Trump Proves the Importance of Memes
The internet is buzzing with news, commentary, and speculation over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recent announcement that he will enter the Republican presidential primary, and that buzz has largely manifested in the form of memes. Former President and chief DeSantis rival Donald Trump was quick to hop on the meme train. He posted a video mocking DeSantis’ Twitter Spaces announcement. (READ MORE: DeSantis Launches on Twitter, the New Conservative Media Empire)
The Trump-shared meme depicts DeSantis as having the implicit support of globalists George Soros and Klaus Schwab, warmonger and former vice president Dick Cheney, the corrupt FBI, Adolf Hitler, and Satan. The short video already has over 350,000 likes on Instagram.
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Trump’s Use of Memes
The Atlantic credits Trump with using memes to tremendous effect. It even faults the so-called “insurrection” of Jan. 6, 2021, on memes.
Although Trump did not invent memes or even pioneer the use of memes in political campaigning and messaging — Michael Bloomberg, for example, spent a reported $1 million a day on social media campaigning in 2020, including memes on both Facebook and Instagram, and Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar has frequently posted memes on his Twitter account — he has not only embraced but learned to understand the use of memes in a way that other major political figures have not.
The term “meme” was coined by atheist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins explained that memes are a way of transmitting cultural knowledge quickly and easily from one mind to another through replication and repetition, in much the same way genes reproduce.
The advent of social media allowed memes, and their ideas, to spread.
Early memes were largely goofy: they often consisted of a simple line of text superimposed above an image with a line of text below the image that often changed the meaning of the top line of text, with context provided by the image. A common exemplar was the Bad Luck Brian meme, which often related humorously unfortunate, embarrassing, or tragic events.
Soon, internet memes became more than just a new way to share a joke. They also became a way to share ideas and philosophies.
The Effectiveness of Memes
The meme’s tremendous functional capacity is based on three key factors: simplicity, recognizability, and humor.
Effective or successful memes are simple or short. They don’t feature paragraphs of text, they don’t feature numerous panels, and they often revolve around binary structures: either simple comparisons or before/after formats. Recognizability can be achieved via repetition, but achieving that repetition is reliant also on relatability, lending memes a personal impact or relevance. That personal impact or relevance is strengthened or made memorable by humor, be it only chuckle-worthy irony or laugh-out-loud absurdity. (READ MORE: Tim Scott Is Running for Vice President — But Whose?)
A common example of an effective meme is the “Do Men Even Have Feelings?” meme. In it, a girl complains to her friend that her boyfriend didn’t even cry when he watched Titanic. She asks, “Do men even have feelings?” The lower image often depicts the boy in question crying over something he finds meaningful — in some cases something serious such as Christ’s crucifixion, a soldier’s act of self-sacrifice, or the fall of Rome, and, in other cases, something emotional but less seriously thought of, such as the scene in Pixar’s Up in which the protagonist and his wife have a miscarriage.
The meme is simple, recognizable, and humorous — each “half” only features one line of text, if that; there are only four images, the two girls, the boyfriend, and the object of his sorrow; the images used are recognizable, not obscure; and the joke is always that men and women are often spurred to deep emotion by different things.
Politicians’ Use of Memes
Of course, with a tool or technique that can be used to almost instantly convey whole ideas across broad portions of the population, it was only a matter of time before politicians capitalized on it.
Initially, internet memes were used by everyday people to mock politicians. One of the earliest examples is the “Dean Scream.” It portrays when the former governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, screamed a high-pitched, “Yeah!” into his microphone at a Democratic presidential primary rally in 2004. Another prime example is the crop of 2016 memes that ridiculously speculated that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz might be the Zodiac killer.
Bloomberg’s use of memes in 2020 failed for two reasons. First, his memes weren’t funny, simple, or memorable. The whole joke of them was that Bloomberg himself wasn’t relatable to young Americans, but that wasn’t a punchline in and of itself, and his memes were constructed around little else. The second reason is that leftists seem largely incapable of making, understanding, or effectively spreading memes coded with their own ideology. A common saying on social media, “The Left can’t meme,” largely inspired leftists’ graduate-thesis-length attempts at memes.
But memes have a strong political impact. Harvard lecturer Joan Donovan has noted the success that the far-right has had in spreading its ideas through memes. A study on Brexit and the 2017 U.K. general election found that memes are an effective way of sharing political ideas with those who otherwise wouldn’t seek them out.
Now, Donald Trump is proving that memes are a vital part of political campaigning. If Republican politicians want to stay relevant, spread their ideas, clarify their platforms, and increase their support, memes will be an essential way of doing that.
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