#Time for change memes 2017 tv#

Part of the power of memes has always been their organic, grass-roots quality: They bubble up from the fever swamps of the internet, shrouded in anonymity, as agents of chaos and mockery. And they provoked a variety of real-world reactions, from Clinton’s August speech denouncing the alt-right to the Anti-Defamation League’s designation of Pepe as a hate symbol to-after the election-the armed assault on a Washington pizzeria wrongly believed to be hiding sex slaves. The meme battalions created a mass of pro-Trump iconography as powerful as the Obama “Hope” poster and far more adaptable they relentlessly drew attention to the tawdriest and most sensational accusations against Clinton, forcing mainstream media outlets to address topics-like conspiracy theories about Clinton’s health-that they would otherwise ignore. There is no real evidence that memes won the election, but there is little question they changed its tone, especially in the fast-moving and influential currents of social media.

#Time for change memes 2017 tv#

After all, the idea that a swarm of socially alienated trolls played a meaningful role in a multibillion-dollar presidential campaign by, among other gambits, relentlessly spreading images of a cartoon frog is at least as ridiculous as the idea that a billionaire TV entertainer could win that campaign. Just about everyone else, if they’re aware of these efforts at all, assumes they amounted to little more than entertainment for bored geeks and some unpleasant episodes for the targets of its often racist and sexist harassment campaigns. Veterans of the Great Meme War brag that they won the election for Trump. It features Pepe the Frog-a cartoon symbol of mischievous fun or racist hatred, depending on whom you ask-and the name of his make-believe battalion, “The 1st Deplorables.” Their weapons of choice were memes, bits of reproducible culture whose most recognizable form is shareable internet photos, like cats behaving adorably or Clinton sending a text message, with captions meant to be funny.īraynard showed me a badge he ordered online to memorialize his service in the Great Meme War. That’s the grandiose name given-only half ironically-to the decentralized efforts of a swarm of anonymous internet nerds to harass Trump’s detractors and flood the Web with pro-Trump, anti-Hillary Clinton propaganda. The chance encounter was a rare in-real-life meeting of veterans of the Great Meme War.

“I felt like I had found a friend that I hadn’t spoken to in a long time,” recalled Trump’s misty-eyed onetime data guru, who had never met the teenager before in his life.