Memes As Participatory Politics: Understanding Internet Memes As A Form of American Political Culture in The 2016 United States Presidential Election

Memes as participatory politics
Understanding internet memes as a form

of American political culture in the 2016
United States Presidential election
Emma Balfour
SID 430289967
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of

the requirements for the degree of Bachelor
of International and Global Studies
(Honours) in American Studies, University
of Sydney, October 2016.
Word Count: 19,847
Abstract: This thesis seeks to theorise and contextualise the memetic activity of the 2016 United
States Presidential election. My paper has three aims: (1) understand the cultural and political forces
that shape memes, (2) catalogue and explain the memetic activity of the 2016 US Presidential race,
and (3) thereby come to an understanding of what political citizenship means within meme culture
and mainstream American politics. Ultimately, political authenticity and memetic authenticity are
woven into the fabric of participatory politics: the cultural power of meme communities may have
even greater significance in future elections.
Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour
Acknowledgments
irst and foremost, thankyou to my wonderful partner, Luke Tisher, who helped and
supported me more times than I know, and was consistently good-natured and
optimistic. I could have done it without you, but I wouldnt have wanted to.
Secondly: family. Thankyou to my mother Fiona for challenging me to be better, and my

father James for keeping me grounded. I would also like to thank my brother, David, for
providing about fifty percent of the memes in this thesis.
I would be nowhere without the incredible academic support of my supervisor
Rodney Taveira, who helped me to think bigger and better. Your advice, support, and humour
were absolutely invaluable. Thankyou also to Rebecca Sheehan, our wondrous Honours
coordinator, for giving me the best advice of my life: Work hard on your good intentions.
Huge thanks to all of my friends who, of their own volition, contributed memes to the
Facebook group Memes For Emmas Honours Thesis. Thankyou to all the delightful
people who helped edit my thesis Rodney, of course, but also my mum, Wally Allington,
Oliver Moore, Jennifer Nicholson, Jim Fishwick, Joe Campbell, Swetha Das, and Cathy
Bouris. I am a big believer of never working alone thanks for your support.
A big thankyou to my thesis study buddy Adam Chalmers, and to my delightful
cohort, Taylor, Claire, Lucy, Jack, and Ella. Each of you made me strive to work harder, and
I am so grateful for your company and support throughout this!
Finally, Id like to dedicate this to my Bapa, Peter Meyer. You may not understand
anything about mediated participatory politics, but you understand hard work.
Contents
Introduction: Memes as politics
Chapter I: Memetics theory and the forces that shape meme creation
12
Chapter II: American comedy culture and its continued impact
34
Chapter III: Political memes in the 2016 US Presidential election
56
Conclusion: Politics as memes
93
Figure References
97
Works Cited
101
Introduction
Memes as politics
emes are the anthropological artefacts of the net, cave paintings on the
walls of the cloud. They are units of accumulated human collaboration that
take place in mediated, online spaces; they represent the depth of complex
creative endeavour, and mark moments of communication and interaction that can be
digitally traced. They are shaped by popular culture, but also have the power to shape it.
Memes represent millions of hours of unpaid labour and this in particular makes them
fascinating.
This thesis aims to do three things: (1) understand the cultural and political forces that
shape memes, (2) catalogue and explain the memetic activity of the 2016 US Presidential
race, and (3) thereby come to an understanding of what political citizenship means within
meme culture, and what memes mean for mainstream American politics. In doing this, I will
reframe memetic engagement production, distribution, and consumption as an act of
citizenship. The idea of political memes as a form of participatory politics is a radical one,
because it seeks to redefine political activity.
One of the strangest experiences of writing this thesis has been peoples desire to
contribute. Countless acquaintances expressed interest in reading it; fifty or so friends
contributed sources and articles to the project; many more sent memes. This cannot just be
explained by my friends kindness why would communities of young people take pleasure
in the anonymous and unrewarded labour of meme creation? Is memetic participation merely
3
time-wasting irreverence, or can memes be a political act of mediated citizenship? To answer

these questions, we need to have a working definition of internet memes.
What are memes?

Memes originally emerged in 1976 as a thought experiment in the final chapter of
Richard Dawkins evolutionary science book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins coined the word to
describe units of cultural transmission, that is, any cultural idea or practice that is spread
through replication and mimicry.1 Memes could be as simple as nursery rhymes or as
complex as the idea of God.2 For clarity, I will refer to these as Dawkinsian memes.
The word was later adapted to describe jokes, rumors, videos, or websites [spread]
from one person to others via the Internet.3 Internet culture scholar Limor Shifman describes
memes as units of popular culture that are circulated, imitated, and transformed by
individual Internet users, creating a shared cultural experience in the process. 4 This is the
definition of internet memes that I will be using throughout my work.
Crucially, memes are not to be confused with viral content. While the two often
overlap, they function in vastly different ways. Viral content describes a single text which is
widely distributed such as PSYs music video Gangnam Style which has 2.6 billion
YouTube views.5 Meanwhile, memetic content is any online content spread through rituals
of repetition, remix, and mashup.6 A good example of a ritualistic memetic practice is the use
1
Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chapter 11 - Memes: the new
replicators. p.203.
2
Ibid. pp.206, 207.
3
[sic] Please note that some quotations feature American spelling. Stockwell, S. (2004). Reconsidering the
Fourth Estate: The functions of infotainment. [online] Adelaide: University of Adelaide. Available at:
https://www.adelaide.edu.au/apsa/docs_papers/Others/Stockwell.pdf [Accessed 18 Nov. 2015].
4
Shifman, L. (2013). Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual Troublemaker. J ComputMediat Comm, [online] 18(3), pp.362-377. Available at:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12013/full [Accessed 18 Nov. 2015].
5
PSY (2012). GANGNAM STYLE( ) M/V. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0 [Accessed 17 Sep. 2016].
6
Shifman, L. (2015). Memeology Festival 05. Memes as Ritual, Virals as Transmission? In Praise of Blurry
Boundaries Culture Digitally. [online] Culturedigitally.org. Available at:
of Doge, whereby an oft-photoshopped image of a Shiba Inu dog (nicknamed Doge) is

accompanied by floating, nonsensical phrases of enthusiasm (wow, amaze, much cake)
in brightly coloured Comic Sans font.7 Doges words of enthusiasm translated easily to any
number of topics, and thus Doge was used as a cultural code to communicate ideas. Overlap
between memetic and viral content does occur, as viral content is often mimicked, and
memetic content often becomes viral.
Shifman bases her analysis of memes on three dimensions: content, form, and stance.8
Content describes the topic of a meme (its characters, subject matter, and cultural
intertextuality). Form describes how a meme is presented (whether it is pictorial, textual,
audio-visual, or a Dawkinsian meme, like a rumour). Stance is more complicated. A memes
stance is the information it communicates about itself as a meme, and its positioning in
relation to its content in political memes, this could be a political opinion communicated by
the meme. The stance of a meme positions it within a broader cultural context; stance is
therefore the most significant dimension for analysing memes contributing to political
conversations, as it examines cultural intertextuality and conversation.
Why are memes relevant to the US Presidential election?

In their consideration of participatory cultures, Jenkins, Ito, and boyd [sic] challenge
the traditional definition of political activity by positioning modern political engagement as
micro-politics.9 They posit that participatory political cultures encourage political
engagement on a cultural level, rejecting the narrow view of politics as institutional
http://culturedigitally.org/2015/11/memeology-festival-05-memes-as-ritual-virals-as-transmission-in-praise-ofblurry-boundaries/ [Accessed 29 Jun. 2016].

7
Know Your Meme. (2013). Doge. [online] Available at: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/doge [Accessed 4
Oct. 2016].
8
Shifman, L. (2013). Op. cit.
9
Jenkins, H., Ito, M. and boyd, d. (2016). Participatory culture in a networked era. Cambridge, UK: Polity
Press. p.154.
practices, such as voting, lobbying, or petitioning.10 In micro-politics, cultural communities

can become political consciousness-raising groups. Groups shape cultural ideas, which in
turn shape the political actions of individuals.
Modern politics has adapted to cater to a world centred upon entertainment. This has
led to a culture of infotainment information presented as entertainment.11 As the lines
between journalism, politics, and culture blurred, political memes became a humorous mode
of online reaction. Memes have the ability to shape ideas and behaviours; when these
behaviours include influential acts like voting, memetic analysis becomes crucial to
understanding political culture. Lisa Silvestri reasons that to meme is to engage creatively
with a popular (and therefore recognizable) cultural artefact [Memes] give us a common
language from which to act politically.12 Therefore, political memes are a kind of
participatory politics. Speaking to this, Netzer et al describe the five primary characteristics
of participatory culture:
[Participatory culture] facilitates civic engagement and self-expression,
supports creation and sharing processes, gives amateurs easy access to expert
mentorship, enhances individuals belief in the significance of their own
contributions and increases their sense of social connection.13
Throughout this thesis, I will demonstrate that meme cultures and communities fulfil all these
functions, facilitating a meaningful expression of citizenship in the process.
The power of political comedy has long been discussed. Shifman and Blondheim
comment that a close reading of humorous texts can provide insight into what is lurking in
10
Ibid.
Stockwell, S. (2004). Op. cit.
12
Silvestri, L. (2015). Memeology Festival 08. Beneficent Memes Culture Digitally. [online]
Culturedigitally.org. Available at: http://culturedigitally.org/2015/11/memeology-festival-08-beneficent-memes/
[Accessed 30 Jun. 2016].
13
Netzer, Y., Tenenboim-Weinblatt, K. and Shifman, L. (2014). The Construction of Participation in News
Websites. Journalism Studies, [online] 15(5), pp.619-631. Available at:
http://nms.sagepub.com/content/12/8/1348.abstract [Accessed 30 Jun. 2016].
11
the social mind, behind the faade of platitudes, conventions, and social expectations.14 This
is especially relevant for online spaces where social mores run amok. Analysis of the political
influence of satire skyrocketed when a survey in 2000 indicated that forty-seven percent of
eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds gleaned information about the [2000] presidential
campaign from late-night comedy shows.15 Sixteen years on, meme culture has become a
prominent expression of comedy amongst young people; political memes, like satire news
before them, are reshaping the landscape of political entertainment.
There is also statistical evidence of the power of online citizenship: in a study
conducted by Indiana University, Digrazia et al found that social media are a better indicator
of political behavior than traditional television media, such as CNN.16 Additionally, a poll in
February 2016 determined that thirty-five percent of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds found
social media sites provided the most helpful information about the 2016 election.17 Online
activity drives a huge portion of political thought in young voters, and understanding internet
culture allows us to ascertain how mediated spaces create political dialogues.
Memetics theory to date

Scientific analogies have guided the development of memetics theory. There are two
scientific analogies used to describe the movement and spread of memes. The first compares
memes to viruses, describing them as pathogens which mutate when passed from one host to
14
Shifman, L. and Blondheim, M. (2010). The medium is the joke: online humor about and by networked
computers. New Media & Society, [online] 12(8), pp.1348-1367. Available at:
http://nms.sagepub.com/content/12/8/1348.abstract [Accessed 30 Jun. 2016]. p.1349.
15
Sella, M. (2000). The Stiff Guy vs. the Dumb Guy. [online] New York Times. Available at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/24/magazine/the-stiff-guy-vs-the-dumb-guy.html?pagewanted=all [Accessed
4 May 2016].
16
DiGrazia, J., McKelvey, K., Bollen, J. and Rojas, F. (2013). More Tweets, More Votes: Social Media as a
Quantitative Indicator of Political Behavior. PLoS ONE, Vol 8, Issue 11.p.4.
17
Gottfried, J. et al. (2016). The 2016 Presidential Campaign a News Event Thats Hard to Miss. [online]
Available at: http://www.journalism.org/2016/02/04/the-2016-presidential-campaign-a-news-event-thats-hardto-miss/ [Accessed 27 Aug. 2016].
another.18 Shifman comments that viral analogies conceptualise people as helpless and
passive creatures, susceptible to the domination of meaningless media snacks that infect
their minds.19 As viral analogies can be reductive, the more commonly accepted analogy
compares the spread and replication of memes to genetic evolution.
Using evolution as a memetic framework similarly conceptualises memes as units that
mutate over time, but the relationship between a meme and an individual is far less
exploitative, as the individual has more memetic agency. Meme creators are like geneticists
in laboratories, working to modify content to their specifications. Speaking to this, Hull
comments that memes are defined as replicators, not interactors, and therefore the memes
themselves do not have agency in change.20 Memes are changed by the external processes of
meme creators, who mutate memes through the two processes of memetic evolution: remix
and mashup. Gurney outlines the difference between these processes: remixes add further
information, whereas mashups take at least two separate sources of preexisting media
content and recombine them.21 Through the processes of remix and mashup, we can add
unrelated elements, replicate previous alterations made to the meme, or revert the meme back
to its original form. Viewing memes as evolution is an imperfect method of analysis, but it
gives us a familiar framework with which to understand their development.
I will explain memetic evolution through the development of Pepe the Frog, shown
below in Figure 1. Pepe was created by comic artist Matt Furie, but was quickly adopted as a
touchstone character to express different emotional responses to content: this is known as a
reaction image.22 Figure 1 is not necessarily an accurate chronology of how Pepe
18
Shifman, L. (2013). Op. cit.

Ibid.
20
Aunger, R. (2000). Darwinizing culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Introduction.
21
Gurney, D. (2011). Recombinant Comedy, Transmedial Mobility, and Viral Video. The Velvet Light Trap,
68(1), p. 11.
22
Collins, S. (2016). The Creator of Pepe the Frog Talks About Making Comics in the Post-Meme World.
[online] VICE. Available at: http://www.vice.com/read/feels-good-man-728 [Accessed 10 Jul. 2016].
19
developed, but it is what internet culture writes as the evolutionary narrative of Pepe this
narrative in itself is an expression of memetic agency.
Figure 1: Development of Pepe Meme (Illustrating Lamarckian Meme Development). Reddit, 2015.
The grandparent meme Original Pepe was remixed into Sad Pepe. From here, users
connected with the elements of Sad Pepe that Original Pepe had not offered: Mad Pepe
replicates Sad Pepes facial shape. Later iterations see Smug Pepe as a powerful meme: his
break of the fourth wall is mimicked by Poopoo Pepe, Good Boy Pepe, and Well Memed
Pepe. What makes memetic characters like Pepe successful is that users can choose which
elements to remix the range of possible modifications is limitless. Because of this, Pepe
became a mascot of meme culture, endlessly malleable and adaptable. Pepe has become
almost canonised within meme communities for his versatility. His imagery was so iconic
that during the course of writing this thesis, far-right online enclaves hijacked the image of
9
Pepe as a means of spreading white supremacy and pro-Trump propaganda (I will discuss this
at greater length in Chapter III). The concept of meme creators as geneticists and memes as
evolving units has remained the prominent theory of memetics. In Chapter I, however, I will
contest this theoretical framework.
Chapter outlines
My argument in Chapter I will reconceptualise memes as genres, a linguistic and
theoretical structure that seeks to reframe memes in a way that will ensure clarity throughout
my thesis. I will make the distinction between singular memes and meme genres. I will also
analyse how the demography, design interface, and cultures of numerous online platforms
shapes memetic form, illustrating my analysis with primary sources from these sites.
In Chapter II, I will evaluate how contemporary American comedy culture impacts
political comedy external to meme cultures, as well as its influences upon meme cultures
(political or otherwise). Although American comedy culture is vast, I have narrowed my case
studies down to television programs and internet comedy sites (radios, plays, and podcast
services are too localised, and films emerge too slowly to be able to react to current political
news). Within television, I will examine satire news, sketch comedy, and late night variety.
Within internet comedy, I will analyse satire websites, sketch comedy, and cultural
commentary. Throughout this chapter, I will make detailed analysis of meme genres and
political comedy that these producers created.
Chapter III will analyse the prominent memes of the 2016 United States Presidential
election, describing and accounting for the different meme genres and communities that
drove political culture on the internet. My significant case studies are Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer,
Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash, Chillary Clinton, Bernie or Hillary, Trump Remix Vines,
and Trump memes of the far-right (please note that this chapter discusses anti-Semitism and
10
mentions sexual assault). Each of these case studies represents a vastly different kind of
memetic process, exemplifying different acts of online citizenship.
It is important to recognise the limitations of this thesis. First of all, the overwhelming
amount of memetic activity means I cannot possibly analyse every meme from the election
I have tried to analyse the most influential meme genres that took place before September 16,
2016 (twenty-one days prior to my thesis due date). Secondly, the internet is not one
homogenous experience. As Kate Miltner astutely observes, the experience of participating
in meme culture is a social experience that is perpetually in process, and yet seems
idiosyncratic to each person who participates: we are individually engaging with our own
version of a shared (and amorphous) culture.23 I have tried to counter any analytical
idiosyncrasies by examining a wide range of websites, political alignments, and meme
cultures. Above all else, the internets heterogeneity is integral to its social functions.
There is perhaps one reason why all my friends volunteered to help me write about
memes, one reason why the sprawling basement of the internet is filled with unrewarded
creative endeavour: memes are interesting. And something this interesting is definitely worth
investigating.
23
Miltner, K. (2015). Memeology Festival 02. From #Feels to Structure of Feeling: The Challenges of Defining
Meme Culture Culture Digitally. [online] Culturedigitally.org. Available at:
http://culturedigitally.org/2015/10/memeology-festival-02-from-feels-to-structure-of-feeling-the-challenges-ofdefining-meme-culture/ [Accessed 27 Jun. 2016].
11
Chapter I
Developing memetics theory and the forces
that shape meme creation
ne of the primary drawbacks of writing about internet culture is that academia

moves glacially in comparison to the online world. As Phillips points out, in
the time it takes to research, write, and publish a project about a specific meme
or community, participatory textsor even the communities that first created and/or
amplified these textsoften undergo profound transformation.24 I will try to let ideas
transcend examples throughout my thesis, and allowing my theory to speak beyond
contextual case studies.25
In my introduction, I outlined the history of scientific theories of memes, concluding
that meme creators act as geneticists purposefully shaping memetic evolution. However,
rather than relying upon scientific analyses, I will approach memetics with terminology
borrowed from genre theory. I will use the language of literary genre to conceptualise
memetic genres.
Such a consideration of memes was originally posed by Wiggins and Bower, who
proposed that every meme is a genre with its own set of rules and conventions and a genre
whose production is a product of postmodern conceptions of representation and
24
Phillips, W. (2015). Memeology Festival 03. Memes, Cool Traps, and Performing Legitimacy: Where the
Researcher Fits in All This Culture Digitally. [online] Culturedigitally.org. Available at:
http://culturedigitally.org/2015/11/memeology-festival-03-memes-cool-traps-and-performing-legitimacy-wherethe-researcher-fits-in-all-this/ [Accessed 1 Jul. 2016].
25
Silvestri, L. (2015). Op. cit.
12
replication.26 They did not, however, investigate what this definition might mean within
literary genre theory. Genre theory has existed since the debut of Greek theatre, and has
struggled between defining texts by internal content (war film, science fiction) and external
audience response (comedy, tragedy). Altman comments that genre theorists have typically
assumed that texts with similar characteristics systematically generate similar readings,
similar meanings, and similar uses.27 Altman dismisses this as an unsophisticated way of
conceptualising genre.
Genre theorists such as Robert Stam see simplistic genre divisions within film and
literature as a hindrance to the creation of texts. Stam argues that one of the significant
problems with generic labels is the proclivity for scholars to rely upon normativism, or
having preconceived ideas of criteria for genre membership.28 This is an issue for any
scholarly undertaking the desire to prove a conclusion before analysing evidence on its own
merits, thereby ignoring anything that disproves a hypothesis. Increasingly, genre theory has
depicted genres as pluralistic, loose collections of texts that communicate with each other in
some ways but not in every way. No text completely conforms to one genre; the original Star
Wars trilogy is a science fiction that also draws from traditional revenge tragedies and the
Western genre. Genres and texts are fluid. This is the first reason I believe that
conceptualising memes-as-genres is useful: it incorporates notions of fluidity and malleability
that memes-as-genetic-evolution does not.
Interestingly, when nineteenth century literary theorists applied Darwins theory of
evolution to literary genres, they found that the rigid scientific model was destructive to genre
plurality, serving to convince theorists that genres evolve according to a fixed and
26
Wiggins, B. and Bowers, G. (2014). Memes as genre: A structurational analysis of the memescape. New
Media & Society, [online] 17(11), pp.1886-1906. Available at: http://nms.sagepub.com/content/17/11/1886.full
[Accessed 4 Jul. 2016].
27
Altman, R. (1999). Film/genre. London: BFI Pub., p.12.
28
Chandler, D. (1997). An Introduction to Genre Theory. [online] pp.1-15. Available at: http://visualmemory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/intgenre/chandler_genre_theory.pdf [Accessed 16 Jul. 2016]. P.2
13
identifiable trajectory.29 It is difficult to analyse genre from an evolutionary perspective,

