Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to another episode of Critical Defiance. I'm Nils, and today we're venturing into territory that might make you rethink everything you thought you knew about the Internet.
We're talking about meme warfare. And no, this isn't about cute cat videos or the latest TikTok dance craze.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Bobby socks here. And forget everything you think you know about memes. Yes, they can be funny. Yes, they can be harmless entertainment.
But here's what the mainstream media won't tell you. Memes have evolved into something far more sinister and powerful. They've become the stealth bombers of the digital age.
Weapons of mass persuasion that can topple governments, swing elections, and reshape entire societies without firing a single shot.
[00:00:46] Speaker C: In today's hyper connected world, a single image with the right text can reach millions of people in hours. Bypassing traditional gatekeepers and planting ideas directly into the collective consciousness. These aren't just jokes anymore.
They are sophisticated psychological operations designed to influence how you think, how you vote, and what you believe.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: We're living through the first era of true information warfare, where memes can destabilize democracies, manipulate public opinion on a massive scale, and even determine the outcome of presidential elections. From the 2016 US election that shocked the world to Brexit's stunning victory, to the ongoing propaganda battles in the Ukraine, Russia conflict, memes have been the invisible hand shaping history.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Today, we're pulling back the curtain on this digital battlefield.
We'll explore the mechanics of how memes weaponize emotion, the dark psychology behind viral content, and the very real dangers this poses to democratic discourse.
Buckle up, because once you see how deep this rabbit hole goes, you'll never scroll through your social media the same way.
Brings a whole new meaning to the idea of doom scrolling, right, guys?
[00:02:19] Speaker B: It really does.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: You know, when you think about memes as. As psychological warfare, when you think about it in those terms, doom scrolling takes on a whole different meaning. But before we even get there, we've got some other stuff to talk about. This week. It's been. It's been a little crazy. We've all had some stuff going on. The Ballad of Bill and the vroom vroom is getting longer and more sad.
I don't know which country star we're going to have sing the final version, but it's getting there.
[00:02:46] Speaker C: I'm 70 years old. I have never been a depressed person.
I'm on the edge, kids.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Yep. So those challenges there.
Yeah. And then on Bobby's side of things, you've had, you know, just big life changes. New job, new, new stuff going on. So you've got all that going on. So craziness there. And for me, I've been running around trying to figure out what's going on as opposed to actually working. Just trying to figure out what's going on is really the motif and I still have no clue. So hopefully Monday we'll bring some answers.
[00:03:18] Speaker C: Figuring out what's going on would be easier and more satisfying if there were some income attached to it.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:27] Speaker C: I've learned that there isn't.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: I feel like at this point I. I am the tunnel at the end of the light. Like the hatch. Hatch. I just, I don't know what to do anymore. Wow.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: I feel that even with a new job does mean stress has gone.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Now just.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Yeah. It's just transposed. Yeah.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Just digging myself out of a never ending hole. Which I feel like most of the country is starting to feel like the administration's really making sure we all stay as broke as well.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: I mean, not the billionaires. The billionaires are doing fine. The billionaires are actually getting our wealth redistributed to them because they need more money.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: Billionaires don't count as people.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Well, we all have our opinions and I'm with the orcas on that one.
[00:04:11] Speaker C: Same.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Somebody do a reboot of Free Willy.
[00:04:15] Speaker C: You ever wonder why the orcas are attacking yachts at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea outside the Straits of Gibraltar? Perhaps they're as pissed off as we are.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: I know too much about orcas. You just opened a whole rabbit hole. Back when humans first started really interacting with orcas, it was to help them hunt. Like the Native Americans would use orcas to help hun. That's why they got the name killer whale. And now we have stupid yachts killing them accidentally and they're like, fuck you.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Now vengeance is mine.
