Watch the following YouTube video that presents the argument that memes and meme culture strongly influenced the 2016 Presidential Election.
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MEME Theory: How Donald Trump Used Memes to Become Presidenthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Y-P0v2Hh0 (video; 33 min)
Next respond with a two-paragraph comment explaining your thoughts about the video in light of what you know about memes, how they work, and why people participate in them. You do not need to take a political stand, only respond to the argument of the video. Do you believe that memes are capable of shaping social and political behavior? Do you see evidence of this happening? What do you think about it?
The response is worth 10 points.
I have seen memes before I knew what they really meant. I thought of them as a quick way to send a message along with some humor. Most of the memes I saw were from the internet, specially facebook and tweeter, I never thought much of them, but apparently, in a subconscious level, they were doing what they are suppose to do. After watching this video, I would have to agree with the host, that memes are very influential to the everyday individual. These memes are as powerful as language, and I would say they are even more powerful because they are accompanied by humor, and can be broadcasted non stop and are readily accessible with every ones cell phone.
We see this with Pepsi commercials, phone companies, alcohol companies, and with the current COVID-19 crisis. Where some of the media outlet cover as just the “COVID-19 CRISIS”, targeting the negativity, recency, and proximity media values, just to mention a few, to saturate the news and for us to feel that is the new common sense in our society.
These memes are political messages that are publicized like corporate slogans are in radio, TV, and Internet. I believe that the public need to be aware of this tactics use by the media and politics industries. We need to practice our media literacy, we need to understand that everything we see and hear has a propaganda. No matter what it is we need to understand that all of it is aimed at our own ideology. The only way they become effective is if we do not know what really is behind them, what the purpose of these things really are, only then we gain the control of out thoughts and mind.
I think that memes are simply posing a statement about a specific issue or topic by which is exerted through humor. In today’s society, I think that it’s probably impossible for one to have never seen a meme or know what a meme is. For me specifically, I come across memes every time I’m on social media. The main use of communicating through memes is by someone posting it somewhere on social media. Then others begin to view the meme and from there, people begin to send them to their friends. When people find memes funny, they begin to share them on their social media accounts, which opens the doors for memes to begin to be posted everywhere and almost impossible for it to go unnoticed. Memes are a method of spreading a message. These messages can be someone simply making a joke, however, oftentimes these jokes are really ideologies. The issue here is that one may not realize memes are a form of ideology because society has become so accustomed to ideologies that they just naturally occur.
After viewing the video, I was intrigued by the way he explained his argument of how Trump used memes to become president. I had not thought of it that way at all, but after completing the video, I agree with the video and how much power memes have to the extent that it can decide who the president of America is. How he mentioned how Trump made it so that his name appeared everywhere and the most effective way of doing that was through memes. How the “dark humor” of memes was the best route for Trump to go with and it ended up working. The whole name-calling strategy, making it impossible for his name to appear everywhere especially on memes. Through this one can see how memes are crucial in today’s society and that for something or someone to be heard or even be known, it is through memes.
Before I watched this video, I genuinely wanted to believe that I was about to watch a conspiracy theory that was so far-fetched. After watching it, however, it saddens me to say that so much of it made sense. From personal experience, being a millennial who is active on social media, memes encompass a part of my daily life. I see them, I laugh at some of them, I share some of them. People participate in spreading memes because in some way they are promoting ideologies. It could be as simple as somebody finding a particular meme entertaining, but the reasons behind why that person finds the meme entertaining are rooted in ideologies and spreading them. I remember seeing several memes at the end of 2015 about Trump running for president and why he would never be elected because he was seen as a “joke.” Little did I know by engaging and participating in these memes I was a contributing factor to Trump’s political gain.
I would like to say that memes are produced and reproduced solely for entertainment purposes, but over the years this has proved to be incorrect. The internet is a powerful tool that is used for making or breaking a person’s reputation, especially celebrities and political figures. I do believe that memes are capable of shaping political and social behavior. Just as the video mentioned, “If you repeat something enough, people will like it.” The repetition of “Make America Great Again,” which the video describes as one of Trump’s political memes, is a perfect example of this. I distinctly remember scoffing at Trump repeating this, but then a couple of weeks later everybody was talking about it and kept repeating it. The slogan clearly sat well with people since he is presently in office. I think that the use of memes for political gain is pathetic and really shows the downfall of our society.
