Meme Antoinette
How Louise Linton helped income inequality go viral — and other practical lessons from the online Resistance.
Recently, Rafael Shimunov, our Creative Services Director, hit gold with an Instagram post (above) that trenchantly annotated a cringe-worthy post from Louise Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. The post went viral and got some of us here thinking about what was the “special sauce” in this post exactly. What makes political memes go? Ericka Persson, Working Families Online Organizer, and Dylan Easterday, ResistHere.org Volunteer Manager sat down with Rafael to talk about memes, the Resistance, and what other creators can do to “win the internet.”
The following transcript has been edited for clarity. You can listen to our conversation on Soundcloud here.
Ericka: We were talking a little bit about how [creating] memes is a science — or maybe not a science, do you want to expand on that?
Rafael: It’s not really a science. You have to [be] prepared all the time and do all the right things and then fail a lot and you’ll see things that are just as good as the ones that succeed that don’t get any traction. I guess the key to it is to just keep doing it, and never promise anyone something viral.
The ideas Bernie represented didn’t go away with Bernie’s loss and people are still one paycheck away from total annihilation in this country, so when they saw that and they saw her comments, beyond just the tastelessness of tagging all these expensive bags — one of the things she didn’t tag was a $20,000 bag!
Ericka: I hate the term “viral” because I feel like it’s one of those terms that people that don’t know a lot about a digital game will use, like “how do we make this go viral?” You don’t just make something “go viral.” If you really make something go viral there has to be certain elements — especially with what we do in the non-profit setting — that they have in common. What would you say those things had in common, and it doesn’t need to be a meme, but like the livestream you did with the airport protests (JFK) that you did. They all had certain qualities. Can you talk about that?
Rafael: Yeah, I guess the more benefits you can have in it, the better. Like the airport video gave people who were not there the ability to be present and we knew that tapped into what people were feeling because after that, every other airport had one. So people did feel that, but before they [were]able to do that themselves, they were able to join with us. So that’s one feature — giving someone a channel to participate, and the other one is doing it in time, so being able to hit as the news hits, or before the news hits (like the JFK protest) really is another advantage and the same thing with memes or anything we share. That news cycle is getting shorter and shorter all the time now. But, in particular with this meme, the news cycle kept getting stimulated so, [Louise Linton] first did that post, then there was a follow up story because she also wrote a book that lied about her experience in Africa and painted herself as a white savior who helped orphan children with HIV and it was pretty horrible — it was so horrible that book stores pulled it — so people had this secondary wave of adding information to the post. Beyond that, there is looking deeper to Mnuchin and verifying that people were shocked at the things that he is infamous for in the foreclosure game and the hedge fund game and all these financial games. Then another thing that stimulated [this] was her apology, which was a very fake, minimalist, not real apology, and so she just kept stimulating it as she kept doing it. People just kept reacting and it kept boosting it up over and over again. It was kinda crazy. And now there is another thing that is boosting it, and that is this investigation of why did they happen to be in the state with the best eclipse view, at the time of the best eclipse view, on some weird, strange assignment to check out the gold reserve? You know, it was so strange! Then it also opened up this other conversation that people are extremely upset about, and that is, you know, Bernie didn’t go away after his loss. I mean, the ideas Bernie represented didn’t go away with Bernie’s loss and people are still one paycheck away from total annihilation in this country, so when they saw that and they saw her comments, beyond just the tastelessness of tagging all these expensive bags — one of the things she didn’t tag was a $20,000 bag!
Dylan: No shit?
Rafael: Yeah there is a $20,000 bag in there that she didn’t tag … but it tapped into this thing that we are all still feeling about economic insecurity, and she was just mocking this person, [who] we are assuming is of modest means, for “not sacrificing” so it opened up a lot of different conversations. People took issue that she’s saying that it is sacrificial to pay taxes, versus her duty, which she barely makes a contribution to (probably). And it also ties into Mnuchin, because he, her husband, is going to be half the team proposing basically tax cuts for the 1% in September. Trump initially promised one of the things that liberals were like “OK,” where he was even going to kill the loophole for [carried interest tax] and Mnuchin is the person that talked him out of it. So, you know, awesome guy.
Dylan: Foreclosure King.
Rafael: That’s true, a lot of the stuff in the meme is just stuff that we assume [is] true, like we know that his firm was the biggest in foreclosing on widows. They systematically targeted widows because they knew that a lot of widows back in the day when they signed mortgages, the husband signed the mortgage, then when the husband died, there is no longer a valid name on the mortgage so they could take the house from under the widow, so they looked at the records of who died, and if its a man of a certain age, they went after the widow and took her house. In one case, they went after a 90 year old woman because she miscalculated her payment by about 20 cents.