So, yeah. So, yeah, as we sit back and watch our wealth as a nation redistributed to like eight people, troops have been deployed on the streets of D.C. now on top of L. A once again under false pretenses. Trump cited this massive flare up of crime in D.C. when statistics show that it has actually been decreasing steadily over time as an excuse because that's really all it is to test putting the military and federal law enforcement on the streets of a city. He can get away with it in D.C. because they have direct control over D.C.
but Comey is already out there saying how he wants this to be the start of something in other big cities and how this is a form of community outreach. And I'm like, outreach. And that's really how they're trying to spin it, guys. They're trying to say it's community outreach, not law enforcement.
[00:05:36] Speaker C: Homie said this. Call me said this.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I did see a really funny TikTok the other day where this girl who lives in D.C. was like, yeah, there is a rise of crime in D.C. just the other day a felon started yelling lies from the White House.
[00:05:53] Speaker C: Can I just take a moment to point out a much, much darker side to this. Part of his excuse for this taking over of the policing is that there are, and this is not a direct quote, but this is the essence of what he has said.
There are gangs of violent teenagers, 14, 15, 16 year olds, terrorizing the streets of the nation's capital and other cities throughout the U.S. what is this response?
Hang on, this gets uglier. As far as I can see in response, he wants 14, 15 and 16 year old criminals to face adult consequences. He wants them re categorized as adults.
Now some of this is speculation, but given what's going on in some red states, it's really scary.
There are red states who have legislation introduced to lower the age of marriage, in a couple of cases, to as low as the age of 14.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: This is fucking disgusting. I'm sorry, I just have to say it.
[00:07:03] Speaker C: Yeah, it is. It is absolutely disgusting.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: We're talking about protect the children and now we're trying to have kids tried as adults and have young girls be. It's just fucking gross. It's gross. It's backwards. It's hurting kids. And show me the fucking Epstein list.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: While we watch so many states try and lower the age that kids can work at and lower the safety requirements that kids can work under.
Florida wants 14 year olds to be working in meat packing plants.
[00:07:34] Speaker C: It's not just southern states. New Hampshire, New Hampshire is one of the states that has legislation advancing to lower the age of legal marriage.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: So all of this is nuts, but it's kind of, it's an aside, I think, to the fact that we've got the military on the streets violating Posse Comitatus kids. We're looking at the scenario now where we've got the military, the National Guard acting as domestic law enforcement, which is illegal. And they're trying to cover it by saying it's community outreach. Give me a break.
[00:08:10] Speaker C: Yeah, who's zooming who?
[00:08:11] Speaker A: It's getting a little nuts. But they're testing the reach of the military onto our streets. They're literally testing their ability to put the military on our Streets.
And in dc, one of the first things they did was set up checkpoints.
Name papers, citizenship status. Okay, wait here while we check to see if you have any outstanding warrants.
And for the first 24 hours, just to show you how sick this is, they kept posting pictures of the criminals that they picked up in D.C. using these new tactics and these new personnel. And I found it odd, but it wasn't just me that noticed that they were all black. No, Every single one of them was African American for about the first 24 hours until someone said something. Actually, it's almost as if we're stepping up the. We're going to do it in front of you and we're going to see how much you'll take. And just as a side note, they sent South Carolina's National Guard to dc.
No, just keep that in your head. That's a little fucking ominous. That's one hair removed from the Civil War.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: They're policing a federal district, but I'm not going to lose too much sleep over that technicality. Yeah, what the hell are they doing there?
[00:09:24] Speaker A: But also, it's the same situation in la. They're from the South. They're not. Well, regional. They're from the South. And being.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: They're taking people with known biases and putting them in positions where they can just go, your skin's this tone. Deported, like it's.
[00:09:42] Speaker C: I'm already finding it hard to sleep because my brain hurts so much over this stuff.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Speaking of other things that are terrifying and just a show of how much this country is reverting back to fucking idiocy. Marriage equality is under fire.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: It all comes down to one case. It come really. It comes down to Oberfell vs. Hodges in 2015, which established the constitutional right under the 14th Amendment to same sex marriage. But one of our great Supreme Court Justices, Clarence Thomas, Captain Kickback, has explicitly called for reconsidering this precedent alongside other substantive due process cases regarding the matter in order to repeal marriage equality.