Memes develop through the process of variation and repetition, they are the fastest way to put an idea in someone’s head. I believe that memes are capable of shaping social and political behavior because memes in politics can activate a group of voters that are not likely to engage in electoral politics but who through social media vested interest in the political process. I see evidence of this happening when President Trump used memes to capture people’s attention. Although most of his words or famous “tweets” generated controversy, it still allowed him to win the elections. Therefore, his usage of Tweeter was a powerful tool to persuade readers.
I believe that memes are a kind of propaganda used in this case by politicians. Mass media develops its power by paying attention to the way information is filtered and represented. The ideology is through an analysis of lexical and syntactic choices of how news is structured in order to present a particular point of view. Sometimes these memes can be a facticity or negativity depending on how the readers interpreted. The ideology of the memes is for people to grasp the content fast and to spread it fast.
I have always viewed memes as videos, context, and pictures to make people laugh or send a message. From reading the interview of Limor Shifman I learned that it also includes cultural socialization. After viewing this video, I learned it can help you win a political campaign and become president. The video demonstrated to us that memes could be just about anything words spoken or printed, events people, faces and characters. Overall, people participate in memes for some sort of gain. Whether it is monetary, for popularity, or to make others laugh; they are done with a purpose.
I believe that memes are capable of shaping social and political behavior because they attract us through our mind which is very powerful. People are attracted to memes by a psychological form that consist of three concepts; schema, heuristic technique and chunking. These concepts help us perceive memes and create them. For instance, a complex article can be compressed to one picture meme. Furthermore, memes are created from people’s ideologies; ideologies can influence others to change their norm and adapt to new ways. For instance, Trump portrays a person who’s rich and powerful, who says what he wants to say and is who he wants to be. As O’ Shea Jackson stated that is everyone’s dream to be rich and powerful and do whatever it is that they want to do. Trump already had attracted people by who he was, then he started to attract people via memes. Most of Trumps speeches, Tweets were controversial, offensive, weaponized memes against the politicians which only attracted more people. The repetition of Trumps negative memes made people’s minds change their thought of the other politicians which eventually dropped out of the campaign. It’s like bad news and good news, bad news always spreads way faster than good news because people view bad news as a form of gossip. For instance, brands such as Coca Cola they are presented everywhere and so much of its repetition has made the people love to drink it. Memes have the power through repetition to mold social and political behavior.
This video shows how powerful memes are because of how simple they are to understand the idea behind them. Memes have the power to shape our ideas on many different things. People do not like to read complex text, for them especially millennials it is much easier or faster to understand an idea through a meme. I agree with what was stated in the video about repetition through memes being used in order to plant idea and thoughts into the public’s mind. If a person sees something enough times they begin to think there is some truth to it and may come to agree with what is being stated or portrayed.
Social media is a huge platform for memes. Many people create them in order to get people to laugh or even gain popularity. Thus, it makes sense that even Donald Trump could have used them in order to gain popularity within the American public. For instance, his slogan of “Making America Great again” became popular within the public instantly because it was easy for them to understand the concept behind the meme itself. Anyone who agreed with this statement could have easily been politically influenced. Memes do have the power to shape not only political behavior but social behavior as well. For instance, memes often criticize things or ideas. If a meme is portraying a person in a negative light in different ways whoever sees the meme will eventually have a negative idea about that person and will slowly turn against them. This then becomes the popular idea within society because it is shared all throughout different platforms within social media. This is something that is seen on plat forms such as Facebook and Instagram. I think this just shows how easily people can be swayed just on what others think about a subject matter. This shows how people want to fit into the status quo of what others think and feel. Memes show what people think thus, people are willingly changing their minds on different things based off of what memes say or show them.
Memes play a huge part in any community. Memes are powerful because they spread messages in a deep manner on different levels. Since memes are easy to make, it’s often for them to blow up so quickly, and memes can vary in many ways from the same source material. Memes are popular on the internet, which is important since the internet is one of, if not, the biggest place for news to blow up. Memes coming from news blow up so fast because it exists on a source that everyone is on. When it comes to political behavior, all these things apply. Political memes are powerful because they take a very political stand based on the joke and message displayed, spreading messages like wildfire.
This is part of how Trump became president so effectively. At first, these memes about him building a wall, making bans and such would spread across the internet. The more people saw, the more people would vote. Not even people that supported him could have, and possibly did vote for him out of the fun of it to see if the memes would live up to what Trump would do. I remember when the day Trump was elected, everyone was talking about how the memes “predicted” this outcome, when it really did play a part in his popularity. With everyone wanting to fit in with the trump memes, it’d be no surprise what messages spread and many more people would vote for him. While there were memes about other politicians like Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, there wasn’t as much blowing up about them like Trump, even outside of political things, such as calling Trump a Corn on the Cob.
