![]() They also favor extreme perspectives: a recent study from Texas University found that individuals who are socially isolated and more likely to be characterized as “on the fringe” have a greater chance at creating a successful meme. Memes thrive on a lack of information – the faster you can grasp the point, the higher the chance it will spread. The reason why it is now possible for Darryl from Accounting who hates “social justice warriors” to have the same communicative power as a television network is down to the DNA of the medium: speed and lack of gatekeepers. By typing some text on an image and sharing it with friends, they too have a voice capable of reaching a critical mass. And through the raw power of mass replication, even their most insipid ideas are able to surface from below. They are agents of nowhere, apparatchiks of nothing in particular. They are our deadbeat uncles, former co-workers and long-forgotten high school acquaintances. Like me, you probably have more than a few Facebook friends who make it their life’s work to circulate political memes in hopes of influencing how you see the world. ![]() They have grown into a form of anarchic folk propaganda, ranging from tolerable epigrams to glittering hate-soaked image macros akin to a million little rogue Pravdas. They are now born from the swamps of the internet in real time, distributed from the bottom up. What’s novel here is an inversion of control – political memes are no longer rare flashes of uncensored personality or intensely manicured visual messages. And of course, more recently, we had Yes We Can. Recall Ronald Reagan’s Welfare Queen or Howard Dean’s euphoric howl. This includes images, text, video, a combination of all three and sometimes real-world actions. Through the internet, the idea moved from the conceptual sphere into the viscous reality of data and pixels, transforming it into something more traceable: a segment of media that is copied rapidly. This included anything that could be learned, remembered and spread from one brain to another, such as the concept of god all the way to the popular Budweiser “ Wazzup” catchphrase. Memes – from the Greek for “that which is imitated” – were once defined as being self-replicating units of culture. ![]() A meme presenting Ted Cruz as the Zodiac killer.
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