[00:10:30] Speaker C: And we already know what happens when a highly conservative Supreme Court begins reconsidering precedents.
Ask any woman who had autonomy over her body until two years ago what happens and they will tell you.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: I remember the day that same sex marriage was legalized. I was still in high school. I remember being so excited. And the fact that I'm older now and getting closer to a time where I am thinking about marriage. The fact that this could just be ripped out right from under me. I'm actually crying right now.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: Sorry.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: It's terrifying and it's heartbreaking. And it's, everyone deserves to love is love, celebrate their love. And this is just fucking disgusting in another way that we're just reverting back to, I guess what Trump thinks is when America was Great, it's what 30%.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: Of America wants at the expense of 70% of America. And that's who voted Trump into office or that's who Trump serves.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: And that's, that's also disgusting because we talked about it in our Found Families episode about, especially in the queer community when it comes to being able to see loved ones in the hospital and, and other things. Having marriage equality really did help so that partners could go see their loved ones when they were sick. And if we pull this away, we're, what are we doing to those that have already gotten married?
[00:12:08] Speaker A: What are we doing to the double digit percentage of our population as Americans I.e. lesbian or gay or bisexual or transgender? What are we doing to literally a double digit percentage of us? And that's the game, Bobby. They started with the trans people, a single digit percentage of us. Now we're going after gay people, double digit percentage of us.
Then we'll go after a larger double digit percentage of us. Maybe the homeless or maybe the mentally ill.
[00:12:37] Speaker C: They're working on the homeless right now. Don't worry.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: Yep. Thanks to a new executive order. But you see the progression, you see the stepping, and it's all per project 2025. And it's pretty fucking terrifying. And if people don't wake up to it, we've got a real problem because we're going to wake up one morning and this is not going to be America anymore. It's going to be Lower fucking Trumpistan.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: And it's been feeling closer and closer to that every day. And sometimes it's really hard for me to understand how more people aren't outraged.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Speaking of insanity in lower Trumpistan, Bill, you want, you want to tell us what's going on over at the Kennedy Center?
[00:13:11] Speaker C: I can't even understand what's going on over there. For fuck's sake.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: So this guy, he's decided that he's personally taking over the board and he's installed his own people in the board, just got rid of everybody and just appointed people. And then he personally selected the 2025 Kennedy Center Honorees. You ready for this shit?
[00:13:32] Speaker C: There used to be a committee for this, right. That was, was nonpartisan, that had nothing to do with politics. That had nothing to do with the guy sitting behind the Resolute desk.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: The list of 2025 Kennedy Center Honorees this year, sliced alone. George Strait, Kiss. Gloria Gaynor and Michael Crawford.
[00:13:55] Speaker C: Now, to top it off. To top it off, he's announced that he will personally host the upcoming honors ceremony.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: He has indicated that. They begged him. They begged him.
My God, no one could do it better than him. They begged him.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: I think we also need to talk about the fact that Gene Simmons was confused.
[00:14:16] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: Was like, why?
[00:14:19] Speaker A: Yeah. He's very outspoken against this administration.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: I think it's because he wants them to like him. I think these are all people that Donald Trump wishes would like him, and I think that's all it is. So with all of this, man is diverting huge amounts of funds to the Kennedy center, and he's going to do extensive renovations to restore its luxury and glamour. Reed ads. He's gonna play every thing he can in gold.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: Yeah. This is also sounding like the beginnings of the capital from the Hunger Games.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: It's sounding like this is how they, like, built it up to be the celebrity rich luxury land once again. We're seeing so many parallels to dystopian fiction that is becoming dystopian reality.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: You know, what's up is how many people predicted this dystopian reality, Right. Like, how many times were we warned? How many times were we told this was going to happen?