Ericka: I mean that is just shocking and disgusting to hear that, but to bring that back to the topic of conversation, is that you were able to convey all of that in one photo. All of these different meanings, and I guess to peel the onion a little bit or dissect the layers: of course, we talked about this, there is this stroke of luck, but ignoring that, I think there are two elements that we are looking at here and it is the timeliness and then the means of inclusion. Whether it’s through, like you said with the airport protest, making people feel that they were there and being able to put a face and humanity to that by going live, or this meme specifically, which was using humor, which was again, an inclusion — a way to include people, it brought people together under this one truth and got people feeling the same thing. The thing that I noticed (and I wonder if you noticed this, too) — did you look at the meme on Facebook and on Twitter?
Rafael: I was slammed, so I stopped looking at the Facebook one, but the Twitter one I kept my eyes on because of who was retweeting it.
Ericka: Yeah, it definitely went viral on twitter. It did pretty well on Facebook, but it didn’t reach quite the reach that twitter did. And I wondered if you could speak [to]that at all.
Rafael: I don’t know. I mean it happened on Instagram, so it’s funny that it worked better on Twitter than on Facebook — and it actually worked better on Twitter than Instagram. It did well on Instagram, but it wasn’t viral, and it was native to Instagram. So you know, I don’t have the answer to it. It could be that a lot of the people that responded were people, what I noticed, a lot of the high profile people that retweeted were actresses — her peers — and directors and writers.
Dylan: That’s so juicy! That’s too good that people that may know her and interact with her in person were driving it.
Rafael: Right. There is already a lot going on [with] certain personalities, that when you hit them, there’s a lot of people that knew her, and knew this about her and now this was just like, “Oh, yeah, the rest of you are catching on.” A lot of Scottish actors and people like that were responding. Just like, you know, Trump is from Queens and when Trump started doing crazy shit, I was the same, with like trying to clean up my Queens mess.
Ericka: I think that points towards noticing the affordances of each different platform. I noticed on Facebook, instead of sharing our stuff, people would take it and post it and then tag us, so it wouldn’t actually increase our stats on Instagram, it’s really hard to share something. Instagram mostly serves its purpose as a digital photo album where you don’t share content as much as you post original content, so that’s one big thing with Twitter. Again, that’s why the inclusion part works so well, is that people were able to share it and be like “OMG, that’s hilarious” and there are also a lot of micro-communities on Twitter, not to say that their aren’t on Instagram, they live in the hashtags a little bit more, but I think on Twitter, a lot of politicos kind of live there constantly, so I think between that and the fact that this was a Hollywood story that had appeal. I think the other thing about it that is important to remember about making something go viral is that celebrities and us “normals” have the same access on Twitter, so they can retweet something — and yeah, it will definitely go out to more people, but that is available on Twitter, and that is something to keep in mind for someone that is looking for a place to start. Also, do you know those banners that people put over their profile picture? There was this one really popular one, that was like “Please don’t curse on my profile”.
Rafael: I haven’t seen that.
Ericka: It went viral, I guess a lot of people had it on their thing as some ironic hipster nonsense and I was reading a thing about how he was talking about going viral and he was like “yeah, I tried it a million times, and I had a bunch that I thought were just as good, and this one just stuck.” I guess that caps this little like rant I’m going on here with sometimes it just comes down to timing and sometimes just luck.
Rafael: Yeah, basically, that old adage, something about luck and preparation. When luck hits you, [you have to be prepared], which means you have to always be meming.
“Every good movie has that scene where you take the tools that are oppressive and use it against them.”
Ericka: Stay meming, A.B.M.
Rafael: The other thing that was particular about this one, which was new, she used the tool (tagging) to like be unjust, to mock everyone below her with her amazingness, so we flipped that on her and we re-tagged it with the truth behind how she’s earned, and how her husband has earned, their vast fortunes, so the fact that we took their weapon, and this is like any movie scene, if you think what is exciting in any movie — it’s the same thing that is exciting in a meme. So someone comes at you with a sword, the scene where you take that person’s sword and use that back against them, that’s really entertaining. I guess that’s one thing, think about in movies, which is the perfect vehicle for getting people excited or inspired, or books for much much fewer people, but basically every scene, the most powerful are scenes like that. Every good movie has that scene where you take the tools that are oppressive and use it against them.
Dylan: For me personally, that’s what I loved about it, is you took her smugness, the actual element of her smugness, and used it against her and turned it into a very clever attack.
Rafael: Yeah, she’s made all of her social media accounts private now!
Ericka: That’s actually like a major theme, especially with the “youth” now, which is authenticity on social media, and it’s why a lot of young people, if you’re in tune, it lives in the hashtags, but they make fun of things that are way too curated like that. Authenticity resonates and lands with people under 30 most of the time — all the time. That’s because we live in this world of social media, but are we ever really connecting? The authenticity aspect of it where you are just laying a “smackdown!” This is how you live and this is why it is wrong because everything that you are doing is just for status.
