarah!
Thank you for your post! I haven’t completed the readings yet for this module because I didn’t assign it to myself this week, but from the standpoint of considering people’s emotions and discriminatory threats, I think your statement, “Memes these days can be utterly offensive to many groups of people,” is definitely worth a lot of attention. In my post, I briefly touch on a binary called offline/online, which Trevor Scott Milford deems as false. One factor Wilford mentions is the lasting effects that being online has when not in direct contact with the internet. I like a lot of memes outside the discriminatory ones. Now, I’m thinking about what can be done to prevent people from experiencing negative responses that the discriminatory creators wanted others to experience. It’s impossible to directly control what people create (or at least, to my current knowledge), but should social media platforms do more to control the spread? What are the other effects of strengthening such tactics, and how do they predict what certain memes even mean that have an underlying offensive meaning that isn’t visibly explicit? These are now questions I’m considering.
Hey Sarah,
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on memes as well as providing some background regarding the general intention and objective of such devices.
You highlight such an interesting point which suggests that memes can be offensive. I think people have a tendency to forget that not only can the captions be cruel and rude, rather, the person who is attached to the meme can also find scrutiny in that. To have your photo associated with crude language can be very upsetting. I am curious to see if there have been any experience like that.
Hi Sarah! I agree with your idea that while memes themselves did not elect Trump, they did incite a subculture and, in my opinion, a harmful ideology that made his political game stronger and encouraged people to show their support for him. When we break down this idea, it is wild that memes have the power to influence people’s ideas and political affiliations, as many appear lighthearted. However, as you stated, many memes also reinforce discriminatory ideas surrounding racism, homophobia, and misogyny that harm certain groups, as the mistreatment of their identity is normalized. I believe memes and social media, in general, can influence us positively and negatively because they are how most of us stay connected to events happening in the world. The idea of “Meme magic” might allude to the idea that memes are like voodoo. But, this influential impact they have, as we have read, comes from the easy and quick format they present themselves in and the visual stimulation we get from looking at a picture. Do you find one specific meme to be used for “evil” the most? This is something I am curious about as I do research for my final project, and I want to get to the bottom if there are memes more at risk of being used for certain discriminatory ideals. Great post. This topic is so interesting!
Hi Sarah,
Meme magic has developed pretty far beyond Pepe the Frog at this point. It became associated so strongly with Trump after the man himself started claiming it and using it in his campaign. His son Don Jr. shared a photoshopped image called “The Deplorables” that dressed up his father as Pepe in a line-up (you can still see it here https://www.instagram.com/p/BKMtdN5Bam5/?hl=en). I would hold that although I don’t know how thorough they were conscious of it, he and his campaign used a politically disaffected group of people’s fascination with the antilogic and chaos that was building on places like 4chan to buy political fascination with their candidate. The conspiratorial nature of thinking about DJT’s presumed relationship to 4chan mythologies that were being created by bored people who needed to exercise their imaginations online bought the campaign time and introduced energy into it. The frog’s image, as it is involved in various activities both cute and repulsive, was a very good symbol for the candidate himself and how he did (and continues to) present himself to his voter base at rallies and such. For people reading this who may be concerned about political bias and such, I don’t think this is even a political view. This push/pull of attraction and repulsion is a test of the audience always, like a Rorschach test. The meme of Pepe, and the magical thinking that surrounded him, is no longer even very relevant in DJT’s political maneuvers, but it did some valuable work for him as he continues to test his audiences and see where they fall (with him or against him).
Hi Sarah,
This is such a great, detailed post! I didn’t do this module, but I still felt like I knew what was going on thanks to your descriptions and explanations. I’m really intrigued by this idea of memes actually having an impact on politics, and I definitely think there’s something to that idea. I don’t think anyone (or at least, I hope nobody) would vote based on a meme, but memes seem to shape the popular views of society. I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility that younger voters’ political ideologies were swayed (subconsciously or otherwise) by the memes at the time.
This week, I focused on module 5 which is all about digital storytelling (and ARGs and videogames). From the sources in that module, it seems digital and multimodal forms of rhetoric are more pervasive and persuasive than other forms of communication. It makes sense that using an image selected by society as significant to convey political information would impact some at least a portion of the population.
I agree with your point about the establishment of a subculture as a result of memes, and I think this can go beyond political parties– I’m really interested now in thinking about different subcultures and what their memes look like, or whether they even use memes. I have no insight on this, but it’s something I’ll start paying attention to on my Facebook scrolls! I’m hypothesizing that there are some specific memes that certain subgroups of society utilize more than others.
Thanks for this post! You’ve given me a lot to think about!