because evolutionary science relies on discrete categories and compartmentalisation, whereas
genres exist in a fluid spectrum that cannot be precisely divided. When applied to memes,
these notions of fluidity and plurality reinforce the practices of remix and mashup.
Memetic genres posit that no meme is pure, and that every meme is a re-presentation
of a previous meme. Just as the novel Frankenstein can be named as the original science
fiction, there is an Original Meme within a memetic genre that characterises subsequent
remixes and mashups.30 Yet that Original Meme may already be a blend of other memetic
practices. Without the context of the science fiction genre, Frankenstein reads as a blend of
horror, drama, and tragedy. Similarly, the 2016 meme genre Dat Boi, featured in Figure 2,
blends the established genres of ugly aesthetics with a pre-existing memetic phrase to create a
new meme genre.31 Dat Boi went on to become a far more successful meme genre than its
parent Pacman meme.32
Figure 2: Dat Boi and its parent Pacman meme. Tumblr, 2016.
29
Ibid., p.6.
Aldiss, B. (1995). The detached retina. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, p.78.
31
Douglas, N. (2014). It's Supposed to Look Like Shit: The Internet Ugly Aesthetic. Journal of Visual Culture,
13(3), Available at: http://vcu.sagepub.com/content/13/3/314.abstract pp.314-339. [Accessed 13 Aug. 2016].
32
Google Trends. (2016a). Dat Boi Frog vs Dat Boi Pacman, 24 September 2012-24 September 2016. [online]
Available at: https://www.google.co.in/trends/explore?q=dat%20boi%20frog,dat%20boi%20pacman [Accessed
24 Sep. 2016].
30
14
We can only create new genres from mashups of what we already know. Dat Boi only
makes sense within internet culture because it borrows memetic practices that already existed
within other memetic genres. As internet users, we can only understand memes because we
have seen memes before. A single meme could be comprised of many smaller memes, and we
may require literacy in all these previous memes to understand the new one.
Memetic genre theory not only recognises the agency of meme creators, but endows
users with authorial intent. The hypodermic needle model of media consumption posits that
users passively and uniformly consume information, but this model fails to account for the
complex individualised relationship between consumers and information.33 Similarly, memes
are not uniformly interpreted by users. Internet citizens, or netizens, interpret memes in
different ways, just as they might interpret a book or film differently from their peers. But
memes-as-genes positions the individuals relation to the meme differently there is no room
for interpretation in genes. The DNA for brown eyes means brown eyes: an individual cannot
interpret that genetic information differently.34 Genetic memes do not reflect the subjectivity
of meaning captured by memetic genres.
Additionally, reading memes-as-genes gives them an intrinsic power that they do not
have. The DNA for brown eyes doesnt contain that information, it is that information. While
genes are information, genres carry information. Cultural information is not intrinsic like
genetic information is; cultural information is extrinsic, and informed by response. Memes
are the vessel for cultural information, rather than the information itself. This, too, is how
genre theorists conceive of genre. Daniel Chandler describes genre as a shared code between
the producers and interpreters of texts a kind of shorthand serving to increase the
33
Utwente.nl. (2016). Hypodermic Needle Theory. [online] Available at:

https://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20Clusters/Mass%20Media/Hypodermic_Needle_Theor
y/ [Accessed 26 Sep. 2016].
34
For academic clarity, this is a simplified definition of how genotypes function and does not consider the
effects of phenotypes.
15
efficiency of communication.35 The code itself is not the information: it is a means to

convey meaning.
Memes-as-genres allows us to incorporate fluidity, develop a reactionary relationship
between meme and netizen, and make a distinction between memes and information. While
evolution describes the interactive element of meme creation and spread, it does not account
for the interactive element of meme engagement. Ultimately, the memes-as-genres
framework allows more meaningful and accurate engagement with memes.
Throughout my thesis, I will use the phrase meme genre to refer to a group of
memes who share similar attributes for example, the Pepe genre, or the Dat Boi genre. An
individual text will be referred to as a singular meme.
Factors Affecting Meme Creation

I have already outlined that no meme is born in a vacuum. Creators are shaped by
what they have already experienced; memes exist within a richly textured history of other
memes and other comedic media (as I will detail in Chapter II). But meme creation is also
shaped by a deeper, less obvious force: the interface and demography of online platforms.
There are a plethora of online platforms where memes are created and distributed, but
for my analysis I will examine what I consider to be the six biggest sites: Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, and Vine.36 These platforms present content in different
35
Chandler, D. (1997). Op. cit. pp.5-6.

Facebook. (2016). Facebook. Facebook - Log In or Sign Up. [online] Available at:
https://www.facebook.com/ [Accessed 21 Sep. 2016].
Instagram.com. (2016). Instagram. Instagram . [online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/ [Accessed 21
Sep. 2016].
Twitter.com. (2016). Twitter. Twitter. It's what's happening. [online] Available at: https://twitter.com/
[Accessed 21 Sep. 2016].
Vine.co. (2016). Vine. Vine Home. [online] Available at: https://vine.co/ [Accessed 21 Sep. 2016].
Tumblr.com. (2016). Tumblr. Log in | Tumblr. [online] Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard
Reddit.com. (2016). Reddit. reddit: the front page of the internet. [online] Available at: https://www.reddit.com/
36
16
ways, moulding the form and positioning of memes. Analysing these platforms allows us to
understand how their memes function.
Facebook mediates content from all other platforms. Its size sets it apart from every
other online interface: founded in 2004, the site now has 1.71 billion users worldwide, who
use the platform to speak to real-life friends.37 Pew Research Center found that sixty-two
percent of all American adults use Facebook.38 Communities develop around group pages
and fan pages. All content posted in these communities and by Facebook friends is organised
algorithmically into a users newsfeed. The platform, which cannot be customised, is not
conducive to creating memetic content, but is ideal at sharing content that was developed on
other platforms.
Because Facebook is made up a series of varied interest groups, memes that appeal to
broader audiences receive wider attention, and fare much better than niche memes.
Facebooks privacy settings often limit how far a post can be shared and there is no
centralised space which hosts site-wide content, however public posts or community posts
made on publics groups or on fan pages can be widely seen via Facebooks newsfeed
algorithm. Facebook is often used as a means of political mobilisation because users can limit
who sees their posts, and, as an American service, cannot be monitored by certain
governments. Facebook was a fundamental tool of communication for Tunisian
revolutionaries during the Arab Spring, who described it as the GPS for this revolution.39
And within the 2016 Presidential election, Facebook hosted the political meme group Bernie
Sanders Dank Meme Stash, which will be analysed in greater detail in Chapter III.
37
Statista. (2016). Facebook users worldwide 2016. [online] Available at:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ [Accessed 23
Sep. 2016].
38
Duggan, M. (2015). Mobile Messaging and Social Media 2015. [online] Pew Research Center: Internet,
Science & Tech. Available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/19/mobile-messaging-and-social-media2015/ [Accessed 26 Jun. 2016].
39
Rosen, R. (2011). So, Was Facebook Responsible for the Arab Spring After All? [online] The Atlantic.
Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was-facebook-responsible-for-thearab-spring-after-all/244314/ [Accessed 1 Oct. 2016].
17
Instagram is a photo-sharing app; Instagram posts take up the entire screen, allowing
users to examine each post without distraction from neighbouring posts. Fifty-five percent of
eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-old Americans use it, but its usage is higher amongst women.40
Instagram is predominantly used like a personal photo album; pictures usually present
wistful, idealised, and romantic glimpses into a users life, perfected through in-app filters
which augment the colour and lighting balances in the photos. Instagram memes tend to focus
upon youth culture, slang, imagery from the 1990s, identity politics, and empowerment. In
keeping with Instagrams pictorial interface, image memes use a combination of reaction
images, tableau, and visual juxtaposition to communicate humour (seen in Figure 3).
Figure 3: From left to right. (a) Youth culture and 1990s references are combined in a meme about Pokmon Go and
sexting; a reaction image accompanies the text, merging a Pokmon character with Pepe the Frog. (b) A meme riffs
on both sexism and ableism at once, implying that the woman is a dog and the man disabled; here, rather than a
reaction image, the accompanying stock photo acts as a tableau of the conversation. Note that the user, drgrayfang,
has watermarked their username in the top left of the meme. (c) A meme plays with youth culture, body image, and
1990s references by juxtaposing Nicki Minaj with Flik from A Bugs Life (1998). Instagram, 2016.
Although Instagram has a culture of personal content creation, it is used to build upon
well-established meme genres from other platforms rather than generate new genres. This is
perhaps because Instagram builds around users rather than content any site that has a
40
Duggan, M. (2015). Op. cit.
18
follower count encourages a cult of personality. Hashtags in posts allow shared interests to be
searched, but hashtags do not necessitate interactions with other users.41 Interactive
communities on Instagram can only be facilitated through commenting and following users.
This lack of user cohesion means that memetic communities must be searched and do not
naturally appear upon a users feed as they may on Facebook.
Additionally, Instagram has no in-app feature to allow users to share and credit other
posts to their own feed, which contributes to a culture of screenshotting (capturing the display
of a screen and uploading it as new content). Instagram meme creators will often watermark
their usernames somewhere on the image to retain name power in any reposts (see Figure 4b).
With such a disregard for intellectual property, limited routes to memetic reproduction, and a
decentralised user-base, Instagrams power as a meme platform is mainly in the diffusion of
established genres rather than creation of new genres. This is partially because Instagram is a
smartphone app, and it is difficult to use graphics software to create memes on phones.
Twitter is a microblogging platform made up of one hundred and forty character-long
posts, or tweets. Twitter displays posts from all accounts that a user follows in a reversechronological feed. Users can publicly interact with content in various ways: tweets can be
liked, the reply feature facilitates conversation, and retweets allow content to be shared
while simultaneously acknowledging the tweets author. These community-building features
encourage content creation.
The retweet function is particularly useful in promoting intellectual property. It is far
easier to retweet content than it is to copy it into a new tweet and disguise it as your own.
While this practice occurs on nearly all platforms, the retweet feature on Twitter means that
users are more likely to hold content thieves accountable. Twitters culture celebrates
originality, ingenuity, and intellectual property, making it a hub of original content creation.
41
Hashtags are a metadata tool that signifies a post is speaking to a particular topic; it is denoted by the symbol
# before a chosen phrase.
19
Twitter is used by some twenty-three percent of online Americans, but this increases
within urban spaces: Pew Research Center found that three-in-ten online urban residents use
the site, compared with 21% of suburbanites and 15% of those living in rural areas.42
Twitter is also more popular amongst non-white netizens: twenty-eight percent of black
internet users use Twitter, as opposed to twelve percent of white internet users.43 The African
American demographic has a particularly strong cultural impact upon Twitters landscape
Reddit has an entire forum dedicated to the memes that originate from Black Twitter.44
Salon described Black Twitter as a collective of active, primarily African-American Twitter
users who have created a virtual community that participates in continuous real-time
conversations, and noted its impact upon the George Zimmerman case in 2013.45 The
hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was used as a focal point for the contemporary civil rights
movement; activists used Twitter as a socio-political tool to discuss racialised police
brutality, give live updates of protests, share experiences of blackness as a form of
consciousness-raising, and push back against spurious media narratives.46
This continuous real-time conversation about breaking news is expedited by
Twitters use by media outlets and journalists.47 Many people use the site to comment on
news in real time. Twitter differs from other platforms because it is often used by journalists
to post breaking news updates, creating a constant online buzz of ambient journalism.48
42
Duggan, M. (2015). Op. cit.

Pew Research Center. (2014). Internet Use Over Time. [online] Available at:
http://www.pewinternet.org/data-trend/internet-use/internet-use-over-time/ [Accessed 21 Sep. 2016].
44
Black People Twitter. (2016). Reddit. /r/blackpeopletwitter. [online] Available at:
https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/ [Accessed 21 Jul. 2016].
45
Jones, F. (2016). Is Twitter the underground railroad of activism? [online] Salon. Available at:
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/17/how_twitter_fuels_black_activism/ [Accessed 21 Jul. 2016].
46
Stephenson, B. (2016). How Black Lives Matter Uses Social Media to Fight the Power. [online] WIRED.
Available at: https://www.wired.com/2015/10/how-black-lives-matter-uses-social-media-to-fight-the-power/
47
Jones, F. (2016). Op. cit.
48
Highfield, T. (2015). Tweeted Joke Life Spans and Appropriated Punch Lines: Practices Around Topical
Humor on Social Media. International Journal of Communication, [online] 9. Available at:
http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/3611/1450 [Accessed 29 Jun. 2016]. p.2716.
43
20
Because tweets are limited to one hundred and forty characters, Twitter memes are
succinct and easily communicated. They carry high memetic power across platforms;
typically it is unusual or absurd tweet syntax that becomes memetic (i.e. the memes form).
Examine Figure 4 below, a tweet from October 2015.
Figure 4: "look at it. it's got anxiety". Twitter, 2015.
The content comments on the dysfunction of humanity, and forms a narrative around
corrupting a perfectly good monkey into one with anxiety, aka Mankind. It merges
common Twitter themes of self-deprecation and crudeness, and the unusual juxtaposition
between the grandeur of Mankind and the colloquialism of the angel presents inconsistent
linguistic tones. This playfulness with tone and syntax is a prominent feature of Twitter
humour, and indeed internet satire, as I will demonstrate in my Chapter II analysis of The
Onion. The topic bears similarities to the Animal Creation genre, seen below in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Animal Creation genre. Twitter, 2015-16.
21
The Animal Creation genre familiarised users to the content of the Anxiety meme: we can
only understand memes if we have seen memes before. The language of the meme was coopted by netizens: the unique punctuation and syntax which rested upon the premise that
someone fucked up a perfectly good x is what you did made it highly adaptable and yet
immediately recognisable. Tumblr developed the tweet into a broader genre, where it
parodied subjects like Frankenstein, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Star Wars (Figure 6).49
Figure 6: An example of the anxiety meme, in the form of a Tumblr chat post. Tumblr, 2015.
Globally each month, thirty-four million internet users access microblogging platform
Tumblr; fifteen percent are aged thirteen to seventeen, and forty-one percent are between
eighteen and thirty-four.50 Additionally, more time is spent on Tumblr than many other social
media sites.51 Tumblr is famed for intersectional activism and fandom culture, as well as an
irony-laden comedy culture of shitposting (a phrase used by many platforms to describe
irreverent and ironic content creation). The success of the Anxiety genre on Tumblr
exemplifies its cultures of mental health acceptance and shitposting.
49
khaleesi-mother-of-fandoms. (2016). Tumblr. Frankenstein Anxiety. Available at: http://khaleesi-mother-offandoms.tumblr.com/post/137616405637/dr-frankenstein-its-alive-i-have-created [Accessed 22 July 2016].
triangular. (2016). Tumblr. Hal 9000 Anxiety. Available at: http://triiangular.co.vu/post/137251162953/drchandra-i-have-made-the-hal-9000-unit-other [Accessed 22 July 2016].
50
Gorman, T. (2016). Tumblrs Best Practices for Building Community and Spreading Stories [VIDEO].
[online] Digitalservices.npr.org. Available at: http://digitalservices.npr.org/post/tumblrs-best-practices-buildingcommunity-and-spreading-stories-video [Accessed 22 Sep. 2016].
51
Smith, C. (2013). Tumblr Offers Advertisers A Major Advantage: Young Users, Who Spend Tons Of Time On
The Site. [online] Business Insider Australia. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/tumblr-andsocial-media-demographics-2013-12?r=US&IR=T [Accessed 22 Sep. 2016].
22
Tumblrs interface facilitates all manner of memes: users can make text posts, image
posts with up to ten images arranged in a grid, script-like chat posts as seen in Figure 6, and
video posts either uploaded to Tumblrs servers or linked externally. This engaging multimedia blogging facilitates many different blogging styles: visual, textual, humour, mixed.
Each user has a fully customisable blog website at the URL username.tumblr.com, and posts
from all followed blogs are streamlined into the Tumblr dashboard. Tumblr is a space of
constant sharing and re-sharing: content is replicated from one blog to another via the
reblog function, and users can add a comment to any post. However, comments are not
posted in one continuous thread, instead branching into different versions depending upon
who has reblogged it (similar to how chain emails branched out into trees). Users can tag
posts with words for searchability, but often the tags are used as a space to comment upon a
post without leaving an actual comment this is far less disruptive to the post. Interactions
with posts (reblogs, likes, comments) are recorded as notes on the post.
Because of its reblog feature, Tumblr (like Twitter) has a culture that validates
intellectual property. Tumblr evades the cult of personality that Instagram and Twitter
experience because a users follower count is not public information: this puts a much bigger
focus upon notes as a measure of success. Contemporary Tumblr memes are typically
formatted as text posts that employ the use of reaction images or reaction gifs, and may coopt the space designed for searchable tags to make additional jokes. Whereas Instagram
memes are created as one whole image, Tumblr memes are mixed media of hypertext and
images.
Tumblr memes are commonly distributed to other websites as screenshots. There is a
sense on the internet that memes that are screenshotted on one platform and reposted to
another are inferior to memes that are shared natively. There is not only a decline in image
quality when memes are captured and reposted, but there is also a notion that reposting to
23
external sites disrupts the functioning of the original site by erasing the original creators
memetic power and attributing it to someone else. The most common place for screenshots to
gain traction is on Facebook, because they can reach far larger audiences who do not need to
start a Tumblr or Twitter account to be in on the joke. Tumblrs content-driven culture means
that Tumblr posts are frequently reshared on Facebook by pages like Humans of Tumblr
which boasts over two million likes.52
The same content-driven culture is found on Reddit, a forum platform which caters to
a plethora of niche interest groups. Reddit bills itself as the front page of the internet, and
contains everything from politics to advice boards to crowdsourced celebrity interviews.53
Reddit organises content via discussion boards called subreddits which focus upon a
particular topic.54 Users vote posts up or down (upvotes and downvotes) as a way to
indicate their approval or distaste with the content. Upvotes given in the first few minutes of
a new post are worth more than successive ones so as to maintain a constant flow of new
content. Reddit unites content from all subreddits on its front page, enabling users to see the
most popular content on the site. In this way, a minor post say, a meme can make its way
to the front page of Reddit if it is flooded with upvotes in its early stages. Reddits front page
has thereby popularised many memes.
The insularity of certain subreddits has notoriously bred toxic and aggressive
subcultures: some subreddits contain Holocaust denial, white supremacy, and pro-rape
sentiments.55 Content from these far-right subreddits occasionally emerges on the front page
of the website by way of the upvoting system. In June 2016, Reddits front page became
inundated with content from the Donald Trump subreddit (/r/The_Donald). The subreddits
52
Humans of Tumblr. (2016). Facebook. Humans of Tumblr. [online] Available at:

https://www.facebook.com/humansoftumblrcom/ [Accessed 26 Sep. 2016].
53
Reddit.com. (2016). Op. cit.
54
Allington, W. (2014). New Media, Old Hatred: The Rise of Holocaust Denial on the Internet. Honours.
University of Sydney. p.45
55
Ibid.
24
moderators had boosted the popularity of certain posts by sticking it to the top of the
message board (a tool usually reserved for community announcements); once a post had
received many upvotes, the moderators switched to a new post. These sustained efforts led to
/r/The_Donald having a disproportionate presence upon Reddits frontpage, more so than the
Bernie Sanders subreddit and the general politics subreddit.56 After this particular case,
Reddit changed its upvoting algorithm.57 This ongoing battle against coordinated memetic
activity of the far right is explored further in Chapter III.
The Reddit interface is largely unchanged from the layout of early 2000s forums,
linking conversation threads in the main body of the page, and featuring the subreddit
descriptions at the right. Reddit does not embed images or videos like Tumblr does: instead,
images and videos exist as external links on Reddit a relic of an older internet age, designed
to minimise download size. Reddits pictorial memes tend to contain all information within
the picture so that memes make sense when linked without original comments. This makes
Reddit memes easily transferrable to other platforms.
While only six percent of the online adult population uses Reddit, this figure rises to
fifteen percent amongst males aged eighteen to twenty-nine.58 A 2012 study of thirty-one
websites found that Reddit was the most male-dominated space: seventy-four percent of its
users identified as male.59 This demography informs the sites content and contributes to a
culture of male insularity. The reason for the forums gendered polarisation is likely related
to the maturation of Reddit as an internet space. In the early days of the internet, recreational
56
Ibid.
Hicks, W. (2016). Reddit Changing Algorithm to Increase Frontpage Diversity, Neuter The_Donald.
[online] Heat Street. Available at: https://heatst.com/tech/reddit-changing-algorithm-to-increase-frontpagediversity-neuter-the_donald/ [Accessed 21 Sep. 2016].
58
Pew Research Center. (2013). 6% of Online Adults are Reddit Users. [online] Available at:
http://www.pewinternet.org/files/old-media/Files/Reports/2013/PIP_reddit_usage_2013.pdf [Accessed 22 Jul.
2016].
59
Huffington Post, (2012). Social Media By Gender: Women Dominate Pinterest, Twitter, Men Dominate
Reddit, YouTube (INFOGRAPHIC). [online] Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/20/socialmedia-by-gender-women-pinterest-men-reddit-infographic_n_1613812.html?ir=Australia [Accessed 22 Nov.
2015].
57
25
browsing was performed by those in technology industries; at that stage, the tech industry
was predominantly male (and indeed, to this day seventy-nine percent of American computer
programmers are male).60 Because the early internet reflected the mostly-male tech world, it
was predominantly males who used internet forums for leisure. As one blogger astutely
points out, not only were [women] walking into a mostly male-populated subculture, they
were also walking into a subculture that had developed around the idea of being a mostly
male-populated subculture.61 There is a self-made mythology that forums represent the true
and original internet a mythology maintained by Reddits by-line calling itself the front
page of the internet.62 Reddit users have power as the perceived tastemakers of the Internet.
Figure 7: /r/aSongOfMemesAndRage, Game of Thrones memes subreddit. Reddit, 2016.
And yet, the platform defies homogeneity with its niche communities. Meme-geared
subreddits cater to specific meme genres, such as Game of Thrones memes (Figure 7 above)
60
Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2016). Employed persons by detailed occupation, sex, race, and Hispanic or
Latino ethnicity. [online] Available at: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm [Accessed 21 Sep. 2016].
61
Nassim A. (2013). Gender and the Internet. [online] Internet Ascent. Available at:
http://internetascent.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/gender-and-internet.html [Accessed 22 Nov. 2015].
62
Reddit.com. (2016). Op. cit.
26
and Christian memes (/r/dankchristianmemes).63 Reddit memes are built upon communities
that are well organised and user-supported.
The last memetic platform is Vine, the powerful new player which has outgrown its
original purpose as a Twitter video-sharing app. Each Vine is a six second video which loops
until a user scrolls beyond it; Vine sees 1.5 billion video loops daily.64 Vines demography is
more teenage-heavy than any of the other platforms, with their largest worldwide
demographic built of eighteen- to twenty-year-olds.65 Due to the inclusion of a follower
count, Vine users (Viners) are susceptible to the cult of personality, and the six second
timeframe means a lot of Vine content is simplistic slapstick (Figure 8, below).
Figure 8: Viner Rudy Mancuso dances to Uptown Funk for 5.8 seconds, and crashes into an object for the remaining
0.2 seconds. The six second time limit does not leave much room for breaking comedic boundaries. Vine, 2014.
63
Dank Christian Memes. (2015). Reddit. memes god would upswag /r/dankchristianmemes. [online]
Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/dankchristianmemes [Accessed 1 Oct. 2016].
64
DeAmicis, C. (2015). Vine rings in its second year by hitting 1.5 billion daily loops. [online] Gigaom.
Available at: https://gigaom.com/2015/01/26/vine-rings-in-its-second-year-by-hitting-1-5-billion-daily-loops/
65
Richter, F. (2014). Infographic: Key Facts on Vine Usage. [online] Statista Infographics. Available at:
https://www.statista.com/chart/2456/key-facts-on-vine-usage/ [Accessed 22 Jul. 2016].
27
Vines short videos are an easy way to transition from pictorial to video memes
without having to commit to the long form of YouTube. Vines are short, simple, and ideal for
multi-platform sharing. Each Vine already acts like a meme: in watching a Vine, the video
automatically repeats, mimicking the process of mimesis through the repetition in its
structure. The Vine platform subconsciously signals the memetic process, and its phonefriendly editing software means that memetic participation does not require expensive
computer graphics software. Vines were commonly used for short mashup and remix videos
during the election; songs were placed over clips of Trumps and Clintons speeches, their
voices were auto-tuned, and the volume and images were warped.
Vine embodies the ever-evolving, fast-paced, trend-driven world of meme culture.
Each of these platforms informs meme creation and meme participation in hugely different
ways, and plays a significant role in shaping how users create, share, and read memetic texts.
What Makes a Meme Successful?

So if user engagement and platform interface inform how a meme genre is created,
what is it that makes a genre successful? Why does a community recognise and reward only
some content with memetic engagement? There are four significant factors which shape
memetic success: spread and virality, topicality, authenticity, and use of internet aesthetic.
First and foremost, a meme genres success is measured by the level of spread and
virality it achieves that is, its reach. Fillippo Menczer, who conducted quantitative analysis
of online trends, commented upon what makes content go viral:
If [a meme] spreads to 10,000 people very early on who are all in one
community, then its less likely to go viral. But if it goes through 100 people
28
who are all from different communities, and they interact with it, its much
more likely to go on and reach a million people.66
Menczer highlights that content does not need to be cross-platform to ensure high virality, but
does need to transcend multiple interest groups this is why Reddits front page, which
filters content from thousands of niche subreddits, is so good at promoting memes. It is
difficult to ascertain the specific qualities that will encourage multiple groups to engage with
viral content, but one is topicality.
There is a constant desire for new and interesting content. Whereas a decade ago a
meme genre lasted months or even years, todays content-saturated internet burns through
genres within a few weeks some within even a few days or hours. Just as news quickly
becomes old in a twenty-four hour news cycle, memes that are not topical quickly become
unfashionable and unfunny. During a particularly large cultural or political event, such as an
election or celebrity feud, memetic activity saturates every platform in a period of what I call
lucid-memeing, where everyone leaps in to give their humorous take on the current state of
affairs.
In any community, there are people who engage deeply and routinely with culture,
and people who are more out of touch. Memes go so quickly that even academics who study
them have difficulty keeping up maintaining memetic authenticity is an uphill battle. And
so, from the fast-changing culture, a spectrum of meme users emerges. At one end, there are
deep netizens, or users who understand genres and can create authentic memes. And at the
other are shallow users, with less memetic fluency. Shallow users are more likely to use
memes superficially, incorrectly, or inauthentically.
66
Lewis, G. (2016). We Asked an Expert if Memes Could Determine the Outcome of the Presidential Election.
[online] VICE. Available at: http://www.vice.com/read/we-asked-an-expert-if-memes-could-determine-theoutcome-of-the-presidential-election [Accessed 28 Mar. 2016].
29
Figure 9: Congressman Massie's doge meme. Twitter, 2013.
Authenticity of memes shapes memetic success, and the intricacy of internet culture
makes spotting inauthentic users easy. Famously, Republican Congressmen Thomas Massie
and Steve Stockman misused the Doge genre that I discussed in Chapter I. As seen in Figure
9, above, Massie employed the white Impact font of old macro memes rather than Doges
signature brightly coloured Comic Sans. Douglas speaks to the congressmens inauthentic use
of the meme:
The criticism of Massie and Stockman was not just over outsiders exploiting
the meme, but over their failure to understand [what] they were trying to
exploit.67
The congressmen hijacked the cultural capital of Doge, and their lack of engagement with
meme culture meant that they created inauthentic memes. Lampooning inauthentic memetic
exploitation became a genre during Clintons 2016 campaign, as I will discuss in Chapter III.
67
Douglas, N. (2014). Op. cit. pp.334-335.

RepThomasMassie. (2013). Twitter. "Much bipartisanship. Very spending. Wow. #doge http://reut.rs/1bml7Pf "
Available at: https://twitter.com/repthomasmassie/status/415145732661059584?lang=en [Accessed 19 July
2016].
30
This anti-exploitation sentiment extends to corporations as well. Reddit is particularly

loud in its scorn for inauthentic meme use; Douglas comments that its anti-authoritarian
culture invites parody, a genre that always leans grotesque.68 There is an entire subreddit
parodying companies who misuse meme culture and youth slang (/r/FellowKids).69 It
becomes abundantly clear that memes are not just a mask that can be exploited for capital or
political gain. There is an anti-corporate sentiment in memetic internet cultures which is
almost punk in its anti-authoritarianism. It may sound counter-intuitive, but netizens only
recognise authentic irony.
Anti-authoritarianism is reflected heavily in the celebration of confusing or
unmarketable content, as seen in the Harambe genre. Harambe was a gorilla at Cincinnati
Zoo who was killed by zoo officials after he threatened the life of a toddler who fell into his
enclosure in June 2016.70 A meme genre soon arose that lampooned the hyperbolic public
outrage over Harambes death; memes heralded the gorilla as an irreplaceable martyr, and
users asked each other to get dicks out for Harambe as a show of mourning. 71 In a later
analysis of why Harambe memes endured for several weeks, Brian Feldman of New York
Magazine attributed it to the genres unique anti-corporate qualities: Harambe is still a
funny punch line because brands will never touch it.72 Harambe not only highlighted a
horrific act of public animal execution, but also violence against children, taboos that are
rarely mentioned in mainstream comedy but which are mainstays of the internets darkest
corners. Harambe reinforced a sense of active camaraderie amongst the meme community,
68
Douglas, N. (2014). Op. cit. p.315

Fellow Kids. (2014). Reddit. How do you do, fellow kids? /r/FellowKids. [online] Available at:
https://www.reddit.com/r/fellowkids [Accessed 26 Sep. 2016].
70
ABC News. (2016). Boy easily entered Cincinnati Zoo gorilla enclosure: witness. [online] Available at:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-01/witness-describes-harambe-incident/7468716 [Accessed 23 Sep. 2016].
71
Geers, J. (2016). The 50 Greatest Harambe Memes Of All Time. [online] Available at:
http://thoughtcatalog.com/jacob-geers/2016/08/the-50-greatest-harambe-memes-of-all-time/ [Accessed 23 Sep.
2016].
72
Feldman, B. (2016). The Dark Internet Humor of Harambe Jokes. [online] Available at:
http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/07/harambe-forever.html [Accessed 30 Jul. 2016].
69
31
re-inscribing the celebration of anti-authoritarianism and cultural anarchy of the internet,

whilst maintaining an aesthetic of self-deprecation.
The aesthetic of internet humour is difficult to pinpoint, but Douglas does an excellent
job summarising it with his concept of internet ugly:
[There is] a definable aesthetic running through meme culture, a celebration of
the sloppy and the amateurish an imposition of messy humanity upon an
online world of smooth gradients, blemish-correcting Photoshop, and
AutoCorrect. It exploits tools meant to smooth and beautify, using them to
muss and distort.73
We have already seen internet ugly in play in memes like Doge, Dat Boi, and Pepe
purposefully amateur imagery that is accompanied by phrases with confusing syntax. Internet
ugly represents a dissonance between streamlined, digital computers, and ugly human
mistakes. It is someone purposefully making something look like shit because it rejects all
the tools at their disposal: it is the act of visual irony.74
While this is by no means descriptive of the entire internet, Douglas asserts that it is
certainly the core aesthetic of memetic internet content.75 This mode of visual keying signals
that a meme is dank a word appropriated from marijuana culture to describe a very good
meme.76 A memes dankness correlates with its ugliness and incongruence: memes dont
have a traditional punchline, and they are deliberately shoddy.77 Paradoxically, the internet,
which many claim is isolating and dehumanising, revels in the ugliness of humanity.
73
Douglas, N. (2014). Op. cit. pp.314-315.

Ibid.
75
Ibid., p.315.
76
I would posit that the opposite of a dank meme is an arid meme. Know Your Meme. (2014). Dank Memes.
[online] Available at: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/dank-memes [Accessed 21 Sep. 2016].
77
Wolske, M. (2016). Make America Dank Again: Why Political Memes Dont Work | In Media Res. [online]
Available at: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2016/09/06/make-america-dank-again-whypolitical-memes-don-t-work [Accessed 21 Sep. 2016].
74
32
Conclusions
At the start of this chapter, I explained my reasoning for adopting the language of
genre to describe memes. Genre theory reflects the fluidity of meme genres, develops the idea
that users interact with memes, and, unlike evolutionary models, depicts memes as vessels for
information rather than information itself. I analysed how memetic creation and sharing are
shaped by the six major memetic platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit,
and Vine). I then outlined the other factors that contribute to memetic success: virality and
spread, topicality, authenticity, and the ugly, anti-authoritarian aesthetic of internet humour.
In Chapter II, I will approach the 2016 Presidential election by analysing how
mainstream comedy engages with political parody. As I have already emphasised, we do not
understand memes unless we have seen memes before; similarly, we cannot understand the
political comedy of meme cultures unless we have satirical and political literacy. By
juxtaposing mainstream comedic media with the internet, we can understand how ideas
between these spheres are exchanged, repurposed, and mirrored.
33
Chapter II
American comedy
continued impact
culture
and
its
emes are unique because the vast majority of them are made by people with
no formal background in comedy. The comedic literacy of the general public
is informed by what John Limon calls Americas comedified culture,
whereby comedy culture permeates throughout every sphere of society. 78 Memes do not exist
in a vacuum separate from this comedified culture: to fully understand memes, we must
understand American political humour more broadly.
There are two main dimensions of traditional comedic media that shape internet
meme culture: television comedy and internet comedy. The television comedy I will be
examining encompasses late night programming (The Tonight Show, NBC), satire news (Last
Week Tonight, HBO; Full Frontal, TBS), and sketch comedy (Saturday Night Live, NBC).
The internet spaces I will analyse are satire websites (The Onion, Clickhole), cultural
commentary websites (Cracked), and sketch comedy sites (College Humor).79
Dissecting memes through American humour studies allows us to understand memes
as a continuation of Americas long comedy history. For nearly ninety years, American
78
Limon, J. (2000). Stand-up comedy in theory, or, Abjection in America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
p.3.
79
The Onion. (2016). The Onion, Home. [online] Available at: http://www.theonion.com/ [Accessed 21 Sep.
2016].
Clickhole. (2016). ClickHole, Home. [online] Available at: http://www.clickhole.com/ [Accessed 21 Sep. 2016].
Cracked.com. (2016a). America's Only Humor Site | Cracked.com. [online] Available at:
http://www.cracked.com/ [Accessed 21 Sep. 2016].
College Humor. (2016a). CollegeHumor. [online] Available at: http://www.collegehumor.com/ [Accessed 21
Sep. 2016].
34
humour studies has examined comedy and politics in parallel. In All Joking Aside, Rebecca
Krefting states that all humor locates itself in social and political contexts.80 It is a strong,
clear statement: comedy is a political act which engages with identity politics and political
satire.
Television
Americans television viewing habits have changed. The increased availability of highspeed internet at a relatively low cost has made on-demand streaming more accessible and
popular; this has had a huge influence upon television. Data indicate that while broadcast
television viewership has decreased since 2011, total video-watching hours continue to grow:
digital video is complementing more than replacing traditional TV.81 Nevertheless,
television viewing in America has decreased by ten hours a week amongst eighteen- to
twenty-four-year-olds, and networks increasingly use online streaming to support broadcast
revenue.82
In particular, light entertainment has moved towards shorter segments that are easy to
upload as YouTube clips, and internet-friendly television emphasises virality over memetic
engagement. Viral content is accessible and boosts viewership; memetic content excludes
potential viewers (as, indeed, does political content, which perhaps explains a reluctance to
ask politicians tough questions). Meme culture can be intimidating to engage with, but viral
content does not need prior knowledge to be understood and shared. So, how has comedy
television reflected the 2016 US Presidential election, and what are its influences upon meme
cultures?
80
Krefting, R. (2014). All Joking Aside: American Humor and Its Discontents. Johns Hopkins University Press.
p.2.
81
MarketingCharts. (2016). Traditional TV Viewing: What A Difference 5 Years Makes. [online] Available at:
http://www.marketingcharts.com/television/are-young-people-watching-less-tv-24817/ [Accessed 10 Sep.
2016].
82
Ibid.
35
Parody and sketch case study: Saturday Night Live

American sketch is seen best in the long-running NBC program Saturday Night Live
(SNL). The show first aired in 1975 and has been produced by Lorne Michaels for all but five
years of its run. The format is unchanging: each week a celebrity host joins the ensemble cast
of sketch performers for ninety minutes of character-driven sketches, punctuated by a musical
performance, pre-recorded Digital Shorts, and a satire news segment. SNL is shot before a
studio audience and broadcast live.
SNLs influence upon politics is well-established; Baumgartner et al found that
exposing voters to Tina Feys 2008 parody of Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin
immediately made Palins favourability plummet by sixteen points.83 The so-called Fey
Effect spilled over into vote intention, and was most pronounced among self-identified
Republicans.84
In 2016, SNLs political parody verged upon libellous with a mock Trump campaign
ad. In the sketch, a series of everyday Americans talk about why they love Trump, but later
reveal their true colours: Hes going to take our economy from here to here, one man says,
raising his arm and revealing a swastika armband.85 The sketch came in the wake of Trumps
refusal to disavow the support of ex-Klansmen David Duke, and used visual techniques to
communicate Trumps popularity with racists.86 Concluding with the tagline Racists for
Trump, the sketch encouraged its audience to challenge the intentions of Trump supporters.
However, any attempts from SNL to disempower Trump were quickly eradicated when the
83
Baumgartner, J. et. al. (2012). The Fey Effect: young adults, political humor, and perceptions of Sarah Palin
in the 2008 Presidential campaign. Public Opinion Quarterley, [online] 76(1), pp.95-104. Available at:
http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/76/1/95.full.pdf [Accessed 13 Aug. 2016]. p.95.
84
Ibid.
85
Stedman, A. (2016). Watch: SNL Mocks Racist Donald Trump Supporters With Fake Campaign Ad. [online]
Variety. Available at: http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/snl-donald-trump-racists-campaign-ad-1201723795/
86
Kessler, G. (2016a). Donald Trump and David Duke: For the record. [online] Available at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/01/donald-trump-and-david-duke-for-therecord/ [Accessed 14 Sep. 2016].
36
show invited Trump to host on 7th November, 2015.87 While the liberal comedy world of SNL
was against Trumps policies, they continued to give him airtime because he was entertaining
and boosted ratings. This shaped how Trump was discussed in memes: as someone whose
dangerous policies did not impact his entertainment factor.
Meanwhile, SNLs Digital Shorts have shaped the landscape of the internet more than
any other aspect of the show. In December 2005, actors Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell
used a cheap camera to create Lazy Sunday, a hip-hop video about a humble Sunday
afternoon. Lazy Sunday repurposed the self-serious mode of hip hop to lampoon whiteness
in a form of burlesque parody. This juxtaposition of ostentatious hip-hop and menial content
soon became iconic to the Digital Short team, who released their musical comedy under the
name The Lonely Island.88
Lazy Sunday was cheap and weird in a way that the internet instantly loved it was
a mainstream comedy translation of homemade, low-fi internet ugly.89 Within a week, Lazy
Sunday was illegally uploaded to YouTube, which at that stage was quite a small website.
The video accumulated some seven million views and there is some evidence that the sites
traffic spiked eighty-three percent.90 However, YouTube partnership director Kevin Yen
insists that there was no remarkable bump in visitors at time of the video.91 The Lonely Island
later uploaded an uncensored version of their racier song Dick in a Box, which gained two
million views in its first week.92 YouTube had allowed The Lonely Island to circumvent
87
Vitali, A. (2015). 'I Know How to Take a Joke': Donald Trump Hosts 'SNL'. [online] Available at:
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-hosts-saturday-night-live-amid-protests-n459341
88
Thompson, E. and Tussey, E. (2013). Andy Sambergs Digital Success Story and Other Myths of the Internet
Comedy Club. In: N. Marx, M. Sienkiewicz and R. Becker, ed., Saturday Night Live and American TV, 1st ed.
Indiana University Press. p.239.
89
Douglas, N. (2014). Op. cit.
90
Thompson, E. and Tussey, E. (2013). Op. cit. p.240.
Anderson, N. (2016). Did "Lazy Sunday" make YouTube's $1.5 billion sale possible? [online] Available at:
http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/11/did-lazy-sunday-make-youtubes-1-5-billion-sale-possible/
[Accessed 13 Aug. 2016].
91
Anderson, N. (2016). Op. cit.
92
Thompson, E. and Tussey, E. (2013). Op. cit. p.241.
37
NBCs censors, making the upload feel more authentic than its original SNL broadcast.
YouTube owes a part of its early growth to the success of the SNL Digital Shorts, and for
allowing its users creative freedom.
But SNLs greatest contribution to internet culture is the meme genre Mmm Whatcha
Say. It derives from a 2007 sketch called Dear Sister, described as a loose homage to the
final moment of the Season 2 finale of The O.C.93 In the O.C. episode, a character death was
overdramatised with a musical hook from Imogen Heaps 2005 song Hide and Seek. Dear
Sister came two years after the episode had aired, and was thus already distant from the
original source material. The short introduces three characters who inexplicably kill each
other with guns; each gunshot is marked by the dramatic Imogen Heap hook mmm whatcha
say, and the scene escalates by use of disruptive edits. Initial remix videos emerged soon
after the sketch aired, whereby users played the hook over clips of people falling or being
injured.94 We can better understand how the genre developed over time by mapping interest
in the genre. In Figure 10, Google Trends analytics data tracks the search term Mmm
whatcha say from 2005 to 2015:
Popularity of Google search term: Mmm whatcha say

a
Figure 10: Google analytics data. Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the
given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. Google Trends, 2016.
93
The Lonely Island. (2014). The Shooting AKA Dear Sister. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmd1qMN5Yo0 [Accessed 13 Aug. 2016].
94
Tubekatt. (2007). Dear Persian (SNL Digital Short Spoof). [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLyzscHXtWM [Accessed 13 Aug. 2016].
38
Point A occurs in April 2007 the SNL airdate. In 2009, Jason Derulo released a multiplatinum single which sampled the Imogen Heap hook; this explains the spike at Point B.95
The genre became dormant until September 2012, when a Tumblr upload of Dear Sister
caused the genre to slowly gain traction.96 After sustained, cumulative exposure on Tumblr,
interest peaked in 2015 (Point C). It became more than a video remix genre, and was invoked
textually with the words mmm whatcha say.97 By Point C, some users admitted to being
unaware of the genres origins, but understood it through memetic experience.98 Ultimately,
the meme genre was most powerful having been repurposed multiple times, and after it was
separated it from its original SNL context. As we will see with Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer in
Chapter III, cumulative memetic repurposing heightens memetic power.
Saturday Night Lives unique ability to influence both political comedy culture and
meme culture makes it fundamental in understanding American political memes. SNL acts as
the comedy zeitgeist, not only in its representation of political figures, but in its ability to
shape mediated comedy. Mediated meme cultures are directly influenced by the ideas and
comic modes that SNL presents, and SNLs sketch form means that segments are easily
shared. SNL sets the tone for how politics is discussed within mainstream comedy, and
establishes comic topicality.
95
Derulo, J. (2009). Whatcha Say. Jason Derulo. Beluga Heights.

