I think it’s the other way around. The right is incredibly good at memes - because memes presume underlying facts without having to prove those facts, and, by portraying them humorously, imply that anyone asking for proof of the underlying facts is taking the meme too seriously.
Remember last summer when the internet was flooded with memes about Haitians eating people’s pets? That whole vicious racist slander based on a single false report that in any other context would have been absolutely unacceptable, but anybody who pointed out “hey, this is vicious racist slander based on a single false report and is absolutely unacceptable” got accused of being humorless wokescolds taking a joke too seriously?
It’s why the Trump White House posts so many viciously racist and contemptuous memes on Twitter. It’s why the fucking Department of Homeland Security likes to hide the numbers 14 and 88 in its social media posts. Because it puts the left in a Catch-22: if they call out the memes, they look like humorless enemies of free speech, and if they don’t, it normalizes racism even further.
The right has mastered the art of the meme. The left may be winning the meme Olympics, but the right are fucking professionals.
I think it’s the other way around. The memes are incredibly good at left vs right because left- and right-leaning people presume underlying facts and the memes reassure people that those facts are true and good (or false and bad, etc.) without doing any fact-finding.
When we say “the right can’t meme” what we mean is that the right’s memes are about projecting bigotry. It’s like saying that the right has no comedians; of course they have people that stand up in front of an audience and emit words according to memes, tropes, and narremes, such that the audience laughs. Indeed, stand-up was invented by Frank Fay, an open fascist. (His Behind the Bastards episodes are quite interesting.) What we’re saying is that the stand-up routine is bigoted. If this seems unrelated, please consider: the Haitians-eating-pets joke is part of a stand-up routine that a clown tells in order to get his circus elected.
In my understanding: they aren’t making jokes with the expectation that their audience laughs at the joke itself. The audience is laughing at the target of the joke. In this sense, you might say the right doesn’t meme, and further speculate that they can’t meme.
So yeah they post and repost a lot of “memes,” but it’s never really to be like: “look at this clever meme I made,” it’s just “look at this meme that makes fun of x people”. Their accusation of humorlessness is just a confession.
I think it’s the other way around. The right is incredibly good at memes - because memes presume underlying facts without having to prove those facts, and, by portraying them humorously, imply that anyone asking for proof of the underlying facts is taking the meme too seriously.
Remember last summer when the internet was flooded with memes about Haitians eating people’s pets? That whole vicious racist slander based on a single false report that in any other context would have been absolutely unacceptable, but anybody who pointed out “hey, this is vicious racist slander based on a single false report and is absolutely unacceptable” got accused of being humorless wokescolds taking a joke too seriously?
It’s why the Trump White House posts so many viciously racist and contemptuous memes on Twitter. It’s why the fucking Department of Homeland Security likes to hide the numbers 14 and 88 in its social media posts. Because it puts the left in a Catch-22: if they call out the memes, they look like humorless enemies of free speech, and if they don’t, it normalizes racism even further.
The right has mastered the art of the meme. The left may be winning the meme Olympics, but the right are fucking professionals.
I think it’s the other way around. The memes are incredibly good at left vs right because left- and right-leaning people presume underlying facts and the memes reassure people that those facts are true and good (or false and bad, etc.) without doing any fact-finding.
When we say “the right can’t meme” what we mean is that the right’s memes are about projecting bigotry. It’s like saying that the right has no comedians; of course they have people that stand up in front of an audience and emit words according to memes, tropes, and narremes, such that the audience laughs. Indeed, stand-up was invented by Frank Fay, an open fascist. (His Behind the Bastards episodes are quite interesting.) What we’re saying is that the stand-up routine is bigoted. If this seems unrelated, please consider: the Haitians-eating-pets joke is part of a stand-up routine that a clown tells in order to get his circus elected.
In my understanding: they aren’t making jokes with the expectation that their audience laughs at the joke itself. The audience is laughing at the target of the joke. In this sense, you might say the right doesn’t meme, and further speculate that they can’t meme.
So yeah they post and repost a lot of “memes,” but it’s never really to be like: “look at this clever meme I made,” it’s just “look at this meme that makes fun of x people”. Their accusation of humorlessness is just a confession.