Rafael: I almost ruined the authenticity, because I was gonna use some animation to bring in the tags, like “pop, pop, pop, pop, pop,” and that would have killed another hour and then it would have made it look too polished.
Dylan: Overproduced.
Rafael: Overproduced, and then it would have been more like [Linton], and like why Hillary lost, and you’re definitely right, there’s an entire generation that is going to be the majority of the population now that is completely impervious to this fakeness. They laugh at us, and we don’t even know they are laughing at us when they know we are not being truthful. Another thing that happened recently, the brands that she tagged now have also responded. They are now distancing themselves from her and saying that they would never seek any relationship with her from this point on in terms of fashion, because she also says she is a model and all sorts of things like that.
Ericka: If I had a nickle for every person that said they were a model on Instagram, damn! I would be able to afford whatever she could afford in that photo! I’m thinking about this one Hillary Clinton ad that was supposed to, again, appeal to young people, and you know those Buzzfeed style listicles? I think it was 7 reasons Hillary Clinton is your Abuelita.
Rafael: Yeah that was horrible! It was not on message for her.
Dylan: On that topic, as a tip for aspirers, what are the things not to do?
Rafael: Here’s one, and this is where we fail a lot — when we go beyond what is our identity. We do a lot of things: We support climate justice, we support racial justice, we support economic justice — all sorts of things — all of them important, but this one in particular is so aligned with us because of just our name even — Working Families. Working Families responds to this selfish, needy person that kicks families out of their homes so that they can have this lifestyle.
Dylan: Yes. I saw it and I felt like this is “core”, this is us!
Rafael: So I guess one lesson, is if you are an organization, or a messenger for a movement, don’t try to go too far beyond what your voice is, or what your credentials are — your “lane.” You could try to experiment, but there are other people that have been doing it, and they are going to do it better and you should honor them. I find more successes like, in the JFK video, I was able to say I’m from Queens and it was in Queens. I was a refugee as a child and this is about refugees. My parents brought me at two years old through the same pathway that the police were blocking. So there was authenticity, but it was also on message for the person speaking about it as well. I would say, figure out what your message is, which is what people are expecting from you. People want us [Working Families] to talk about this.
Ericka: I think this meme is very good and it was pointed and funny, which are two things that are both hard to do and can be hard to land, so if you can do funny, do it, but if you can’t do funny, at least gut test it with some people that you know first, if you are unsure. Sometimes if things aren’t funny, they are really not funny — like really not. Sometimes they are not OK.
Rafael: Definitely circulate it.
Ericka: Give it to folks that you know will tell you the truth and have your back. At the same time, there has to be a balance and go with your gut. It’s gonna take a few times to figure out what works and sometimes you can have all the elements right and be like “wow, this is timely and funny and poignant, and makes a message and it’s not too heavy, etc.” and “here it is world!” and there is like four retweets and that’s just it.
Dylan: At Netroots this year, I attended the Popular Culture in Politics panel led by Elana Levin, previously of Make the Road and now Netroots Nation, and she cited many different great examples of using popular culture to further a message, but one of the examples she brought up was Princess Leia in the Resistance. She gave you credit for originally creating that in the panel and I don’t know if there is a real comparison, but there is something about using visuals that are already kinda popping and that are out there.
Rafael: Yeah, we used Disney’s thing against Disney! Right now there is no more business council for Trump. It was disbanded because of his bullshit and also because the pressure from #QuitTheCouncil. One of our works with Quit the Council was against the Disney CEO that was on it, and we used Leia and we used Mickey’s hand and we turned it into a fist, and we literally used Mickey Mouse in Times Square, we gave him couple bucks and we went to the flagship Disney store and we sang their songs with Nelini and we used them against them. I’m not the only one using their things against them — and we won! That council is gone.
Yeah, just do it! If it sucks, no one is gonna see it! You won’t be embarrassed — it’s like the perfect formula: Doesn’t work? No one sees it. Works? Everyone sees it! Shouldn’t everything work like that?
Dylan: This was really great. You have a few wins under your belt now — some big hits! Obviously this was really cool and I think it will be helpful for other people that aspire to create and try things and figure out what works and what doesn’t work.
Rafael: Yeah, just do it! If it sucks, no one is gonna see it! You won’t be embarrassed — it’s like the perfect formula: Doesn’t work? No one sees it. Works? Everyone sees it! Shouldn’t everything work like that?
Ericka: That is really it. Just keep trying. Also try to invest in Photoshop if you can. Just keep trying and if you have an idea, don’t even ask, just do it and send people the finished project and be like “hey, this is the thing, whaddaya think?”’
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