stupidfuckingquestions. (2012). Tumblr. Dear Sister, accessed via Wayback Machine. [online] Available at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20121016020359/http://stupidfuckingquestions.tumblr.com/post/30118256714
97
thestereotypebuster. (2014). Tumblr. How to turn Hamlet into a comedy: mmm whatcha say [online]
Available at: http://thestereotypebuster.tumblr.com/post/106422891325/how-to-turn-hamlet-into-a-comedymmm-whatcha [Accessed 10 Sep. 2016].
98
officialnoot. (2016). Tumblr. NO ONE TOLD ME IT WAS A REAL MEME [online] Available at:
http://officialnoot.tumblr.com/post/106778349255/demiboyclintbarton-mmm-whatcha-say-is-like [Accessed 10
Sep. 2016].
96
39
Variety and interview case study: The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon
SNL alum Jimmy Fallon has been the king of late night interview television since his
move from Late Night to The Tonight Show on NBC in early 2014.99 Fallons Tonight Show
is an internet-friendly format emphasising celebrity-driven sketches and games over
interview.100 Segments from the show are uploaded to the shows YouTube channel which
boasts 11 million subscribers (more than any other late night interview channel by 3.5
million).101
Fallons show plays with virality more than memetic content, but his real triumph
during the election cycle was his combination of sketch and interview. When Hillary Clinton
was on the show, Fallon impersonated Trump and interviewed her via a split-screen phone
call. What would you do for women in this country? he asked her, allowing her to
demonstrate her competency in juxtaposition to his grotesque Trump caricature.102 The sketch
format conjured a slightly more relaxed Clinton: Hang on, let me get my pen, she says,
grabbing a glass of white wine from off camera. While this relaxed Clinton is still highly
scripted, the sketch format re-frames the use of a script. She is performing a sketch rather
than a written speech, and communicates a genuine sense of humour she can talk about real
policy within the confines of a comedy sketch, and distance herself from being seen as a
harsh or stoic woman.
99
Kissell, R. (2016). Ratings: Jimmy Fallon Caps Dominant Year Two on NBCs Tonight Show [online]
Available at: http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/ratings-jimmy-fallon-two-years-nbc-tonight-show-host1201702314/ [Accessed 10 Sep. 2016].
100
Pang, K. (2016). Jimmy Fallon: Host for a Twittering society. The Chicago Tribune. [online] Available at:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-03-02/entertainment/0903010190_1_astral-weeks-talk-tonight-show
101
Jimmy Kimmel Live. (2016a). Jimmy Kimmel Live YouTube Home. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/user/JimmyKimmelLive [Accessed 10 Sep. 2016].
102
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. (2016a). Donald Trump's Phone Call with Hillary Clinton.
[online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONRQZshyrPI [Accessed 10 Sep. 2016].
40
Within the same episode, Fallon asked Clinton about the email scandal and her
experiences with motherhood.103 Clinton embraced her political flaws within a space that
positioned her as a mothering figure; she maintained humility without having her work ethic
compromised. This is what Fallon can facilitate at his best: real conversation, genuine
emotion, and political redemption or at least, a contrived and convincing fakery.
Comparatively, Fallons sketch-interview with Trump was one where Trump
interviewed himself in a mirror.104 Fallon, mimicking Trump with verisimilitude, faced the
real Trump in set designed to look like a mirror. This is a sketch form that Fallon had used
before, interviewing himself (Andy Samberg) in a mirror in 2011 on SNL, and Mitt
Romney in 2015.105 Trump happily parodied himself, smiled at jabs at his tan, and ended the
interview with a self-deprecating nod to his accent: Its gonna be yuuuuuuuuge.
The effect of these two sketch-interviews with Clinton and Trump was completely
different. With Clinton, Fallons Trump impersonation emphasised her passion and
competency whilst maintaining a softness and relatability. Trumps sketch only served to do
what Trump does best: entertain. Fallons deft combination of interview, sketch, parody, and
satire make him central to American political comedy culture.
However, when Fallon hosted Trump again on September 15, 2016, his behaviour
was entirely different. No longer was Trump one amongst many Republican primary
candidates: he was the Republican nominee. The interview quickly gained notoriety when
103
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. (2016b). Hillary Clinton Explains What's in Her Classified
Emails. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l_NECN1lK4 [Accessed 10 Sep. 2016].
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. (2016c). Rapid-Fire Interview with Hillary Clinton. [online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey7GdZVtdkM [Accessed 10 Sep. 2016].
104
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. (2016d). Donald Trump Interviews Himself in the Mirror. [online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2DgwPG7mAA [Accessed 10 Sep. 2016].
105
Saturday Night Live. (2016a). Jimmy Mirror. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGGIkG4gMlI [Accessed 10 Sep. 2016].
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. (2016e). "Mitt in the Mirror" with Mitt Romney & Jimmy Fallon.
[online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHCFqjxpuPY [Accessed 10 Sep. 2016].
41
Fallon ruffled Trumps infamous hair.106 This moment served to humanise Trump, and
garnered negative virality for contradicting Fallons long-held anti-Trump parody: like SNL,
Fallon prioritised ratings over political message.
This prioritisation of entertainment over political ethics was reflected in Trump
memes. As I will discuss further in Chapter III, liberal meme spaces of the internet criticised
Trumps politics and simultaneously created accessible memes about him that downplayed
his actions for entertainment. Fallons prioritisation of Trumps entertainment value over
political integrity was reflected in meme communities that sought to simultaneously criticise
and trivialise Trump.
Satire case studies: Last Week Tonight and Full Frontal

Following Jon Stewarts retirement in early 2015 and Stephen Colberts move to The
Late Show, the fifteen-year-strong ecosystem of American satire shifted. During the 2016
election, two programs emerged at the top of the food chain: HBOs Last Week Tonight with
John Oliver and TBSs Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.
John Oliver is famous for pioneering long-form comedic journalism, although Oliver
routinely defies being categorised as a journalist, so perhaps investigative comedy is a
better description.107 His twenty-minute segments focus on subjects ranging from Miss
America to nutritional supplements, and attract consistent media attention.108 After an
episode airs, news headlines invariably emerge announcing that Oliver has destroyed or
106
The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. (2016f). Donald Trump Lets Jimmy Fallon Mess Up His Hair.
[online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0BYqzdiuJc [Accessed 16 Sep. 2016].
107
Suebsaeng, A. (2014). Last Week Tonight Does Real Journalism, No Matter What John Oliver Says.
[online] Available at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/29/last-week-tonight-does-real-journalismno-matter-what-john-oliver-says.html [Accessed 17 Sep. 2016].
108
Last Week Tonight. (2014a). Miss America Pageant. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDPCmmZifE8 [Accessed 17 Sep. 2016].
Last Week Tonight. (2015). FIFA II. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr6ar3xJL_Q
Last Week Tonight. (2014b). Dr. Oz and Nutritional Supplements. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0wKeokWUU [Accessed 17 Sep. 2016].
42
eviscerated this weeks topic.109 An investigation into this John Oliver Effect found that
Last Week Tonights stories garnered more media coverage than mainstream news sources:
people were more likely to click on a John Oliver-related headline vs. a 60 Minutes headline
[about the same topic].110
However, Adam Felder of The Atlantic argues against Olivers journalistic efficacy
because he is unlikely to reach anyone outside a predominantly liberal audience. 111 I
counter that while Olivers investigative comedy may preach to the choir, it galvanises that
choir with further political knowledge and satirical literacy and that young, liberal, satirical
choir forms a large bulk of meme creators. Felder also posits that Olivers eviscerations are
ineffective in the long run, because these segments dont change policy outcomes, or at
least not large-scale policies, as demonstrated by Olivers hand in reforming bail legislation
within New York City.112 While Olivers segments do not necessarily spark major policy
change, Felders vision of political engagement is limiting. We should examine the viewing
and sharing of Last Week Tonight as another kind of participatory politics: one which focuses
upon changing conversation and cultural education. Olivers show demonstrates that sociopolitical information can be delivered through comedy, galvanising young voters with
another means of enacting citizenship.
One such example of Olivers power to incite action in his viewership was his church
experiment. To prove a point about money-making schemes masking as televangelist
109
Boggioni, T. (2015). John Oliver destroys lying, hypocritical GOP idiot who wants to gut Medicaid.
[online] Rawstory.com. Available at: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/john-oliver-destroys-lyinghypocritical-gop-idiot-who-wants-to-gut-medicaid/ [Accessed 17 Sep. 2016].
Gray, S. (2015). John Oliver eviscerates Congress over Americas crumbling infrastructure. [online] Salon.
Available at:
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/02/john_oliver_eviscerates_congress_over_americas_crumbling_infrastructure/
110
VanNest, A. (2015). Measuring the Impact of "The John Oliver Effect" | Parse.ly. [online] Available at:
http://blog.parsely.com/post/2380/measuring-the-impact-of-the-john-oliver-effect/ [Accessed 9 Sep. 2016].
111
Felder, A. (2016). What Does a John Oliver 'Evisceration' Really Accomplish? [online] The Atlantic.
Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/04/late-night-comedy/475485/ [Accessed
9 Sep. 2016].
112
Ibid.
43
churches, Oliver set up a legally recognised church.113 Viewers donated hundreds of

thousands of dollars to Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption before the church was
permanently closed (proceeds were donated to Doctors Without Borders).114 Olivers power
to mobilise his viewers even if as a joke is impressive.
Last
Week
Tonight
created
its
biggest
memetic
impact
with
its
#MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain campaign. As part of a February 2016 segment about Donald

Trump, Oliver revealed that Trumps ancestral surname was Drumpf, and touted its
unimpressive
ugliness.115
Oliver
also
announced
his
new
website
makedonalddrumpfagain.com, where viewers could download a browser extension that

replaced the word Trump with Drumpf, and purchase Make Donald Drumpf Again
hats which sold out of all 35,000 units after eight days.116 By Super Tuesday, Google
searches of Donald Drumpf had surpassed searches of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.117
Oliver spread, through one memetic word, Trumps failures, deceit, and ineptitude. And
while Felder argues that Olivers liberal-exclusive reach limits his power, I counter that
memetic power on the internet lies within two political poles. Olivers memetic influence
over the liberal pole makes him a crucial player in internet political culture.
There is a presumption of a male-dominated landscape both in internet comedy and
mainstream comedy culture. Every American late night program is hosted by a man with the
exception of TBSs Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, which had 3.2 million viewers per
113
Locker, M. (2015). John Oliver Starts Own Church. [online] TIME.com. Available at:
http://time.com/3999933/john-oliver-televangelist-church-alst-week-tonight/ [Accessed 23 Sep. 2016].
114
Kreps, D. (2015). John Oliver Shuts Down Fake Church Over Unsolicited Semen. [online] Rolling Stone.
Available at: http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/john-oliver-shuts-down-fake-church-over-unsolicitedsemen-20150914 [Accessed 23 Sep. 2016].
115
Last Week Tonight (2016). Donald Trump. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnpO_RTSNmQ [Accessed 17 Sep. 2016].
116
Koblin, J. (2016). John Oliver Sells Out of Make Donald Drumpf Again Caps. [online] Nytimes.com.
Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/09/business/media/trump-segment-on-john-oliver-showexplodes-on-youtube.html [Accessed 17 Sep. 2016].
117
Wolfers, J. (2016). Donald Drumpf Is Beating Rubio and Cruz for Second in Google Searches. [online]
Nytimes.com. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/upshot/donald-drumpf-is-beating-rubio-andcruz-for-second-in-web-searches.html [Accessed 17 Sep. 2016].
44
episode in its first season.118 Like John Oliver, Samantha Bee uses long-form investigative
comedy, but addresses womens issues with regularity. In an election where Hillary Clinton
constantly comes under sexist scrutiny, Bee acts as feminist catharsis; she tackles issues like
untested rape kits and Southern legislation designed to block abortion clinics.119 Her comedy
is primal, angry, and didactic; shes not afraid to wipe fake vomit off the screen in response
to Trump talking about his penis.120 With a diverse writing staff, Bees visceral outrage
appeals to the intersectional feminist meme communities of Tumblr.121 Bee is the lone female
voice of late night American political comedy, and represents that same small voice of angry
satirical Tumblr women. She has repositioned female anger from a punchline to a satirical
tool, outlining the significance of a female voice not only in mainstream comedy but in
internet spaces.
Internet comedy sites

Internet comedy is distinct from internet memes because humour websites are created
by people with comedy careers, whereas anyone can contribute to meme culture. While some
of these websites invite users to contribute content, there is a different dynamic to meme
culture these sites still have the power to act as comedy gatekeepers by exercising editorial
power over user contributions. The biggest comedy websites function as idea hubs, and when
they do interact with meme culture it is in an attempt to explain it or to service a deeper
118
Morris, A. (2016). How Samantha Bee Crashed the Late-Night Boys' Club. [online] Available at:
http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/features/how-samantha-bee-crashed-the-late-night-boys-club-20160630
119
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. (2016a). Rape Kit Backlog. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrxTrR5_8Zo [Accessed 24 Sep. 2016].
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. (2016b). Abortion, Texas-Style. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSMXwzH-moc [Accessed 24 Sep. 2016].
120
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. (2016c). R.I.P. GOP (Part 1). [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkvp6Syvv9c [Accessed 24 Sep. 2016].
121
Traister, R. (2016). Smirking in the Boys Room With Samantha Bee. [online] Available at:
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/01/samantha-bee-full-frontal-c-v-r.html [Accessed 9 Sep. 2016].
45
joke.122 Comedy websites can be swept into the broad modes of satire, cultural commentary,
and sketch; the case studies I will be analysing are The Onion and its sister site Clickhole, as
well as Cracked and College Humor. Each of these websites speaks not only to internet and
meme culture, but also to political culture at large.
Satire case studies: The Onion and Clickhole

The Onion began as a student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin in 1988, and
quickly became an internet staple when it started publishing online in 1996.123 The Onion
creates satirical newspaper articles, reflecting on both current events and fictional content.
Much of their fictional content juxtaposes a unique experience with the reporting style of
current affairs news (e.g. Man On Cusp Of Having Fun Suddenly Remembers Every Single
One Of His Responsibilities).124 The Onion is a satirical touchstone Reddit has a thread for
unbelievable current affairs stories called /r/NotTheOnion.125 Most readers access The Onion
via its Facebook and Twitter accounts.
A notable instance of The Onions influence upon internet culture is its gun control
satire No Way To Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.126 The
article was originally published in May 2014 following the Isla Vista shooting in California,
where an enraged gunman opened fire at the University of California, Santa Barbara as
122
See College Humors use of the Gangnam Style dance in their 2014 all-nighter video: College Humor.
(2014a). YouTube Closed Captioning Experiment (All-Nighter 2014). [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txvud7wPbv4 [Accessed 14 Aug. 2016].
123
Marino, N. (2016). Six Insights From an Editor at The Onion. [online] Available at:
https://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2009/07/six-insights-from-an-editor-at-the-onion.html [Accessed 10
Aug. 2016].
124
The Onion. (2013). Man On Cusp Of Having Fun Suddenly Remembers Every Single One Of His
Responsibilities. [online] Available at: http://www.theonion.com/article/man-on-cusp-of-having-fun-suddenlyremembers-every-32632 [Accessed 10 Aug. 2016].
125
Not The Onion. (2016). Reddit. Sadly, this is not the Onion. /r/nottheonion. [online] Available at:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/ [Accessed 22 Sep. 2016].
126
The Onion. (2014a). No Way To Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens. [online]
Available at: http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-36131
46
retribution for his own virginity, killing seven and injuring thirteen.127 The Onion article
was later republished with key places and names changed in the wake of subsequent mass
shootings (June 2015, October 2015).128 Users soon took to reposting the headline in the
aftermath of other mass shootings. The articles memetic power is emphasised by its anti-gun
stance.
An example of the Onions direct influence upon meme culture is their article
Cinnamon Roll too good for this world, too pure.129 This particular turn of language
describing a cinnamon roll as good and pure was quickly adopted by fandom communities
as memetic shorthand for a much beloved character cursed with tragedy.130
Figure 11: A Cinnamon/Sinnamon meme categorising characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Tumblr, 2015.
The Cinnamon Roll is an example of a meme genre that transcended its context as an
Onion article. Although there are more structured sub-genres within the broader genre, the
127
O'Connell, E. (2016). We fostered something chaotic and irresponsible: Elliot Rodger, Isla Vista & the
echoes of a tragedy. [online] Salon. Available at:
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/22/we_fostered_something_chaotic_and_irresponsible_elliot_rodger_isla_vista_
the_echoes_of_a_tragedy/ [Accessed 22 Sep. 2016].
128
Available at: http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-prevent-says-only-nation-where-regularly-ha-51443
The Onion. (2015b). No Way To Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens. [online]
129
The Onion. (2014b). Beautiful Cinnamon Roll Too Good For This World, Too Pure. [online] Available at:
http://www.theonion.com/article/beautiful-cinnamon-roll-too-good-for-this-world-to-35038 [Accessed 10 Aug.
2016].
130
dork-larue. (2015). Tumblr. [online] Available at: http://dork-larue.tumblr.com/post/122264549961/i-lovehow-because-of-that-beautiful-cinnamon [Accessed 10 Aug. 2016].
47
Cinnamon Roll stands as an example of a memetic idea being replicated in multiple varying
ways. In comparison to No Way To Prevent This, Cinnamon Roll is far more susceptible to
remix and mashup. No Way To Prevent This governed the content to which it is attached, but
Cinnamon Roll transcended its existence as a phrase or an image: it became an idea, an
abstraction, far more portable because it was not constrained by content or imagery. The
Cinnamon Roll genre is an internet meme only in that it was developed and spread online
its abstract form makes it Dawkinsian in nature.
The Onion launched a spinoff website, Clickhole, in 2014.131 Rather than publishing
straight satire, Clickhole lampoons clickbait culture with neo-Dadaism. Clickholes articles
very rarely have a point beyond an underlying nihilism about the futility of online media.
Titles such as Problem Solved! This Panda Has Been Giving Birth Over And Over Without
Stopping Since Last Month! pair positive clickbait language with surrealism.132
Questionnaires like Which One of My Garbage Sons Are You? parody culture website
Buzzfeed, juxtaposing specificity with broad-appeal personality quizzes.133
Clickholes unusual writing style underpins its highly conceptual tone. Its
employment of strangely juxtaposed epithets with jarring syntax reflects the unusual syntax
of Weird Twitter for example, Clickhole writing feels very similar to the Anxiety genre
discussed in Chapter I. Its popularity can be attributed to the fact that it uses the wellestablished practice of specificity. The introduction to Which One of My Garbage Sons Are
You? is an example of specificity: Ive got some shit boys. My huge beautiful wife gave
131
Dewey, C. (2014). The Onion launched a parody site called Clickhole, and not everyone got the joke. (What
happened next will not surprise you.). [online] Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theintersect/wp/2014/06/24/the-onion-launched-a-parody-site-called-clickhole-and-not-everyone-got-the-jokewhat-happened-next-will-not-surprise-you/ [Accessed 1 Oct. 2016].
132
Clickhole. (2014a). Problem Solved! This Panda Has Been Giving Birth Over And Over Without Stopping
Since Last Month!. [online] Available at: http://www.clickhole.com/article/problem-solved-panda-has-beengiving-birth-over-an-822 [Accessed 10 Aug. 2016].
133
Clickhole. (2014b). Which One Of My Garbage Sons Are You? [online] Available at:
http://www.clickhole.com/quiz/which-one-my-garbage-sons-are-you-1458 [Accessed 10 Aug. 2016].
48
me children who think and speak like the toilet.134 By juxtaposing the general tone of a
questionnaire with sudden bursts of specificity, Clickhole conjures a vivid universe. My
huge beautiful wife fractures the traditional adjective order, underpinned by the unusual
syntax of speak like the toilet. Clickholes writing style toys with the concept of American
dialect. Versions of American dialect humour have emerged in Yiddish theatre, the Southern
writing of Mark Twain, and SNL sketches like The Californians.135 Clickholes specificity
is a new form of American regionalism whose region is the online sphere. Both Clickhole and
The Onion tap into the comedic language of specificity which is used elsewhere on the
internet, which is why their writing remains funny online.
Cultural Commentary case study: Cracked

