In a decentralized network society, perception is the primary political space. Essentially, this means that the ways an idea, image, or quotation can interpreted is primarily responsible for how it is propagated and spread around in an interconnected societal web. An idea or property, if creatively tampered with to such an extent, can be used to promote ideologies and concepts initially far from the intended interpretation of the original, especially for political purposes.
First, it is essential to define what a meme is in this context – image macros featuring a witty phrase or connotation, but are not necessarily humorous in nature. Internet memes, as easily replicated open-source image macros, are used to promote ideologies and concepts quite frequently. They are inherently spread through users, and are influenced and warped over time by the perceptions and interpretations of those that intend to spread a message – what is innocent one day could eventually interpreted as something else entirely through feedback loops reinforcing introduced ideas and concepts. In the decentralized online space, there is no grand authority on how something must be expressly interpreted or used, there is no regulatory body that controls how these interpretations are conducted, and there is no singular database on how an idea, image, quote or artistic creation must be identified.
Memes have often evolved to serve the interests of ideological movements far away from their intended original uses, and this blog post will utilize two distinct cases of this occurring.
Pepe the Frog was not originally created as the online face of the Alt-Right white nationalist movement, nor was it ever intended to incite the wrath of so many others eager to oppose online racism. Pepe’s roots actually date back to 2005 as a main character in Matt Furie’s non-political comic series “Boys Club” – a crass yet inoffensive work depicting the lives of stoner anthropomorphic roommates in search of the meaning of life in pizza boxes and unwashed bongs.
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The potential for Pepe as a reaction image was discovered by 4chan (among other online message boards) around 2008, and the original design was tampered with extensively to suit certain agendas, portray celebrities or politicians, or simply to display different emotional reactions to situations, often as an accompaniment to an anecdote. Eventually the meme went mainstream, and as a backlash to the wider online community embracing Pepe, incarnations of the frog as an SS guard and Ku Klux Klan member started to resurface under the guise of the far-right community expressing their desire to reclaim him. However, this attribution was a falsity – a prank orchestrated by 4chan in order to trick the media into associating Pepe with white nationalism (Echevarria, 2020).
They succeeded immensely, with the Anti-Defamation League adding Pepe to a database of hate symbols in September 2016 (Ibid), exacerbated through the meme’s association with the Alt-Right during the presidential election. A notable meme in particular – known as The Deplorables – featured Pepe alongside many Trump supporting individuals in a parody of The Expendables, inverting Clinton’s reference to Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” (Reilly, 2016). The image would only complete Pepe’s transformation from his innocent origins to a paragon of hatred.
Such is the power of the perception/interpretation feedback loop in the online space. Association feeding off of attention, attention feeding off of association. Additionally, this is how a meme in itself is a form of ‘subcultural capital’ – a way to signal awareness of particular values and create communities based around mutual understanding (Crawford et al, 2021). The comedic veneer of memes acts as a barrier to participation, and a defense against outsiders or dissenting parties, whilst simultaneously looking for an opportunity to shift the “Overton Window” – the boundaries of acceptable public discourse – towards accepting far right ideals as the norm (Ibid).
The goal of influencing the political sphere, and enacting societal change as a result, can be achieved through memes quite easily as history has shown us. Memes are easily adaptable, easily spread, and easily replicated because of the open-source protocol their designs are based on – a protocol intended to operation on a free-to-use basis – and are also based on the FIST values of design (Fast, Inexpensive, Simple, Tiny), which means they are perfect for quickly manipulating for practically any usage (Wall & Mitew, 2021).
My second example of this process acting in congruence with memetic evolution involves the meme known as Feels Guy, whose popularity in recent years has skyrocketed due to the growing mythos around the character as well as the adaptability of the original format.
Originally representing the feeling of despondency and/or passive sadness in early meme culture, the figure’s average looks and non-controversial design associated him with the everyman, facing the everyman’s struggles from day to day (Myers, 2020). This interpretation eventually spawned the NPC meme – a depiction of the crowd, the homogenous mass of culture existing outside of the self, and representative of the individual only as a part of the status quo.
The NPC meme is essentially the first step in the association chain of events – categorizing anyone outside of the individual as grey ‘sheep’. The point of the meme is to not replicate the NPC, to reject their opinions and develop your own convictions independently. This depiction of the herd mentality would later be attributed to the opinions and stereotypes of American liberal/far left politics, carving a deeper line in the sand and forming yet another weapon to utilize in the online culture war.
The Feels Guy, now renamed to Wojak, would quickly diversify to represent more and more cultural stereotypes, such as the Doomer – a perpetually depressed, anti-social misanthrope. The Soyjak, another significant development debuting in 2017, depicted so-called “nu-males” as lacking traditional masculine qualities and possessing a fervent fixation on pop culture and far left politics – a depiction used to mock individuals online that match the stereotype either in appearance or behavior.
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Suddenly, the melancholic nature of Feels Guy made sense. What exactly was responsible for these feelings? Could it be a deep ideological opposition to, and contempt for, the status quo with no way to express it? A lack of an idol to represent what could be perceived as “lost”, such as traditional Judeo-Christian values, masculinity, conservativism and social norms?
And thus, the Yes Chad meme was born.
A meme created specifically to represent these values, casually replying ‘Yes’ when forced to justify one’s ideology as if no further explanation was needed. Of course, questions asked to the Yes Chad were heavily slanted, in order to make the Soyjack seem contradictory, mentally ill or uninformed. Yet, the meme persists to this day as a new, shiny, absolute rejection of Hall’s concept of the Blue Faith – a distinct characterization of the Blue Church as weak willed and anti-life as opposed to the Red Religion, a beacon of humanity and a solution to “modern degeneracy” (Hall, 2017).
The mythos associated with Yes Chad meme continues to develop to this day. The evolution of the Wojak meme through feedback loops and interpretation in the decentralized online space shows how users can be radicalized by assimilating the ideology behind each iteration of the meme in question, and how the meme is easily propagated through an open-source protocol. Much like Pepe, it is not hard for once innocent concepts to be politicized and associated with values far removed from their creator’s intentions.
Memes are a fickle mistress, one moment they are a humorous distraction, and before too long they may place you on a federal watchlist. Such is the nature of perception and interpretation in the political network society.
References
Hall, J. (2017). Situational Assessment 2017: Trump Edition – Deep Code – Medium. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/deep-code/situational-assessment-2017-trump-edition-d189d24fc046 [Accessed 14/10/2021].
Crawford et al. (2021) Memes, Radicalization, and the Promotion of Violence on Chan Sites. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 15 (1). 982-991. Available at: https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/guillermo.suarez-tangil/papers/2021icwsm-memes.pdf [Accessed 13/10/2021]
Wall, T & Mitew, T. (2021). View of Swarm networks and the design process of a distributed meme warfare campaign | First Monday. [online] Available at: https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/8290/7202 [Accessed 14/10/2021].
Myers, Q. (2020). How Wojak Memes Took Over the Internet. [online] MEL Magazine. Available at: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/wojak-meme-history-meaning [Accessed 14/10/2021].
Echevarria, G. (2020). How Pepe the Frog became a symbol of hope and hate. [online] Business Insider. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/pepe-frog-meme-hate-symbol-hope-hong-kong-protesters-2019-10 [Accessed 13/10/2021].
Reilly, K. (2016). Read Hillary Clinton’s “Basket of Deplorables” Remarks About Donald Trump Supporters. [online] Time. Available at: https://time.com/4486502/hillary-clinton-basket-of-deplorables-transcript/ [Accessed 14/10/2021].
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