This video made a few interesting points. I had always assumed Donald Trump’s tweets were just his careless attempt to shift blame and point fingers. He also likes to fuel conspiracies, his tweets and speeches involve a lot of “don’t trust them, trust me.” When he would bring up random unrelated things, I assumed it was just for the sake of petty arguing. However, the idea that he is purposely saying outrageous things to distract us with memes puts a new perspective on things. I always wondered why his staff hadn’t put an end to the tweeting. Distraction seems like the only practical reason so far. During this pandemic, he has used the term “Chinese virus” which became a small meme. When the news media asked him why he was using such an offensive term, he bluntly said “because it came from China.” I noticed a lot of people were amused by the memes and his reckless attitude, which in turn made him slightly more likable. I also laughed at his antics, but that doesn’t mean him or what he said was ok.
I agree that the overwhelming coverage on Trump played a huge role in him becoming the Republican Party nominee. The only other Republican candidate I knew of was Ted Cruz, which funnily enough was also because of a meme! I remember there were memes about him being the zodiac killer. It’s no coincidence that Ted Cruz was his only real competition. However, as the video points out, Trump gave new material for memes every week. Additionally, I’d like to point out that a lot of celebrities we see today take advantage of memes about themselves. For example, there was a meme about Kylie Jenner singing “rise and shine”. Jenner immediately took that opportunity to sell merchandise and essentially profit off of the joke. If celebrities are aware of the advantages of memes, it’s not a stretch to believe Trump is too.
I believe that memes have power over multitude of people as they have a firm psychological control of how people think and react to the issue presented to them. Meme work through the “mirror exposure of facts” theory where repetition and constant exposure a meme evokes interest in the content. When masses talk about a meme, they evoke interest in other people, making them affiliate with the content, these people then feel the need to spread the meme. By evoking interests, memes can ultimately condition and shape people’s social and political behavior—an example of how memes shape behavior is in Donald Trump’s election. The media and individuals strived to make hilarious memes about Trump, making him popular and eventually aligning people to take interest and vote for him.
I think that memes are defining the ideas, attitudes, and behaviors in the digital age. For example, it is common to see threads of people participating in social media challenges emanating from a meme. Such challenges where people copy or imitate what they saw or heard in a meme is evidence of behavioral conditioning and change. I, therefore, believe that memes have a psychological influence on the masses, conditioning them to align with its contents.
Md Faris Noor
ENG 1161
Professor Patrick Corbett
The video titled MEME Theory: How Donald Trump used Memes to Become President itself is humorously presented with the effective utilization of memes (for example: references of Vsauce, The Simpsons, the movie 300, presidents, etc.). I’m familiar with memes and I normally think of them as “silly pictures in the internet that states something (often humorous) about life. However, the dude in the video clarifies that “memes can be anything and they can come from anywhere. Memes can be words spoken or printed, they can be events, people, faces, characters both fictional and real.” He explains that people decide (subconsciously) whether to turn a picture meme or not. Memes sort of work in accordance with the Mere-Exposure Effect “where people develop preferences for familiar things.” Additionally, people see certain memes multiple times (repetition) and are exposed to them more and more. Thus, certain memes become so well-known that millions of people become aware of them. People should participate in memes because they allow people to (socially) connect in a way. Finally, according to the dude in the video, participating in memes may help us win things, especially political campaigns, convince people to choose us, or just use them as shortcuts!
After watching the video, I believe that memes are, to a degree, capable of shaping political and social behavior for a variety of reasons. First, memes can be a reference to anything so it must have at least something to do with political and social behavior. This means that memes can, in one way or another, make a reference to famous quotes by politicians or how they communicate and interact with the public. Second, let’s talk about Donald Trump. He uses twitter, a social media site where not only do memes thrive but also shape social and political behavior. Apparently, according to the dude in the video, Trump used his knowledge of memes to act and behave the way he did, just as how Howard Dean’s lack of utilization of memes caused his entire campaign to go downhill, which happened because of just one meme. Yes, according to the dude in the video, a meme has the power to influence whether people like a politician or not. For example, one of the memes that Trump used was the meme of the Simpsons: The meme states- “Now, the first order of business is to blame everything on the guy before me.” Trump did exactly this by persistently blaming Barack Obama for almost everything! Ultimately, I believe that most people didn’t know that memes could be so powerful and influential, but after watching the video, I’m starting to see how they can truly shape the world.