Cracked.com calls itself Americas Only Humor Website, and mainly comments
upon popular culture.136 Like The Onion, Cracked is descended from print media: Cracked
Magazine was a MAD Magazine knockoff founded in 1958; after poor sales in the early
2000s led to a short-lived rebrand as a lad-mag, Cracked Magazine folded as a print
publication in 2007.137 Cracked.com was founded in 2005 under the management of ABC
News veteran Jack OBrien who established a cutting and self-deprecating analysis of pop
culture and current events maintained to this day.138
Cracked presents information in written, audio, and video forms. It has a host of
regular columnists, but also showcases guest articles, infographic pieces, podcasts, sketches,
134
Ibid.
Browne, L. (1945). The wisdom of Israel. New York: Random House, pp.495-510, 521-530.
Buxbaum, K. (1927). Mark Twain and American Dialect. American Speech, [online] 2(5), p.233. Available at:
http://jstor.org/stable/452316 [Accessed 22 Sep. 2016].
Saturday Night Live. (2012). The Californians: Drama Off the 405. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt-tG6ufH90 [Accessed 22 Sep. 2016].
136
Cracked.com. (2016a). Op cit.
137
Dean, M. (2002). Anthrax Attack and Distribution Troubles, Cracked Awaits Salvation. [online] Available at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060505022532/http://www.tcj.com/242/n_cracked.html [Accessed 17 Sep.
2016].
138
Abraham, J. (2016). Jack O'Brien, Cracked.com. [online] Gothamist. Available at:
http://gothamist.com/2005/10/12/jack_obrien_crackedcom.php [Accessed 30 Jul. 2016].
135
49
and Photoplasty articles where readers are encouraged to submit photoshopped images that
conform to a certain theme.139 Many article ideas are crowdsourced through the Cracked
forums some contributions are compensated, but users mainly contribute in the hopes that
they may one day be selected to write a full article. This practice of unpaid labour reinforces
the memetic process of uncompensated cultural participation.
Crackeds writing style relies heavily upon listicles (articles presented in list form),
but goes into a lot of depth with each point on the list. There are, of course, exceptions to the
listicle form, usually presented as shorter satirical or confessional columns. This format
means that Cracked articles can be read quickly and concisely, making them the perfect
method of delivering bite-sized news, fan theories, and quirky facts. Crackeds clickbait
headlines make it desirable to read and easy to search searchability is vital for internet
cultures because it introduces more people to internet communities.
Cracked hosts a range of web series centring upon popular culture, but the most
common form of Cracked videos features a member of staff presenting a listicle to the
camera. Cracked receives most of its video exposure through its YouTube page. YouTubes
recommendations algorithm means that anyone who has watched a video remotely connected
to geek culture or film theory has likely been recommended a Cracked video.
Cracked produces around five pieces of content (videos, articles, and podcasts) each
weekday. In recent years, Cracked has shifted from its lad-mag roots to a socially conscious,
progressive internet space. Its desire to keep up with a politically engaged zeitgeist has meant
that it now presents socio-political news alongside popular culture, eroding the lines between
the two. The company has brought more women onto its video and writing teams, and tackles
topics that would have once been considered completely out of character for the site. Cracked
139
Cracked.com. (2016b). Obvious Ways To Solve Famous Movie Plots In Seconds. [online] Available at:
http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_2210_12-movie-plots-settled-with-basic-household-products/ [Accessed
30 Jul. 2016].
50
was once a geek haven that relished in articles about side-boob: it now produces insightful
pieces about Monsanto, political correctness, and sex work.140
Rather than invading journalism with entertainment, Crackeds entertainment has
been invaded by journalism. Similar to John Olivers investigative comedy, the effects of this
cross-media practice have changed the fundamental core of internet comedy spaces. This
change in pace talking about socio-political issues alongside popular culture is mirrored
in the changing landscape of meme communities. Cracked engages a different public about
politics, and provides an unlikely means to disseminate information, just as memes do.
Sketch comedy case study: College Humor

College Humors website was founded in 1999; based out of collegehumor.com, it
produced user-generated content to foster a loyal community with the express purpose of
earning advertising revenue.141 The business expanded in the mid-to-late 2000s to become
one of the most influential comedy websites. Its biggest platform today is its YouTube page,
which launched in 2006: with over 10.9 million subscribers, and videos regularly surpassing
one million views, College Humor is a mainstay of internet sketch comedy, posting five
original sketch videos weekly.142 Their content aims for virality, and typically riffs on
popular culture, life as a self-deprecating millennial, and, more recently, political satire. The
140
Cracked.com. (2009). Boobs: The Closest We've Come to the Jedi Mind Trick. [online] Available at:
http://www.cracked.com/funny-212-boobs/ [Accessed 17 Sep. 2016].
Cracked.com. (2016c). Bayer Purchased Monsanto (And We Are All Screwed). [online] Available at:
http://www.cracked.com/article_24346_bayer-purchased-monsanto-and-we-are-all-screwed.html [Accessed 17
Sep. 2016].
Sargent, J. (2015). 6 Ways Critics Of Political Correctness Have It Backwards. [online] Cracked.com. Available
at: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-ways-critics-political-correctness-have-it-backwards/ [Accessed 17 Sep.
2016].
Evans, R. et al. (2016). 5 Ways Life as a Prostitute is Nothing Like You Expect. [online] Available at:
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1490-5-ways-life-as-prostitute-nothing-like-you-expect.html
141
Fox News. (2006). Business at Collegehumor.com Is No Joke [online] Available at:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/06/15/business-at-collegehumorcom-is-no-joke.html [Accessed 12 Aug.
2016].
142
College Humor. (2016b). CollegeHumor YouTube Home. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/user/collegehumor [Accessed 12 Aug. 2016].
51
bulk of their video sketches are set within the College Humor offices, with staff playing
fictionalised versions of themselves, although they have produced numerous higher-budget
sketches and web series.
Similar to Cracked, College Humor has developed more progressive and socially
conscious content. Recent sketches have addressed coming out as bisexual, the nuances of
being mixed race in America, and the exploitation of activist language a far cry from their
award-winning yet juvenile 2007 sketch, Hand Vagina.143 College Humor has always, on
some level, engaged with politics: their 2008 video If the Other Party Wins lampooned
Republican and Democrat fearmongering campaigns.144 This practice of political parody
continues to be a useful and appealing tool deployed by them to this day look no further
than their parodic series Whats Inside Peoples Pockets? (Figure 12).
But the 2016 election has seen College Humor engage with politics beyond parody.
Sketches like Donald Trump Will Never Be President Or Will He? and Why Bernie
Sanders is Actually Winning tussled with liberal confusion and stubbornness, engaging with
the political anxiety gripping the left in the 2016 election.145 Their video Donald Trump:
Show Us Your Penis parodied activist campaigns, asking Trump to verify his claim of an
impressive penis size.146 The actors speak didactically, pleading with him to make good his
word, and their sustained incredulity challenges their audience to demand better of Trump.
143
College Humor. (2015a). When Coming Out Goes Better Than You Thought. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgHwF4CNiJA [Accessed 12 Aug. 2016].
College Humor. (2015b). Are You Asian Enough? [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVR3B01NxiM [Accessed 12 Aug. 2016].
College Humor. (2015c). Coming Out As Trans-Everything. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMUl6w1efXI [Accessed 12 Aug. 2016].
College Humor. (2007). Hand - Vagina. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQtKnDGhxmk [Accessed 12 Aug. 2016].
144
College Humor. (2008). If The Other Party Wins. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-_JhRJ0tWA [Accessed 12 Aug. 2016].
145
College Humor. (2016c). Donald Trump Will Never Be President Or Will He? [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxSAHqFqG58 [Accessed 12 Aug. 2016].
College Humor. (2016d). Why Bernie Sanders is Actually Winning. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHS-K7OuLAc [Accessed 12 Aug. 2016].
146
College Humor. (2016e). Donald Trump: Show Us Your Penis. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG5kSgJtyQg [Accessed 12 Aug. 2016].
52
Other videos implored viewers to register to vote and go to college (the latter with a cameo
from First Lady Michelle Obama).147
Figure 12: "My second bag of Werther's candies comes with a big, fat, sticky joint." College Humor's parody of
Bernie Sanders taps into his dual persona as a radical college student and benevolent grandpa. College Humor, 2016.
College Humor, then, uses political comedy not just as a comedic tool, but as a way to
enact genuine social change. Rebecca Krefting describes this as charged humour humour
that specifically intends to incite social change, develop community, and lobby for civil
rights and acknowledgement.148 These are actions that College Humor has increasingly
pushed. Still tongue-in-cheek, College Humor has used comedy to demand better of
American politicians, while simultaneously normalising comedy as an act of participatory
politics. This is, perhaps, College Humors greatest transformation.
147
College Humor. (2014b). A Political Ad For Your Friend Who Doesnt Vote. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeGAnQ6DyJs [Accessed 23 Sep. 2016].
College Humor. (2015d). Go To College Music Video (with FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA!). [online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1yAOK0nSb0 [Accessed 23 Sep. 2016].
148
Krefting, R. (2014). Op. cit. p.25.
53
Conclusions
In this chapter, I outlined the impact that traditional comedy media have upon
American political comedy and memetic comedy. I first examined the influence of television
comedy. I outlined the varied achievements of Saturday Night Lives use of parody and its
history with memetic creation, but concluded that their hypocritical portrayal of Donald
Trump was to the detriment of their comedic integrity. Fallons use of parody empowered
Clinton and mocked Trump, demonstrating his ability as a comedian to mediate internetfriendly light politics. However, this assessment also fell victim to hypocrisy after Trumps
later appearance on the show. My analysis of satire news outlined the prominence of
investigative comedy in the works of John Oliver and Samantha Bee. Ultimately, Olivers
voice is most powerful within left-wing enclaves, while Bees feminist voice acts as the
outraged comedic catharsis that Jon Stewart once provided the nation. My analysis of comedy
websites revealed that The Onion and its sister site Clickhole maintain online relevance by
using the language of specificity developed by Weird Twitter. Cultural and sketch sites like
Cracked and College Humor, however, mirror a wider trend that has shifted centrist online
spaces into more radical socio-political commentators. These sites blur the lines between
entertainment and news, much in the way that meme cultures do, but also use their platforms
to enact charged comedy that incites change in their viewers.
Meme culture is now an integral part of Americas comedic ecosystem. It provides
talking points on interviews, riffs upon the character and caricature developed by these
traditional comedy outlets, and takes cues from mainstream media in its attitudes towards
socio-politics. In Chapter III, I will examine the biggest memetic genres and trends that arose
during the 2016 US Presidential election, organising them according to which candidate they
focus upon. Through this, I hope to demonstrate how the political culture has deepened, and
how it exists in conversation with American comedy and political culture at large.
54
Chapter III
Political memes in
Presidential election
the
2016
US
aving come to an understanding about how memetic genres form, and how
American comedy culture inculcates memetic creators with comedic literacy, let
us now examine the political memes of the 2016 US Presidential election up to
16th September, 2016. I will begin by examining the memes about Senators Ted Cruz and
Bernie Sanders. I will then review memetic activity about Democratic candidate Hillary
Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump, extrapolating how these memes
demonstrate cultural ideas about the candidates. I will delve into conflicting representations
of caricature, and the memetic voice of extreme conservatism online. Through this, I hope to
demonstrate the different ways each of these genres engages with Netzer et als notions of
participatory culture.149 I hope also that this section might serve as a catalogue of political
memetic culture, and that it might indicate what the future of memetic politics may entail.
Ted Cruz: Zodiac Killer

Texan Senator Ted Cruz was Donald Trumps main adversary in the Republican
primaries, running on an evangelical platform until his withdrawal on 3rd May 2016.150
Cruzs hard stance against abortion, Obamacare, climate change, and gun control made him
149
Netzer, Y., Tenenboim-Weinblatt, K. and Shifman, L. (2014). Op. cit.

Sullivan, S. and Zezima, K. (2016). Ted Cruz drops out of the Republican presidential race. [online]
Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ted-cruz-drops-out-of-the-republican-presidentialrace/2016/05/03/8f955a06-0fe7-11e6-81b4-581a5c4c42df_story.html [Accessed 20 Aug. 2016].
150
55
especially unpopular amongst liberals, as did his anti-Obamacare legislation which resulted in
the government shutdown of 2013.151 Additionally, Cruz is renowned for being an unlikeable
person. While working as an election staffer in 2000, colleagues occasionally avoided
meetings that included Mr. Cruz, to spare themselves the pontification.152 Senator Lindsay
Graham famously said, If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in
the Senate, nobody could convict you.153 Craig Mazin, Cruzs freshman roommate, routinely
insulted Cruz on Twitter: As a freshman, I would get into senior parties because I was Teds
roommate. OUT OF PITY.154 Mazins classmates described the young Cruz with words
like abrasive, intense, strident, crank, and arrogant. Four independently offered the
word creepy.155 Even before caricature, Cruz was regarded as an unpleasant person.
And thus, within mainstream comedy, the persona of Cruz as creepy and insufferable
endured. Full Frontal With Samantha Bee featured an insult montage, where Bee referred to
Cruz as Princetons unwanted foetus fist-faced horseshit salesman the worlds only
unlikeable Canadian the junior senator from the uncanny valley [] self-described
human tentacle monster half melted Reagan dummy unflushable toilet clog.156
Speaking of the Indiana primaries, satirist Stephen Colbert said Cruz has really put all of his
eggs in this basket, and I want to be perfectly clear, his eggs is a common expression, Im
151
Martin, J. (2016). Republicans Using Shutdown to Stake Positions for Potential 2016 Bids. [online]
Nytimes.com. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/us/politics/republicans-use-shutdown-to-stakepositions-for-2016-bids.html?_r=0 [Accessed 19 Aug. 2016].
152
Flegenheimer, M. (2016). Before Rise as Outsider, Ted Cruz Played Inside Role in 2000 Recount. [online]
Nytimes.com. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/politics/before-rise-as-outsider-ted-cruzplayed-inside-role-in-2000-recount.html [Accessed 19 Aug. 2016].
153
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. (2016d). Cruz 101. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMgaqhTZBlg [Accessed 19 Aug. 2016].
154
Clmazin. (2016). Twitter. As a freshman, I would get into senior parties because I was Ted's roommate.
OUT OF PITY. He was that widely loathed. It's his superpower. [online] Available at:
https://twitter.com/clmazin/status/686241061329485824 [Accessed 19 Aug. 2016].
155
Murphy, P. (2013). Ted Cruz at Princeton: Creepy, Sometimes Well Liked, and Exactly the Same. [online]
Available at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/19/ted-cruz-at-princeton-creepy-sometimes-wellliked-and-exactly-the-same.html [Accessed 19 Aug. 2016].
156
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. (2016e). Cruz Bows Out / Michelle Branch. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtZF007Lep4 [Accessed 19 Aug. 2016].
56
not saying that he is a reptile that reproduces with hatchlings.157 Saturday Night Live went
for a succinct image: Cruz with horns and fangs rising from hell accompanied by a demon.158
The Onions take was perhaps the most cutting: Brutal Anti-Cruz Attack Ad Just 30 Seconds
of Candidates Photo Displayed Without Any Text, Voiceover, Music.159
Figure 13: Ted Cruz lookalikes, compiled by Mic.com. Tumblr, 2016.
This caricature of Ted Cruz as a weird-looking unlikeable creep was reflected in

memes about the candidate. A whole series of memes presented a picture of Cruz alongside a
picture of something he ostensibly looked like (Figure 13). This lookalike meme is the visual
157
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2016a). It's Do Or Die For Ted Cruz... Probably The Latter, May 4.
[online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iQCq_Bdlr8 [Accessed 19 Aug. 2016].
158
CNN. (2016). 'Church Lady' returns to 'SNL,' takes on Trump ... again. [online] Available at:
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/entertainment/2016/05/10/snl-church-lady-moos-pkg-erin.cnn/video/playlists/snlpolitics/ [Accessed 19 Aug. 2016].
159
The Onion. (2016). Brutal Anti-Cruz Attack Ad Just 30 Seconds of Candidates Photo Displayed Without Any
Text, Voiceover, Music. [online] Available at: http://www.theonion.com/video/brutal-anti-cruz-attack-ad-just30-seconds-candida-52562 [Accessed 19 Aug. 2016].
57
version of Samantha Bees epithets. This visual keying sought to other Cruz by depicting
him as inhuman, uncanny, and uncomfortable. Othering, or the process of alienation, is a
very useful caricature technique, calling into question someones true nature by distancing
them from the general populace (Figure 14).
Figure 14: Ted Cruz is depicted as an alien or rogue science experiment, desperately trying to blend in with other
humans. Twitter and Tumblr, 2015-2016.
The most prolific method of othering Cruz was the Zodiac Killer genre. The memetic
idea was simple: perpetuate a rumour that the identity of the anonymous serial murderer
known as the Zodiac Killer is Ted Cruz. The Zodiac Killer murdered five people in the
California bay area in 1968-1969; he sent taunting cryptic notes to the police about his
58
murders, calling himself the Zodiac.160 The Zodiacs identity has never been discovered, so
the killings remain a mainstay of internet conspiracy theories. It goes without saying that
there is no way this theory could possibly be true: Ted Cruz was born in Canada in 1970, two
years after the first killing.161
The genre arose from the depths of Twitter in 2013 when Cruz was speaking at the
Conservative Political Action Conference. Twitter user RedPillAmerica tweeted #CPAC
Alert: Ted Cruz is speaking!! His speech is titled: This Is The Zodiac Speaking. 162 The
genre did not re-emerge until late 2015. During GOP Debate on 14 February 2016, comedian
Nathan LaMagna and his circle of comedy friends on Twitter were interested to see if they
could get a phrase onto the CBS Trending Ticker.163 The ticker itself is evidence of the
mainstream medias attempt to connect with mediated online spaces, and its exploitation by
memetic communities is indicative of the internets scorn for anything mainstream.
Figure 15 shows Google search interest in Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer from its inception
in March 2013 until August 2016.
Figure 15: Interest over time 14th March 2013 20th August 2016; a value of 100 is the peak popularity for the
term. Search terms Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer (blue); Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac Killer (red). Google Trends, 2016.
The graph demonstrates that after February 2016, the genre exploded. Its success lay
in its variety of form: while the content and stance remain the same in every meme, the form
160
Sanders, S. (2016). #MemeOfTheWeek: Ted Cruz And The Zodiac Killer. [online] Available at:
http://www.npr.org/2016/02/26/468153952/-memeoftheweek-ted-cruz-and-the-zodiac-killer [Accessed 19 Aug.
2016].
161
Statesman.com. (2016). U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. [online] Available at:
http://www.statesman.com/s/news/politics/ted-cruz/ [Accessed 5 Oct. 2016].
162
RedPillAmerica. (2013). Twitter. #CPAC Alert: Ted Cruz is speaking!! His speech is titled: This Is The
Zodiac Speaking. [online] Available at: https://twitter.com/RedPillAmerica/status/312323787091755009
163
Sanders, S. (2016). Op. cit.
59
varies. Like The Onion-derived Cinnamon Roll genre I analysed in Chapter II, Ted Cruz
Zodiac Killer was a successful and versatile meme genre because it was not tied to any one
platform or aesthetic. It was an abstract, Dawkinsian meme that could be presented through
any form.
Twitter users quickly formed the hashtag #ZodiacTed to spread convoluted evidence
of Cruzs guilt.164 Tumblr produced textual and pictorial memes, such as the parody of Kanye
Wests 2016 album The Life of Pablo, (bottom right, Figure 16). The YouTube upload of the
2007 documentary This is the Zodiac Speaking was barraged with comments mentioning
Cruz.165 Three mock change.org petitions demanded answers from Congress, Obama, and
about Ted Cruzs implications in the Zodiac case.166 Two subreddits dedicated to the meme
genre were founded.167 The Facebook page Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer accumulated over
47,000 followers.168 An image comparing the police drawing of the Zodiac Killer and Ted
Cruz was shared and reposted hundreds of times across every platform (top right, Figure 16).
In short, it was an enormous cross-platform phenomenon that took many forms.
164
JasonRRocha. (2016). Twitter. "THEODORE CRUZ = 12 LETTERS ZODIAC KILLER = 12 LETTERS 12

SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC It's almost too perfect...almost #ZodiacTed". [online] Available at:
https://twitter.com/JasonRRocha/status/700712012620238848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw [Accessed 20 Aug. 2016].
165
pedrobosox. (2016). This is the Zodiac Speaking. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI0jnsbZwys [Accessed 20 Aug. 2016].
166
Change.org. (2016a). Ted Cruz: Make Ted Cruz answer the question "are you the zodiac killer". [online]
Available at: https://www.change.org/p/ted-cruz-make-ted-cruz-answer-the-question-are-you-the-zodiac-killer
Change.org. (2016b). Barack Obama: Formally Investigate Ted Cruz: Zodiac Killer. [online] Available at:
https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-formally-investigate-ted-cruz-zodiac-killer [Accessed 20 Aug. 2016].
Change.org. (2016c). Ted Cruz: Ted Cruz to admit he's the zodiac killer. [online] Available at:
https://www.change.org/p/ted-cruz-ted-cruz-to-admit-he-s-the-zodiac-killer [Accessed 20 Aug. 2016].
167
/ Ted Cruz is Zodiac Killer. (2016). Reddit. /r/tedcruziszodiackiller. [online] Available at:
https://www.reddit.com/r/tedcruziszodiackiller/ [Accessed 20 Aug. 2016].
168
Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer. (2016). Facebook. Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer. [online] Available at:
https://www.facebook.com/TedCruzIsTheZodiacKiller/ [Accessed 20 Aug. 2016].
ZodiacTed. (2016). Twitter. @ZodiacTed. [online] Available at: https://twitter.com/ZodiacTed [Accessed 20
Aug. 2016].
60
Figure 16: Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer memes. Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook 2016.
We can better understand how Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer developed as a genre by
mapping interest in it with Google Trends data. There is no methodology as of yet which can
accurately map memetic creation, but Google Trends allows us to estimate the internets
interest in a phrase. With meme genres, spikes in interest generally correlate to significant
moments in the genres life, such as a hashtag, an article, or a period of lucid-memeing (that
is, prominent memetic activity coinciding with a large cultural event).
61
Figures 15, 17, and 18 all use the same data sets gathered via Google Trends; the x
axis represents time, and the y axis represents the popularity of the search terms as a
percentage of its most popular point of search, so that a value of 100 represents the terms
peak popularity.169 It is clear from Figure 15 (page 60) that despite the genres instigation in
2013, the genre began to gain traction at the time of the 14 February GOP Debate, so for the
sake of clarity, let us examine from February 1st, 2016 (Figure 17).
a .b c
.d
Figure 17: Interest over time from 1st February, 2016. Search terms Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer (blue); Is Ted Cruz
the Zodiac Killer (red). Google Trends, 2016.
On Figure 17, I have denoted four points of interest. Point A of Figure 17 falls on February
14th, with Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer at three percent of its total popularity: this marks the
GOP Debate hijacked by Lamagna. Point B is at 20th February: a week after the GOP Debate,
it has gained enough cumulative traction to spike for the first time. Point C is February 27,
where Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer increases to sixty-one percent of its total popularity. Point D
on March 25th marks another notable spike in activity, and finally at Point E the search term
peaks on May 4th. Let us now compare the data to the search term Ted Cruz (Figure 18).
a .b c
.d
Figure 18: Interest over time of search terms Ted Cruz (yellow); Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer (blue); Is Ted Cruz
the Zodiac Killer (red). February 1 2016 August 20 2016. Google Trends, 2016.
169
Google Trends. (2016a). Op. cit.
62
Notably there is no correlation in interest at Points A, B, and C: the genre was developing
independently of events in the election and reacting to events within memetic spaces.
However, points D and E show simultaneous spikes of the search terms Ted Cruz Zodiac
Killer and Ted Cruz. Point D (25 May, 2016) coincides with allegations about an extramarital affair which emerged in The National Enquirer; these were later dismissed by Cruz as
a smear campaign instigated by Trump.170 As for Point E, at May 4th, the day prior was the
day Ted Cruz dropped out of the Presidential race.171
It is important to differentiate between correlation and causation when examining this
kind of data. It is possible that greater memetic activity occurred as a reaction to Cruzs sex
scandal and subsequent withdrawal. But it is also equally plausible that users seeking
information about these political developments were led, through Googles search results, to
information about Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer, and carried out their own independent search of
the information.
That being said, the most likely reason for the spikes at Points D and E in Figure 18 is
that when Cruz news trends, Cruz memes emerge. When prompted with news about Ted
Cruz, internet users familiar with Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer are likely to react using the genre to
maintain topicality. But this can only be enabled by previous cumulative surges in memetic
activity, such as in A, B, and C. As I emphasised in Chapter I, memes can only be understood
if we have seen memes before. Using Zodiac Killer memes in the period of lucid-memeing
after Cruzs withdrawal was only funny because people were already familiar with the genre.
Just as we saw with Mmm Whatcha Say in Chapter II, memes need to cumulatively increase
in power within intra-memetic spaces before they become reactive to external current events.
But what was the effect of this meme genre on Ted Cruzs bid for the Republican
candidacy, if any? The first sign of the genres influence emerged when Public Policy Polling
170
Diamond, J. (2016). Cruz blames Trump and his 'henchmen' for tabloid story. [online] CNN. Available at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/25/politics/ted-cruz-national-enquirer-donald-trump/ [Accessed 20 Aug. 2016].
171
Sullivan, S. and Zezima, K. (2016). Op. cit.
63
asked 1,012 Floridian voters Do you think Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer, or not? as part of
a larger questionnaire about the Republican and Democratic candidates. Ten percent
responded Yes, sixty-two percent responded No, and twenty-eight percent responded Not
Sure.172 More than ten news sources including Rolling Stone, Gawker, and Fusion ran
headlines proclaiming thirty-eight percent of Floridians believed Ted Cruz could be the
Zodiac Killer.173 Although the articles themselves outlined the nuance of the statistics, the
headlines inflated the genres influence.
The next notable impact of the genre was raised by a Tumblr user who noticed that
when they had typed is Ted Cruz into Google on 26 February 2016, the second search
suggestion was is Ted Cruz the zodiac killer.174 However, by March 21st, this suggestion no
longer appeared (despite Google Trends confirming rising interest in the phrase).175 It is
unknown whether the suggestion was removed at the request of the Cruz campaign, or if
someone within Google made the decision.
There is no denying that the Cruz campaign was aware of the meme genre. On March
30th, Cruz was interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel Live but gave an unusual answer to a question
in a quick-fire round:
Kimmel: Whats your favourite cereal?
Cruz: Cereal or serial killer?176
172
Public Policy Polling, (2016). Trump Leads Rubio in Florida Even Head to Head. [online] Available at:
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/PPP_Release_FL_22516.pdf [Accessed 20 Aug. 2016]. pp.1, 32.
173
Stuart, T. (2016). Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac Killer? Maybe, Say Florida Voters. [online] Available at:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/is-ted-cruz-the-zodiac-killer-maybe-say-38-percent-of-floridavoters-20160226 [Accessed 20 Aug. 2016].
Feinberg, A. (2016). Poll: Nearly 40 Percent of Florida Voters Think Ted Cruz Might Be the Zodiac Killer.
[online] Available at: http://gawker.com/poll-nearly-40-percent-of-floridians-think-ted-cruz-mi-1761428903
McDonough, K. (2016). Florida voters split on whether Ted Cruz was Zodiac Killer. [online] Available at:
http://fusion.net/story/273809/florida-ted-cruz-zodiac-killer/ [Accessed 20 Aug. 2016].
174
theinfinitebox. (2016). Tumblr. All searches relating ted cruz and zodiac killer have been removed from
google. [online] Available at: http://theinfinitebox.tumblr.com/post/141453737241/all-searches-relating-tedcruz-and-zodiac [Accessed 20 Aug. 2016].
175
Ibid.
176
Jimmy Kimmel Live. (2016b). Jimmy Kimmel Asks Senator Ted Cruz Random Questions. [online] Available
at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmI6JQz2M10 [Accessed 21 Aug. 2016].
64
For those in the know, this response was a sly wink to Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer. But for the
many viewers unaware of the meme genre, Cruzs response was alienating and suspicious.
Certainly, Cruzs response indicates a desire to connect with the youth vote, but also displays
an inability to know how to authentically deploy a meme. This was the first and only time
that Cruz referenced the genre.
Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer was addressed again at the White House Correspondents
Dinner, held on April 30th 2016. The traditional dinner hosts Washingtons media at the
Hilton, and comic speeches typically riff on the year in media and politics. The 2016 guest
speaker was Larry Wilmore, host of The Nightly Show, who dedicated two and a half minutes
to jokes about the genre.177
Theres a joke going around the Internet that Ted Cruz is actually the Zodiac
Killer? Come on, thats absurd some people actually liked the Zodiac
Killer John Boehner came out of retirement and described Ted Cruz as
Lucifer in the flesh! Lucifer! I mean, that is not fair, man. Lucifer is horrible,
but hes not the Zodiac Killer.178
Wilmores inclusion of Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer brought the genre not only to mainstream
comedy, but also to the international limelight.
Such was the magnitude of Wilmores speech that two days later, when interviewing
Cruzs wife Heidi, Yahoo News asked her opinion about Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer. Well, Ive
been married to him for 15 years, and I know pretty well who he is, so it doesnt bother me at
all. Theres a lot of garbage out there, she answered. 179 Vanity Fair responded to this
statement saying, This is, of course, exactly what the wife of the Zodiac killer would say.180
177
Wilmore, L. (2016). White House Correspondents' Dinner Remarks. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IDFt3BL7FA [Accessed 21 Aug. 2016].
178
Ibid.
179
Walker, H. (2016). Heidi Cruz responds to people who call her husband the Zodiac Killer. [online] Available
at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/heidi-cruz-responds-to-people-who-call-her-husband-175305796.html
180
Nguyen, T. (2016). Heidi Cruz: My Husband Is Not the Zodiac Killer. [online] Vanity Fair. Available at:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/05/ted-cruz-zodiac-killer [Accessed 21 Aug. 2016].
65
Just as he followed five Californians to their demise in the 1960s, the Zodiac Killer
followed Cruz to his political end. On the same day that Heidi Cruz refuted Zodiac claims as
garbage, Cruz withdrew his candidacy from the race.181 The internets shared joke united
very diverse communities against Cruz; those aware of the genre did not take his bid for
president seriously. Zodiac Killer jokes emerged from both liberal- and conservative-leaning
spaces. It existed as a form of crowdsourced character assassination, but its implausibility
freed users of accountability.
Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer espoused Netzer et als values of participatory culture very
clearly: it demonstrated deep civic engagement by reacting directly to moments during
Cruzs campaign and it was built on sharing processes across multiple communities.182 It
mentored amateurs in alternative meme forms, and the broader public response to the genre
enhanced belief in the significance of meme communities, which in turn increased a sense
of social connection.183 While the genre was originally limited to one small corner of the
internet, it was able to transcend cultural boundaries and shape broader American political
culture.
Through Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer it became clear that the power of caricature no
longer rests purely in the hands of the comedy elite. The world no longer looks solely to late
night television and comedy websites for comedic reactions to current affairs. The world
makes its own comedy, in a world that has no defamation or censorship laws.
Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash

Senator Bernie Sanders ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination on a far-left
platform which emphasised economic and racial inequalities and appealed most strongly to
181
Sullivan, S. and Zezima, K. (2016). Op. cit.

Netzer, Y., et. al. (2014). Op. cit.
183
Ibid.
182
66
young white millennials.184 The memetic success of Sanders campaign was observed quite
early in the election (even though SNL called him a human Birkenstock).185 Caitlin Dewey
of The Washington Post described Sanders an anti-establishment white dude, and
commented that his anti-Wall Street rhetoric resonated with white liberals who made up a
large percentage of Reddit.186 Reddit posts about Sanders gained extraordinary traction as
once-depoliticised users became martyrs of the Sanders campaign with rapid speed. Soon, the
phrase Bernie Bro emerged, describing the young, white men who used aggression and
misogyny in their online support of Sanders.187
In October 2015, Sanders cultural power on Reddit reached a high point: the
subreddit /r/SandersForPresident housed memetic content, and described itself as a
grassroots for Sanders production, already forging a connection between Sanders memes
and political activism.188 Reddits entire politics subreddit was saturated with news about
Sanders for many months.189 College Humors video How Bernie Sanders is Actually
Winning addressed Reddits culture of Berniebros warping statistics to create a victory
narrative.190 When it became clear that Reddits growing obsession with the candidate was
not going to fade, Sanders was used to lampoon Reddit culture on the self-parody subreddit
/r/CircleJerk.191 One post, accompanied by a picture of a Bernie Sanders doll, proclaimed
Someone brought a bunch of these lil Bernie dolls to the Bernie rally today. She told me she
184
Holmes, R. (2016). Bernie Sanders Beats Donald Trump at Social Media. [online] Available at:
http://fortune.com/2016/04/18/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-social-media/ [Accessed 3 Sep. 2016].
185
Saturday Night Live. (2016b). A Hillary Christmas. [online] Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvSiH1eAF3s [Accessed 10 Jun. 2016].
186
Dewey, C. (2016). Op. cit.
187
Meyer, R. (2016). Here Comes the Berniebro. [online] The Atlantic. Available at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/here-comes-the-berniebro-bernie-sanders/411070/
188
SandersForPresident. (2016). Reddit. Bernie Sanders For President - 2016 /r/SandersForPresident. 1st
February 2016 via the Web Archive. [online] Available at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160201002126/https://www.reddit.com/r/sandersforpresident [Accessed 26 Sep.
2016].
189
Politics. (2016). Politics /r/politics 1st February 2016 via the Web Archive. [online] Available at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160201152857/https://www.reddit.com/r/politics [Accessed 26 Sep. 2016].
190
College Humor. (2016b). Op. cit.
191
Circle Jerk. (2008). Reddit. a high quality subreddit for high quality redditors /r/circlejerk. [online]
Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/circlejerk [Accessed 4 Oct. 2016].
67
made 42,069 of them and donated profits to the campaign.192 This joke invokes the tone of
clickbait and the number 42,069 (referencing both 420, the numerical representation of
marijuana, and the 69 sex position). The phrase Bernie Sanders thus became a part of
Reddits self-reflexive memetic lexicon, setting the precedent for the type of memetic content
about Bernie Sanders: hidden beneath thick layers of irony, yet conveying a generally
positive stance about Sanders himself.
Reddits love of Sanders as a memetic feature catalysed the nexus of memetic culture
and Sanders politics. The public meme-sharing Facebook group Bernie Sanders Dank Meme
Stash (hereon referred to as BSDMS) has over 432,000 members who are overwhelmingly
between eighteen and twenty-one years of age.193 The group was one of the major distributors
of Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer, but also incorporated Sanders into a variety of dank memes
using incongruous pop culture references.194 BSDMS required members to understand the
nuances of American politics in order to create more complex, niche, and dank content. The
groups only overriding message, Caitlin Dewey of The Washington Post observed, is that
Bernie is cool. The memes are far less concerned with policies [Sanders] has promoted, or
statements hes actually said, than they are with furthering his Internet-icon status.195 And
on the internet, iconography is what counts BSDMS was the most popular Bernie Sanders
Facebook group.196 Examples of BSDMS memes can be seen in Figure 19 below.
192
Devinchancexxx. (2015). Reddit. Someone brought a bunch of these lil Bernie dolls. [online] Available at:
https://www.reddit.com/r/circlejerk/comments/3nfemw/someone_brought_a_bunch_of_these_lil_bernie_dolls/
193
Alexander, L. (2016). Blame it on the Zodiac killer: did social media ruin Ted Cruz's campaign? [online] the
Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/04/ted-cruz-campaign-social-mediamemes-zodiac-killer [Accessed 27 Aug. 2016].
194
Dewey, C. (2016). How Bernie Sanders became the lord of dank memes. [online] Available at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/02/23/how-bernie-sanders-became-the-lord-ofdank-memes/ [Accessed 27 Aug. 2016].
195
196
Bereznak, A. (2016). The Bernie Bros rule the Internet. [online] Available at:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/the-bernie-bros-rule-the-internet-180426111.html [Accessed 7 Sep. 2016].
68
Figure 19: Bernie Sanders is combined with lyrics from Smash Mouth's All Star, a song from Shrek; Bernie is
inserted into a vaporwave style album cover; Bernie lays down some sick tracks for the kids. BSDMS, 2016.
The groups early growth can be attributed to its viral spread. As Menczer observed,
sharing content across multiple interest groups increases virality.197 BSDMS members spread
pro-Sanders memes across Facebook, on Reddit, in their Twitter and Tumblr feeds. 198 This
early community-building meant that BSDMS memes gained traction within the group and as
reposts to other communities. No other candidate appealed to the liberal tastemakers of the
197
198
Lewis, G. (2016). Op. cit.

69
internet quite like Sanders did. Dewey commented that BSDMS has a pretty narrow
definition of what it considers dank or cool: this is quality as judged by white suburban
stoners and nostalgic male nerds.199
There were two major phases of Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash: the hopeful
excitement of the primaries seen in Figure 19, and a tone of political angst after Sanders
withdrawal and endorsement of Clinton. These represent two vastly different modes of
memetic internet engagement. The first, full of irreverent caricature, is a loving form of
political fandom. This kind of mediated political engagement follows Henry Jenkins five
levels of fandom activity:
(1) sharing and debating meanings between other members of a community
(2) relating interpretations back to ones own lives
(3) involves a base for consumer activism, i.e. speaks back to the creator or
performer
(4) an emphasis on loyalty, identity and belonging expressed through
aesthetic norms developed within the community
(5) functions as a social community [with] the ability to offer symbolic
solutions to real world problems.200
Fandom has the ability to build communities, and relies upon intertextuality as a means to
communicate ideas about a text, the creator, and societal context. Fandom exists as a means
to express ideology and celebrate creativity, central values of participatory culture according
to Netzer et al.201 BSDMS became a mediated space of social connection, exemplifying
another function of participatory culture as set forward by Netzer et al.202 The creation of
BSDMS as a community catalysed political consciousness raising more than the memetic
content itself. The group acted as a means of community building, and this is where the true
power of BSDMS lay.
199
Ibid.
Parikh, K. (2012). Political Fandom in the Age of Social Media: Case Study of Barack Obamas 2008
Presidential Campaign. MSc. London School of Economics and Political Science. Available online at:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/mediaWorkingPapers/MScDissertationSeries/2011/64.pdf [Accessed
3 Sep. 2016]. p.7
201
Netzer, Y., et al. (2014). Op. cit.
202
Ibid.
200
70
Figure 20: Disillusioned memes and coping with Bernie's endorsement. BSDMS, 2016.
The second era of BSDMS was a reactionary period after Sanders withdrawal that attempted
to incite political action through memes. Sanders endorsement of Clinton brought groupwide criticism of Sanders as a sell-out who had lost his integrity to satisfy the corporate
political elite, as seen in Figure 20. Memes were more actively engaged with policy and
political participation, and often implored members to write-in Bernie as a third-party
candidate. Memetic support for Green Party candidate Jill Stein also emerged in the group.
Figure 21: Charged memetic activity of BSDMS, September 2016.
Figure 21, above, exemplifies the posts that flooded BSDMS in September 2016. It
demonstrates the use of politically charged hashtags such as #OurRevolution and
71
#BernieOrJill (referring to Jill Stein). These hashtags signal a comedic space being used for
activism in alignment with Kreftings concept of charged comedy.203 A memetic space was
now being co-opted to incite direct socio-political action. BSDMS was originally a memetic
space first and a political one second, and it was this that gave it cultural power. Its transition
into a political action group was largely ineffective.
So what is the political efficacy of a fundamentally cultural memetic space? Longtime blogger Carles argued that for BSDMS to impress upon American political culture, it
needed to engage with a wider audience:
Does dankness translate to electability? when it comes to non-Millennial
demographics (who can be counted on to vote in primaries and general
elections), perhaps the dankness of these memes could make Bernie Sanders
seems unapproachable to those who prefer memes curated by their local radio
stations Facebook page.204
Within broader political culture, BSDMS alienates the uninitiated. It does not act as any
traditional political group might; but then again, political action looks very different within
modern mediated spaces.
BSDMS is a manifestation of the notion of a personal micro-politics, as set forward
by Jenkins et al.205 It becomes clear that memetic political groups do not necessarily impact
upon broader political discourse, but upon memetic discourse and personal consciousness
raising: the community facilitates a mediated micro-politics. While BSDMS did not directly
influence traditional means of political activity (voting, lobbying, or petitioning), it had the
power to mobilise a depoliticised segment of society dispossessed youth to interact with
politics on a cultural and personal level.206 Jenkins et al emphasise that participatory politics
cannot in and of itself overcome structural inequalities that have historically blocked many
203
Krefting, R. (2014). Op. cit. p.23.

