Political Internet Memes: More Than Jokes
Internet memes are generally regarded as purely for entertainment purposes — funny, irreverent, relatable, snarky, or ridiculous aspects of online culture — but are not given much more credibility or thought beyond that. Indeed, I never truly considered them something worthy of serious analysis until reading Patrick Davidson’s The Language of Internet Memes and Nathan Jurgenson’s Speaking in Memes.
Richard Dawkins initially coined the term “meme” as a unit of culture that determines the behavior of an organism. As Jurgenson explains, “cultural products pass virally from person to person by multiplying themselves throughout the social body.” In this case, the organism is the social body. Today, this definition has been recast onto internet memes, which are pieces of culture that gain influence through online transmission.
Internet memes must meet certain criteria in order to be considered successful, but defining exactly what that criteria is can sometimes by difficult. Jurgenson and Davidson both manage to tap into key aspects of successful memes, however, some of which include; being created “bottom-up,” or, from the public, and not by a corporation, politician, or entity with ulterior motives behind its creation; being easily reproducible , as they are part of the unrestricted web in which creativity is valued over “intellectual property”; being devoid of authorship, as that is a criteria for reproducibility freedom; and appearing to be authentic, genuine, or new (a defining feature of the meme is its incredibly high mortality rate — once a meme is “mainstream” it is considered “a mere performance of mob conformity”).
All of this informed our discussion about whether political memes were, in fact, noteworthy commentary on our political landscape. Again, at first glance this sounds ridiculous — they are just jokes about seemingly random yet somehow hilariously popular events. But in delving further into Jurgenson’s argument for their actual legitimacy, a new understanding of the social forces informing these memes comes to light. Jurgenson makes the claim that memes serve as a form of expression and satirical commentary on the true joke: American politics today. He states that “memes inject some authenticity into a political process seen as problematically over-performed.” I found myself nodding along to his arguments, realizing a definite connection within myself to this theory. I would certainly consider myself part of the disillusioned youth who does not believe in the way our society is currently structured (I would not, however, consider myself part of an apathetic sector that sees it all as entirely hopeless. I think it is actually possible to make social change by actively involving myself in the political process, both through the political system and also through dissenting displays like social protest, in order to massively overhaul the current system). I followed the last presidential campaign quite closely, but a lot of my engagement was also with satirical and irreverent user-generated content. It was a sort of outlet, honestly, for the unending frustration inherent in our manufactured political process. Jurgenson exactly explains my sentiments when he says “in a moment where trust and favorability in politics is near an all-time low, the political statements we make about the presidential election increasingly need to account for the absurdity of the process, from the behavior of the campaigns themselves to the mainstream coverage of them…because of this frustration [toward the process], many stand ready to find any bit of authenticity, any deviation from the script…”
Memes are perhaps then representative of an over-arching attitude simmering within many people today — an attitude of derision toward current social institutions. People are exasperated by the, frankly, bullshit that is fed to us from places of power — corporations, politicians, media — in the forms of carefully constructed scripts and rhetoric meant to guide public attention toward specific activities that really only benefit a few members of society (capitalism, America’s “democracy,” etc.). Perhaps my radical opinions are shining through a little too brightly here, but my point is that we as a society crave things that are genuine, authentic, and honest, not things that we must investigate for intentionally misleading half-truths that reveal the ulterior motives of the source. Critically studying memes reveals that they can offer part of that which we crave — a part of a publicly-created culture inside a society that is built on artificially manufacturing “culture”.
Obviously, I am not trying to insinuate that memes are these revolutionary masterpieces that will somehow serve to awaken people to the reality of our world. I am merely suggesting that they are one thing that can offer a refreshing break from it. And also that, in that sense, they serve as a window into the psyches of the people who generate and share them — a people existing in general unrest.
The memes within our current social structure are, in internet meme terms, “over.” It’s time for new memes to replace them.