Carles. (2016). Can Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash Swing the Election? [online] Available at:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bernie-sanders-dank-meme-stash-facebook-page [Accessed 27 Aug. 2016].
205
Jenkins, H., Ito, M. and boyd, d. (2016). Op. cit.
206
Ibid.
204
72
from participating in civic and political life, but within mediated liberal spaces, BSDMS
becomes a powerful tool for cultural activism.207
This cultural power was recognised by Clinton supporters, who saw the internet as a
cultural battlefront that belonged to Bernie. On April 26, 2016, six pro-Sanders meme pages
were temporarily suspended from Facebook. Jamie Peck of Death and Taxes Mag
investigated these suspensions: while there was no immediate reason why they had occurred,
a number of members [reported] seeing explicit images, even child porn (!), posted by trolls
for the likely purpose of getting the groups flagged and removed.208 While not suspended,
BSDMS was being barraged with pornography when Pecks article was posted.209 Peck
speculated that it may have been the work of David Brock, who led a Clinton Super PAC and
formed an online mob of paid trolls designed to attack any and every person who says one
cross word about Hillary Clinton on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, or elsewhere.210
Peck supported his allegation after finding evidence of a Brock supporter bragging in the
Bros4Hillary [Facebook] group about getting a Sanders group taken down.211
In addition to factional warring, BSDMS was also subject to leadership corruption.
Administrator Will Dowd was shown to have filtered out as many as 100,000 posts, and
charging $150 to promote clickbait articles by third parties.212 Dowd continued even when
warned that his actions could lead to a lawsuit for accepting payments under anothers
identity.213 Despite its non-normative engagement with political activity, the meme-sharing
207
Ibid. p.161.
Peck, J. (2016). Did Hillary Clinton's super PAC pay trolls to shut down Sanders Facebook pages? [online]
Death and Taxes. Available at: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/288806/hillary-clinton-trolls-shut-downsanders-facebook-pages/ [Accessed 27 Aug. 2016].
209
Ibid.
210
King, S. (2016). Hillary Clinton now paying trolls to attack people online. [online] Available at:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/king-hillary-clinton-paying-trolls-attack-people-online-article1.2613980 [Accessed 7 Sep. 2016].
211
Peck, J. (2016). Op. cit.
212
benjaminwareing1998. (2016). Viral Group Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash Owner Involved in
Corruption. [online] Available at: https://nextgenerationblogs.wordpress.com/2016/07/01/viral-group-berniesanders-dank-meme-stashowner-involved-in-corruption/ [Accessed 7 Sep. 2016].
213
Ibid.
208
73
community was still susceptible to political controversy, and was seen as a threat to the
Clinton campaign.
Chillary Clinton, and Bernie or Hillary

Nowhere was memetic disdain for Clinton more vocal than on BSDMS: Hillary
Clintons character was routinely mocked in the group, and these memes quickly permeated
the whole internet. Clinton ran on a moderate Democrat campaign emphasising the
healthcare, education, and economic empowerment of women, and also supported
immigration reform, gun law reforms, and (having been pushed further left by Senator
Sanders) tax reform for Wall Street.214 Clintons campaign was plagued by numerous
scandals as well as her lowest ever approval ratings.215 Her political history constantly
resurfaced: she was criticised for her positions on Wall Street, the Iraq War, Benghazi, the
war on drugs, a shifting stance on marriage equality, and her use of a private email server
while she was Secretary of State.216
Clintons low approval ratings were further compounded within memetic spaces by
her attempts to connect with young voters via memes and popular culture. Clinton was first
perceived as being memetically unfashionable when the Hillary Clinton Snapchat account
posted a video showing Clinton saying, Im just chillin in Cedar Rapids, followed by a
shot of a drink cosy that read More like Chillary Clinton amirite?217 Aside from the pun,
Clinton made more attempts to connect with youth culture: on The Ellen Show, Clinton
learned how to dab (a popular dance fad); her Twitter sent a tweet reading How does your
214
Hillaryclinton.com. (2016a). Hillary Clinton on the issues. [online] Available at:

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/ [Accessed 7 Sep. 2016].
215
Blake, A. (2016). A record number of Americans now dislike Hillary Clinton. [online] Available at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/31/a-record-number-of-americans-now-dislikehillary-clinton/ [Accessed 7 Sep. 2016].
216
Ibid.
217
itsmoi. (2015). Vine. Clinton Cedar Rapids. [video] Available at: https://vine.co/v/erQH0K9JthD [Accessed
23 Nov. 2015].
74
student loan debt make you feel? / Tell us in 3 emojis or less; at a rally, she plead voters to
Pokmon Go to the polls which was later described as cringey.218 Clinton had committed
the cardinal sins of misusing teen slang and trying to use youth culture for political gain.
The memetic persona of Chillary Clinton emphasised these popular culture faux
pas. Chillary was not interested in learning what young voters wanted, but condescended to
them with exploitative versions of their own subcultures. She was tacky, out of touch, and
unsettling (Figure 22).
Figure 22: Sanders is presented as a candidate who speaks on important political issues, while Clinton patronises and
panders. Twitter, 2015.
Clintons misuse of teen subcultures and memes is especially reminiscent of corporate

exploitation of memes. I briefly touched upon corporate appropriation of meme culture in
Chapter I; the hardest thing to mimic is memetic authenticity. Clintons inauthentic pandering
re-emphasised her perceived similarities to the corporate world of Wall Street, but it also
highlighted a seeming lack of empathy. Chillary was the perfect foil to the internets antiauthoritarianism.
Saturday Night Live cleverly played off the genre. A December 2015 sketch united
SNLs two most recent Clinton impersonators (Kate McKinnon and her predecessor Amy
218
Future Media News. (2016). YouTube. [Slow Motion] Hillary Clinton Dabs On The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
[online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1aYwQDqPDQ [Accessed 7 Sep. 2016].
HillaryClinton (2016a). Twitter. "How does your student loan debt make you feel? Tell us in 3 emojis or less.".
[online] Available at: https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/631538115514007553 [Accessed 7 Sep. 2016].
NERZ. (2016). Cringey Hillary Clinton Pokemon Go Joke. MEME-IFIED!!! "pokemon go to the polls". [online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtTSp97EKRo [Accessed 7 Sep. 2016].
75
Poehler). In celebration of Clintons 2016 campaign, current-day-Clinton offers a fist bump

to 2008-Clinton saying, Well pound to that, only to be met with confusion. She clarifies:
Oh, Im sorry, thats how I have to talk in 2015. Not enough to just work hard:
we have to be cool yet tough, soft but strong, a sweet old lady but a sweet old
lady that says YAASSSS, KWEEEEEN.219
This is an instance where mainstream comedy played off memetic caricature. SNL subverted
the Chillary genre, criticising a public that simultaneously judged Clinton for being too hard
and mocked her attempts to soften herself.
There was one instance where Clintons use of a meme was given an uproarious
reception. Responding to a tweet by Donald Trump, Clintons Twitter deployed three now
infamous words (Figure 23):
Figure 23: The tweet is Clintons most popular to date. Twitter, 2016.
The Delete Your Account meme genre was first used in 2008 as response to people
displaying social media faux pas and attention-seeking behaviors on Twitter.220 What made
it accessible for Clinton is that it can be understood separate from its original memetic
219
Saturday Night Live. (2016b). Op. cit.

Know Your Meme. (2016b). Delete Your Account. [online] Available at:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/delete-your-account [Accessed 7 Sep. 2016].
220
76
context. It was ruthless, aggressive, and short ideal for Twitter, and ideal for Clintons
campaign.221 By dismissing Trump rather than engaging with him, Clinton communicated
that Trump was unworthy of her time she had more important things to do.
It is important to note how Clinton uses her Twitter account, however; Clinton herself
did not write Delete your account, as she signs her tweets with H.222 In fact, much of
Clintons pandering personality is likely due to misplaced campaign advice, but this overreliance on campaign staff plays even more into Clintons inability to connect with young
voters. Clintons managed online persona comes in sharp contrast to Trumps perceived
authentic use of his Twitter account, but then, even this is up for debate. The authenticity of
Trumps tweets are negligible, as most of the accounts Trump retweets from are ghost or
bot accounts that either tweet nothing at all, or tweet the same phrase over and over
again.223 Additionally, data scientist David Robinson posited that tweets from Trumps
account were coming from different people. Robinson noticed that the tone of tweets from
iPhone devices differed greatly from Android tweets (Trump being a noted Android user).
After analysing one thousand of Trumps tweets, Robinson concluded that the Android
tweets are angrier and more negative, while the iPhone tweets tend to be benign
announcements and pictures.224 While both Trump and Clintons Twitters sometimes
present highly managed versions of themselves, sexist double standards ensure that only
Clinton is judged for this practice, while Trumps so-called authenticity remains intact.225
221
The genre was also reminiscent of the Texts From Hillary genre of 2012 which depicted Clinton as being in
control. Know Your Meme. (2016c). Texts From Hillary. [online] Available at:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/texts-from-hillary [Accessed 7 Sep. 2016].
222
HillaryClinton. (2016c). Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) | Twitter. [online] Available at:
https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton [Accessed 22 Sep. 2016].
223
Sargent, J. (2016). The Laziest Lie Of Donald Trump's Entire Campaign (So Far). [online] Cracked.com.
Available at: http://www.cracked.com/blog/trump-having-twitter-conversations-with-fake-accounts/ [Accessed
30 Jun. 2016].
224
Robinson, D. (2016). Text analysis of Trump's tweets confirms he writes only the (angrier) Android half.
[online] Available at: http://varianceexplained.org/r/trump-tweets/ [Accessed 22 Sep. 2016].
225
This may partially be due to the nature of Trumps personal tweets: many are personal or nonsensical rants
unleashed at odd hours of the day, like his tirade against former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, where he
invited his Twitter followers to watch a non-existent sex tape of Machado. Jacobs, B. (2016). Donald Trump
77
The next significant Clinton meme genre was Bernie or Hillary, which juxtaposes
images of Sanders and Clinton accompanied by the candidates opinions about the issues
that matter.226 It emerged in the wake of Tumblr and Reddit posts made by ObviousPlant, a
comedian who distributes joke posters around Los Angeles.227
Figure 24: Some of the original Bernie or Hillary posters that were "left on the streets of Los Angeles" by
ObviousPlant. Tumblr, 2016.
tries to distract from Machado sex tape accusations. [online] the Guardian. Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/30/donald-trump-alicia-machado-sex-tape-accusations-clinton
[Accessed 4 Oct. 2016].
226
Obvious Plant. (2016). Bernie or Hillary? Left on the streets of Los Angeles. [online] Available at:
http://obviousplant.tumblr.com/post/138227198008/bernie-or-hillary-left-on-the-streets-of-los [Accessed 8 Sep.
2016].
227
Ibid.
78
ObviousPlants posters, seen above in Figure 24, parody the candidates responses to
campaign questions, but focuses upon irreverent topics. Hillarys answer is insufferable and
cloying, while Bernie answers with a cool response once again, cool as judged by white
suburban stoners and nostalgic male nerds.228 As the genre developed beyond
ObviousPlants initial posters, the form of the meme remained the same, but the content
changed (Figure 25).
Figure 25: Development of the genre after users adapted ObviousPlants parent meme. Various, 2016.
228
Hess, A. (2016). Bernie vs. Hillary: The Weird, Ceaseless, Kind of Sexist Meme the 2016 Campaign
Deserves. [online] Slate Magazine. Available at:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/users/2016/02/the_bernie_vs_hillary_meme_is_weird_ceaseless_and_
kind_of_sexist_just_like.2.html [Accessed 21 Feb. 2016].
79
The new versions of the genre became more simplified: this version of Chillary is reminiscent
of the 2010 Idiot Nerd Girl genre, which mocks a young woman for poor pop culture
knowledge.229 The creators of these memes act as self-appointed cultural gatekeepers,
excluding Clinton but welcoming Sanders.
Bernie or Hillary drew criticism from Buzzfeed for sexism; Rodman for Vocativ
countered that this same joke structure also fits the not-necessarily-sexist criticism that
Clinton comes across as pandering.230 But it was Amanda Hess writing for Slate whose
dissection of the genre best revealed the pro-Sanders stance of the meme:
The joke at the heart of this [genre] is the translation of Sanders passion and
expertise in discussions of economic inequality to a meaningless cultural
dispute hed never actually address The meme doesnt exactly fight fair: It
compares how Clinton fields soft questions with how Sanders replies to hard
ones.231
This unfair comparison is a different kind of sexism: in addition to depicting Clinton as a
cloying woman, Bernie or Hillary implies that Clinton is unworthy of being judged by the
same metric as her male opponent.
The memetic activity became self-reflexive about the genres dubious positioning,
seen in Figure 26. Through this technique of self-parody, netizens were able to comment
upon the sexism of the memetic genre as well as the sexism of the election. The metamemeing allowed for a criticism of memes as participatory politics whilst subverting the
form of memetic participatory politics.
229
Hess, A. (2016). Op. cit.

Broderick, R. (2016). There's A New "Bernie Or Hillary" Meme, But Is It Just Reinforcing Sexist
Stereotypes? [online] Available at: https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/theres-a-new-bernie-or-hillarymeme-but-is-it-sexist-stereot?utm_term=.pkNEmlWq7#.orO2e4wOm [Accessed 8 Sep. 2016].
Roudman, S. (2016). Decoding Bernie or Hillary, Your New Favorite Meme - Vocativ. [online] Available at:
http://www.vocativ.com/279654/decoding-bernie-or-hillary-your-new-favorite-meme/ [Accessed 21 Feb. 2016].
231
Hess, A. (2016). Op. cit.
230
80
Figure 26: Meta-memes which reflect upon the nature of Bernie or Hillary. Transcription of second meme: Issue:
This meme. Bernie: Like many similar formats, it runs the risk of becoming increasingly meta (or ironic) to the
point of total incomprehensibility, ruining the joke for everyone. Hillary: Its funny! I like the thing thats bad LOL.
Various, 2016.
Another important feature of Bernie or Hillary is that the visual keying of the genre is
reminiscent of image macros: it uses block text and a simple, easily replicated pictorial
template. Although its ideas and positioning are more complex than macro images, Bernie or
Hillary is accessible to shallow users. Memes about bigger political personalities like Clinton
are more traditional, and do not require deep memetic fluency this was also a running
theme with Trump memes. This suggests that it is not only deep netizens who engage with
memes about bigger candidates, but that their memetic appeal is universal.
Trump and the Alt-Right

Using his business acumen as a political resume, Donald Trump ran for the
Republican Presidential nomination. He had a hard stance against immigration with plans to
build a wall on the US-Mexico border, and his campaign was marked by a series of
controversies. Trump called Mexican immigrants rapists and said women who sought
81
abortions should face punishment.232 He mocked a disabled reporter and the parents of a
fallen Muslim American soldier.233 He hinted that gun rights supporters should assassinate
Clinton and encouraged Russia to release intelligence about Clintons emails.234 John Oliver
suggested that Trumps sustained gaffes had numbed America like a bed of nails.235
Memetic activity about Trump took two prominent forms: simple caricature within
liberal/centrist spaces, and memetic idolatry of Trump by a far-right online movement.
Grotesque caricature of Trump was seen on Vine, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.
Chapter I details that these spaces feature higher rates of young, urban, black, Hispanic, and
female users demographics that tend to vote liberal.236 Trump memes on these liberal
spaces were often redistributed Vines using audio manipulation and remix of speech excerpts.
A moment that reverberated through meme communities came from early in Trumps
campaign. In a speech in August 2015, Trump said You people know a lot about trucks,
then later mimicked political lobbyists and donors, pinching his fingers in the air as if he
were distributing money, saying Bing bing, bong bong bong, bing bing.237 These moments
232
Lee, M. (2016). Donald Trumps false comments connecting Mexican immigrants and crime. [online]
Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/08/donaldtrumps-false-comments-connecting-mexican-immigrants-and-crime/ [Accessed 14 Sep. 2016].
Corrigan, S. (2016). My Issue With Trumps Anti-Abortion Comments. [online] Refinery29. Available at:
http://www.refinery29.uk/2016/04/107392/donald-trump [Accessed 14 Sep. 2016].
233
Kessler, G. (2016b). Donald Trumps revisionist history of mocking a disabled reporter. [online] Available
at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/08/02/donald-trumps-revisionist-history-ofmocking-a-disabled-reporter/ [Accessed 14 Sep. 2016].
Alexander Burns, M. (2016). Donald Trumps Confrontation With Muslim Soldiers Parents Emerges as
Unexpected Flash Point. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/01/us/politics/khizr-khan-ghazala-donald-trump-muslim-soldier.html
234
Smith, D. (2016). Donald Trump hints at assassination of Hillary Clinton by gun rights supporters. [online]
the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/09/trump-gun-owners-clintonjudges-second-amendment [Accessed 22 Sep. 2016].
Parker, A. and Sanger, D. (2016). Donald Trump Calls on Russia to Find Hillary Clintons Missing Emails.
[online] Nytimes.com. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/donald-trump-russiaclinton-emails.html?_r=0 [Accessed 14 Sep. 2016].
235
Paschal, N. (2016). John Oliver Compares Donald Trump to Bed of Nails. [online] Available at:
https://www.yahoo.com/tv/john-oliver-compares-donald-trump-to-bed-of-nails-083536827.html [Accessed 22
Sep. 2016].
236
Pew Research Center. (2015). A Deep Dive Into Party Affiliation. [online] Available at: http://www.peoplepress.org/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-party-affiliation/ [Accessed 27 Sep. 2016].
237
Hathaway, J. (2015). Donald Trump Has Gone Completely Bing-Bong. [online] Gawker. Available at:
http://gawker.com/donald-trump-has-gone-completely-bing-bong-1723877013 [Accessed 15 Sep. 2016].
82
were juxtaposed on Vine by Actual GOP, who highlighted Trumps nonsensical words by
concluding with a soundbite of the rallys closing music, Were Not Gonna Take It by
Twisted Sister.238 It sparked the Bing Bong genre, where Viners sampled the speech in song
remixes, such as The Crazy Frog, Windows start-up music, and the Tetris theme song.239 This
caricature was continued in pictorial memes, seen below in Figure 27.
Figure 27: Common themes include mocking Trumps appearance and accent, referencing his proposed Mexican
border wall, and his dislike of immigrants. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, 2016.
238
Actual GOP. (2016). Vine. Bing Bing and Twisted Sister. [online] Available at:
https://vine.co/v/edrOxZUtAaa [Accessed 15 Sep. 2016].
239
Know Your Meme. (2016d). Donald Trump's "Bing Bong" Speech. [online] Available at:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/donald-trump-s-bing-bong-speech [Accessed 15 Sep. 2016].
Dank Memes that almost Out Woob a Shoob. (2016a). Facebook. Crazy Frog Bing Bong Speech. [online]
Available at: https://www.facebook.com/yeastybread/videos/1706528252940727/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2016].
WindowsXP_Vines. (2016). Twitter. Windows XP Bing Bong Speech. [online] Available at:
https://vine.co/v/ivj3QIZhl63 [Accessed 15 Sep. 2016].
ben, don't do that!. (2016). Vine. Tetris Bing Bong Speech. [online] Available at:
https://vine.co/v/e0TWX6rXEqI [Accessed 15 Sep. 2016].
83
While the more mainstream and liberal spaces of the internet were happy to mock
Trump with remix and grotesque caricature, online enclaves of the alt-right made him a
mascot of anti-political-correctness. The alt-right (alternative right) is an online
conservative movement housed in Reddit and its hostile predecessor 4chan. 4chan originally
started as an anime forum, but developed into a haven for far-right ideologies: on 4chan,
every user is anonymous and posts are frequently deleted, making it a bastion of short-lived
activity that easily flies under the radar of civilised society.240 4chan hosts political actors
ranging from the alt-right to hacktivist group Anonymous, however it is the actions of the altright that made a memetic impact upon the 2016 election.
The alt-right contains many far-right ideologies: nationalism, pro-guns, antifeminism, anti-Semitism, anti-multiculturalism, and white supremacy. Writing for The
Federalist, Cathy Young described the movement as a mix of old bigotries and new identity
and victimhood politics adapted for the straight white male.241 Alt-right figurehead Milo
Yiannopolous was banned from Twitter for targeted racism and sexism, and insists upon the
movements playfulness: its a mischievous, dissident, trolly generation who [performs antiSemitism] because it gets a reaction.242 Young counters that despite this claim, there is a
consistent pattern of Jew-hatred and white supremacism, not general irreverence.243
Many alt-right enclaves became a major base of Trump's online support, using
hostile memes as a means to annoy the pearl-clutching guardians of political correctness.244
Pro-Trump memes swelled from 4chan, shouts of Crooked Hillary reverberated through
240
4chan.org. (2016). 4chan. [online] Available at: http://www.4chan.org/ [Accessed 22 Sep. 2016].
Young, C. (2016). You Cant Whitewash The Alt-Rights Bigotry. [online] The Federalist. Available at:
http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/14/you-cant-whitewash-the-alt-rights-bigotry/ [Accessed 16 Sep. 2016].
242
Yiannopolous, M., as quoted Ibid.
243
Ibid.
244
Matthews, D. (2016). The alt-right is more than warmed-over white supremacy. Its that, but way way
weirder. [online] Vox. Available at: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11434098/alt-right-explained [Accessed 16
Sep. 2016].
Young, C. (2016). Op. cit.
241
84
/r/The_Donald on Reddit.245 100,000-person strong Facebook groups such as Donald Trump

for President!!!!!! posted memes reading Make America white again.246
Part of the alt-rights Trump fandom merged with an endeavour to restore 4chans socalled ownership of meme culture. Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast reported upon 4chans
campaign to reclaim Pepe from mainstream internet culture (i.e. not 4chan).247 As I
mentioned in Chapter I, male-dominated forums like Reddit and 4chan have constructed a
self-made mythology wherein they believe they are tastemakers who own the internet.248
This perceived ownership led to possessiveness: [The memetic character Pepe] belongs to
us, white supremacist @JaredTSwift told Nuzzi, and well make him toxic if we have
to.249 The alt-right mixed Pepe in with Nazi propaganda, to build an association between
Pepe and white supremacy (Figure 28).250
Figure 28: Smug Pepe before alt-right reclamation (left) and after (centre, right). 4chan, 2011, 2016.
245
The _Donald. (2012 (2015). Reddit. Donald J. Trump, our glorious leader For President /r/thedonald.
Home. The_Donald. [online] Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/thedonaldthe_donald [Accessed 1621 Sep.
2016].
246
Martel, W. (2016). 12,000+ Member Pro-Trump Facebook Group Posting Daily Stormer Articles. [online]
Daily Stormer. Available at: http://www.dailystormer.com/12000-member-pro-trump-facebook-group-postingdaily-stormer-articles/ [Accessed 16 Sep. 2016].
247
Nuzzi, O. (2016). How Pepe the Frog Became a Nazi Trump Supporter and Alt-Right Symbol. [online]
Available at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/26/how-pepe-the-frog-became-a-nazi-trumpsupporter-and-alt-right-symbol.html [Accessed 16 Sep. 2016].
248
LtziZFLN. (2016). Reddit. /pol/ PEPE IS OURS!!! 88759104. [online] Available at:
http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/88759104 [Accessed 16 Sep. 2016].
249
Nuzzi, O. (2016). Op. cit.
250
Ibid.
85
While @JaredTSwift later dismissed his Daily Beast interview as trolling, Pepe
nevertheless became the avatar for racism, just as he was the avatar for sadness, for
smugness and for 4chan itself in turn [Pepes] new [white supremacist] context became the
main context.251 Combining Pepe with white supremacy may not have been a concerted
effort to reclaim the genre, but the racialised trolling had that effect nonetheless; their
narrative became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Forming around #FrogTwitter, the alt-right
spread neo-Nazi Pepe to Twitter, and began integrating Trump imagery into the sub-genre.252
Figure 29: You cant stump the Trump, but your memes can stump America. Twitter, 2015.
In October 2015, Trump retweeted the Trump Pepe image seen in Figure 29. Jonathon
Morgan of The Washington Post posited that Trumps continued retweeting of alt-right
tweets propelled the movement into the limelight.253
251
McDonald, K. (2016). Who is Pepe, the cartoon frog Hillary Clinton is accusing of racism? [online] iNews.
Available at: https://inews.co.uk/opinion/columnists/who-is-pepe-the-cartoon-frog-hillary-clinton-is-accusingof-racism/ [Accessed 16 Sep. 2016].
252
Nuzzi, O. (2016). Op. cit.
253
Morgan, J. (2016). These charts show exactly how racist and radical the alt-right has gotten this year.
[online] Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
86
4chan created a pseudo-religion, ironically worshipping Pepes memetic power by

incorporating religious imagery with Pepe to create a demi-god named Kek (an old online
abbreviation for laughter, derived from the video game World of Warcraft).254 This pseudoreligion was what 4chan boards dubbed meme magic, when memes impact the real
world.255 The very idea of meme magic espouses Netzer et als fourth tenet of participatory
culture: that is, enhanced belief in ones own contributions.256 Having found considerable
media attention following the debut of Trumps Pepe retweet, the alt-right continued to
position memes as a form of manifest destiny. 4chan did everything in its power to make
Pepe more repugnant; images emerged of Pepe standing in front of gas chambers,
brandishing the Confederate Flag, and anally raping decapitated women.257 The use of the
Trump-Pepe sub-genre exploded, and began to gain attention from political figures.
In a campaign speech in Reno, Clinton named the alt-right as perpetrators of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.258 At her mention of the alt-right, a man in
the crowd yelled out Pepe! In an interview with alt-right news source Breitbart.com, the
heckler identified himself as a member of 4chans alt-right movement.259 His disruptive yelp
signalled the emergence of alt-right Pepe in a mainstream political space.
Pepe re-emerged in the wake of Clintons comment that you could put half of
Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables, addressing the racism and
intersect/wp/2016/09/26/these-charts-show-exactly-how-racist-and-radical-the-alt-right-has-gotten-this-year/
[Accessed 1 Oct. 2016].
254
BwKVaqRu. (2016). 4chan. /pol/ KEK: 88775645. [online] Available at:
255
Know Your Meme. (2016g). Meme Magic. [online] Available at: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mememagic [Accessed 16 Sep. 2016].
256
Netzer, Y. et al. (2014). Op. cit.
257
NO3x7fHe. (2016). 4chan. /pol/ 88779123. [online] Available at:
http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/88774029#p88774029 [Accessed 15 Sep. 2016].
258
Washington Post. (2016). Hillary Clintons alt-right speech, annotated. [online] Available at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/25/hillary-clintons-alt-right-speech-annotated/
259
Nash, C. (2016). We Spoke To The Guy Who Yelled 'Pepe' During Hillary Clinton's Alt-Right Speech Breitbart. [online] Available at: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/08/26/spoke-guy-shouted-pepe-hillarys-altright-speech/ [Accessed 1 Oct. 2016].
87
sexism emanating from Trump supporters.260 In September 2016, Donald Trump Jr reposted
the infamous meme in which he, Pepe, Milo Yiannopolous, and Trump are part of a team of
Deplorables, seen below in Figure 30.
Figure 30: The meme that stopped a nation. Instagram, 2016.
Following this meme, Clintons campaign released a statement:

Trump has been slow to disavow support from Ku Klux Klansmen and white
supremacy groups [Additionally,] Trumps presidential campaign is posting
memes associated with white supremacy online.261
The responses to this press release varied from incredulous confusion on Tumblr to enraged
frustration that Pepe had been destroyed at the cost of 4chans respectability. 262 Clinton
260
Blow, C. (2016). About the Basket of Deplorables. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/12/opinion/about-the-basket-of-deplorables.html [Accessed 16 Sep. 2016].
261
Hillaryclinton.com. (2016b). Donald Trump, Pepe the frog, and white supremacists: an explainer . [online]
Available at: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/post/donald-trump-pepe-the-frog-and-white-supremacists-anexplainer/ [Accessed 16 Sep. 2016].
88
irrefutably solidified the link between Pepe and white supremacy that the alt-right had been
clawing at for ages. She was able to use Pepes compromised nature for political leverage.
While the alt-right had co-opted Pepe into a white supremacy symbol, many netizens were
either unaware of the connection, or refused to legitimise it.263 Clintons campaign statement
legitimised the claim; this level of exposure led to Pepe being listed as a hate symbol by the
Anti-Defamation League on September 28, 2016.264 In her Reno speech, Clinton condemned
the actions of the alt-right but simultaneously empowered them by giving them nationwide
coverage. The alt-right celebrated being depicted as a threat being taken seriously was the
ultimate victory for the alt-right who saw themselves as playful trolls.
Galvanised by supposed political efficacy, an administrator on the subreddit
/r/The_Donald announced Nimble America, an organisation that would use donations from
memetic merchandise to fund pro-Trump television advertisements.265 The use of the word
nimble refers to a YouTube mashup video where a voiceover from a nature documentary
about centipedes is played over footage of Trump at a debate: the narrator says despite its
impressive length, [the centipede is] a nimble navigator.266 The formation of this group is
once again evidence of meme communities using charged humour as a means to mobilise
politically.
However, Nimble America was met with wide disdain from the community who felt it
fundamentally opposed the purpose of irreverent shitposting. I posit that the primary purpose
262
balfies. (2016b). Tumblr. doomy: what did we do to deserve this election season? [online] Available at:
http://balfies.tumblr.com/tagged/reference [Accessed 23 Sep. 2016].
wfFEYS23. (2016). 4chan. /pol/ thanks for fucking up a time honoured 4chan meme 89046506. [online]
Available at: http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/89046506#q89046506 [Accessed 16 Sep. 2016].
263
balfies. (2016b). Op. cit.
264
Begley, S. (2016). Anti-Defamation League Declares Pepe the Frog a Hate Symbol. [online] TIME.com.
Available at: http://time.com/4510849/pepe-the-frog-adl-hate-symbol/ [Accessed 28 Sep. 2016].
265
TehDonald. (2016). Reddit. Announcing Nimble America /r/The_Donald. [online] Available at:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6-3qm6OyY4J:https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5353i4/announcing_nimble_america/+&cd=1&hl=
en&ct=clnk&gl=us [Accessed 23 Sep. 2016].
266
Rose, A. (2016). Decoding the Language of Trump Supporters. [online] ATTN:. Available at:
http://www.attn.com/stories/6789/trump-supporters-language-reddit [Accessed 23 Sep. 2016].
89
of political memeing within these alt-right spaces was to disrupt the confidence of the
Democrats and canonise Trump as a memetic icon as BSDMS did for Bernie Sanders.
Nimble America tried to use the power of a meme community which antagonised traditional
media to fund campaigns in traditional media. This mode of political activity was
incompatible with the mediated citizenship of the memetic community, because, as we saw in
our examination of BSDMS, political memes become corrupted and inauthentic when coopted by mainstream acts of citizenry.
Conclusions
This chapter has examined the prominent genres that emerged during the 2016 US
Presidential election, organised around the candidates themselves. I first examined the
caricature of Ted Cruz which sought to Other him. This in turn led to the Ted Cruz Zodiac
Killer genre, and my analysis of Google Trends demonstrated that the genre became reactive
to socio-political events only after it had gained cumulative memetic power over a matter of
months. The political power of memes comes secondary to memetic power. My examination
of the Facebook group Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash revealed that political fandom
served as a better form of political mobilisation than charged comedy did. The employment
of fandom allowed users to express a mediated micro-politics through cultural means, and
ultimately this new mode of political action mobilised a depoliticised segment of society and
instigated politically-based community-building.
I next outlined how the memetic caricature of Hillary Clinton reinscribed the antiauthoritarianism of the internet but the Bernie or Hillary genre revealed a double standard by
comparing the two candidates through different lenses. Clintons memes demonstrated that
memes about bigger political personalities are more accessible to superficial shallow users
and require less memetic fluency. This was also seen in liberal and centrist memes about
90
Trump which used accessible caricature to parody him. Conversely, the alt-right constructed
Trumps memetic character as powerful; they connected Trump imagery with white
supremacy to great effect. Clintons response to the alt-rights memes fulfilled their intended
purpose: to disrupt Democratic cultural power and canonise Trump into memetic fandom.
Ultimately, all of these memetic genres demonstrate the breadth and variety of
memetic political engagement. They engage with notions of parody, authenticity, and
community, and reveal the efficacy of meme communities as cultural political powers rather
than institutionally recognised political groups. In my next chapter, I will analyse how these
discoveries impact our understanding of participatory politics as a cultural actor, and how
these modes of political conversation might develop in future elections.
91
Conclusion
Politics as memes
here does this leave memes as participatory politics? Having mapped and
analysed the impact of the popular meme genres of the 2016 election, it is
clear that memetic activity can be a mediated act of citizenship, but only if
it remains separate from the voices of mainstream media. There is one simple explanation for
this: meme culture is unpaid.
Citizenship itself is an unpaid act. Citizenship is a duty that each of us puts thought
into and performs. If we conceptualise citizenship as unpaid labour, then paid politicians exist
almost as professional citizens. If we transplant this conceptualisation of citizenship onto
the unpaid labour of participatory meme cultures, it becomes immediately clear why memetic
politics cannot be co-opted by mainstream politics. The later stage of the Bernie Sanders
Dank Meme Stash, where members implored people to vote #BernieOrJill, was unsuccessful
as a political tool. The Nimble America project, which tried to exploit the memetic power of
the alt-right to create traditional television advertisements, was also a failure. These two
groups were built by similar processes: that is, a desire to improve the cultural capital of
Sanders and Trump. When exterior forces attempted to transform these acts of cultural
citizenship into traditional political ventures, there was resistance from within. The notions of
political authenticity and memetic authenticity are woven within the fabric of participatory
politics. We must be authentic in our memes to be authentic political actors: to go against the
tone, purpose, and anti-capitalist aesthetic of the internet is not only fruitless, but harmful to
92
the true nature of these memetic communities. By introducing notions of conventional

politics, the memes become inauthentic, exploited, and unfashionable.
Traditional comedy media have been gradually teaching political literacy content
producers like College Humor and Cracked have shifted from pure humour sites to spaces
that present political knowledge alongside comedy. They have shown that comedy and
politics need each other, proving Kreftings comment that all humor locates itself in social
and political contexts.267
Like memetic comedy, political comedy engages with notions of authenticity. The
disdain for The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live hosting Donald Trump after each
program had broadcast anti-Trump sketches is the perfect example of that. Within comedy
culture, there is a desire for political comedy to be authentic and to have integrity. The same
applies within memetic communities. Take, for example, Clintons tweet asking indebted
college students to express their feelings in 3 emojis or less as an example.268 A meme that
is created with intentions of political efficacy fails quickly because its ulterior political
motives annul any authenticity. Memes are at their most powerful when they are irreverent:
purposeful memes cannot exist meaningfully.
The true power of memes, then, is their unintended cultural shaping. Political memes
have reframed cultural dialogue as a form of participatory politics. It is this cultural dialogue
that in turn shapes direct political action (voting, lobbying). If we consider autonomous
political groups to operate at a grassroots level, then memetic political groups operate at a
level below that soil level, perhaps. If the subterranean soil of a community is fertilised
with cultural capital and memetic community-building, then roots can form.
One of the reasons political memes have such a deep cultural impact upon online
communities is because the processes of memes and the processes of politics are so similar.
267
268
Krefting, R. (2014). Op. cit.

HillaryClinton (2016a). Op. cit.
93
Politics reifies ideas, plays with familiar and popular iconography, and inscribes ideologies
that permeate throughout American culture. Similarly, memes propagate themselves through
reification; they are strengthened through remix and mashup with familiar and popular
iconography; they inscribe ideologies that, through the processes of sharing and re-uploading,
can permeate every corner of the internet. I sought to describe memes as a form of politics,
but ultimately it seems as though politics is memetic.
During the 2016 election, meme communities began to understand their actions as
part of a bigger story. Whilst meme encyclopaedia Know Your Meme has been around for
years, smaller site-specific meme catalogues arose.269 Countless thinkpieces tried accounting
for the purpose, form, and origin of memes. The 2016 Presidential election allowed the
internet to realise the potential of memetic power.
This thesis not only comes with a conclusion, but also with a prediction: in future
elections, memes will become even more influential. Establishment politics has attempted to
co-opt memes for political gain; this is counter-productive. Memes are a language mediating
internet comedy culture and grassroots politics the establishment recognises the cultural
significance of memes, but does not yet understand how best to approach them.
In 2016, the Democrat Party has had difficulty reckoning with young politically
mobilised Sanders groups that were facilitated by memetic communication. Although these
communities used memes amongst themselves, political exploitation of memetic language
was perceived as inauthentic. Political memetic communities do not want a memetic dialogue
with politicians: they want a political one.
269
Know Your Meme. (2016h). Know Your Meme. [online] Available at: http://knowyourmeme.com/ [Accessed
17 Sep. 2016].
Memedocumentation. (2016). Tumblr. Meme Documentation. [online] Available at:
http://memedocumentation.tumblr.com/ [Accessed 17 Sep. 2016].
94
Memes are the indestructible anti-authoritarian voice of the people. In future

elections, memes will become the subterranean cultural soil of grassroots campaigns, forming
the foundations of a truly autonomous political comedy culture.
95
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97

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Memes As Participatory Politics: Understanding Internet Memes As A Form of American Political Culture in The 2016 United States Presidential Election

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Memes as participatory politics

Understanding internet memes as a form

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Secondly: family. Thankyou to my mother Fiona for challenging me to be better, and my

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Chapter II: American comedy culture and its continued impact

Chapter III: Political memes in the 2016 US Presidential election

Conclusion: Politics as memes

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

time-wasting irreverence, or can memes be a political act of mediated citizenship? To answer

What are memes?

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

of Doge, whereby an oft-photoshopped image of a Shiba Inu dog (nicknamed Doge) is

Why are memes relevant to the US Presidential election?

http://culturedigitally.org/2015/11/memeology-festival-05-memes-as-ritual-virals-as-transmission-in-praise-ofblurry-boundaries/ [Accessed 29 Jun. 2016].

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

practices, such as voting, lobbying, or petitioning.10 In micro-politics, cultural communities

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Memetics theory to date

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Shifman, L. (2013). Op. cit.

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

ne of the primary drawbacks of writing about internet culture is that academia

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

identifiable trajectory.29 It is difficult to analyse genre from an evolutionary perspective,

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Utwente.nl. (2016). Hypodermic Needle Theory. [online] Available at:

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

efficiency of communication.35 The code itself is not the information: it is a means to

Factors Affecting Meme Creation

Chandler, D. (1997). Op. cit. pp.5-6.

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Statista. (2016). Facebook users worldwide 2016. [online] Available at:

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Duggan, M. (2015). Op. cit.

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Duggan, M. (2015). Op. cit.

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Figure 4: "look at it. it's got anxiety". Twitter, 2015.

Figure 5: Animal Creation genre. Twitter, 2015-16.

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Humans of Tumblr. (2016). Facebook. Humans of Tumblr. [online] Available at:

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Figure 7: /r/aSongOfMemesAndRage, Game of Thrones memes subreddit. Reddit, 2016.

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

What Makes a Meme Successful?

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

Figure 9: Congressman Massie's doge meme. Twitter, 2013.

Douglas, N. (2014). Op. cit. pp.334-335.

Memes as Participatory Politics | Emma Balfour

This anti-exploitation sentiment extends to corporations as well. Reddit is particularly