[00:15:18] Speaker B: How many decades had a big book or big book series saying, hey, hey, hello, this is where we're heading. This is the book telling you, stop doing this insanity.
[00:15:29] Speaker C: Right at the end of the tunnel is the oncoming train.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: Fucking green blinking light from Gatsby Foreign.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: Today, we're diving into something that might sound like science fiction, but is very much our reality. Meme warfare.
Now, when I say meme warfare, I'm not talking about your typical cat videos or funny gifs. We're exploring how these seemingly innocent pieces of Internet culture have become powerful weapons in the battle for hearts, minds, and votes. Think about it. When was the last time you shared a political meme? Maybe it was something that made you laugh, or perhaps it perfectly captured your frustration with a particular issue.
What you might not realize is that you've just participated in one of the most sophisticated forms of modern political communication.
These aren't just jokes anymore. They're strategic tools designed to influence, persuade, and sometimes even manipulate public opinion. So what is a meme? How do we break down what a meme is?
[00:16:38] Speaker B: Guys, I remember when I was first asked this question as a teenager, and I was like, I don't know. Memes are memes. I was like, how do you describe it? It's just something that everybody knows, and.
[00:16:49] Speaker C: That'S exactly what it is.
It is a unit of cultural information that everybody can identify.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: It's usually an idea, image, phrase, behavior, style.
And now we have things like TikToks and reels so that we can add videos to that or just text formats with variations that comment on culture, politics, or everyday life.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: And they all tend to jump from person to person. Right. That's really the thing that makes a meme a meme is it jumps from person to person and evolves like the telephone game.
[00:17:24] Speaker C: Given the magic of the Internet, this stuff spreads like virtual wildfire.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: And they can be edited, too. You don't always know if the meme you're sharing is what the original meme content was.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: What's meme warfare? To me, that's when we start talking about the strategic use of memes. So we take those units of cultural information and we use them to influence public opinion or to shape narratives around something or to achieve a political or a social objective, especially in an online space where you want to control the vibe of the space.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: And right now, we think of memes as something relatively new to our culture. But if we want to go back even farther, it wasn't called a meme yet, but the Uncle Sam, I want you, or even Rosie the Riveter, we can think of those as, like, historical memes almost. They're an image that everybody knew, everybody knew the meaning behind, at least in the US because we didn't have the Internet. But those are some of the, like, first examples of. You look at that, and you know exactly what it means, even if the words aren't there.
[00:18:35] Speaker C: Those were cultural icons of the time.
They spread through the media of the time, which was print media.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: Yep. So slower in many ways.
[00:18:46] Speaker C: Much, much slower, but they spread nevertheless, and they became as iconic as any meme you're familiar with today.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: And that really is key, Bill, because some of these proto memes or prehistoric memes really are as iconic or more iconic than the memes of today. Bobby mentioned Rosie the Riveter. That's an image that's been burned into my head since I was a sixth grader.
[00:19:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: So some of them stand the test of time, and it makes me question which ones of ours will stand the test of time.
Interesting question, and a little worrisome.
So that gives us a definition of what meme warfare is, but how do people do it? Well, when people get into meme warfare, what we're talking about is creating and distributing or amplifying stuff primarily in online spaces that supports a very specific view or a very specific narrative.
[00:19:38] Speaker C: And the creation has become so much easier with the advent of artificial intelligence. Anybody see Obama getting arrested recently?
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Trump in church?
How about, you know, if we're going to talk about artificial intelligence, how about the sheer number of AI generated memes of bullshit that the White House posts?
It's embarrassing.
Trump as Superman, Trump with ripped abs, Trump with Jesus. I mean, come on, give up.
[00:20:08] Speaker C: Just as the next Pope. Hello.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:20:11] Speaker C: Wait a minute. What alternate reality have I fallen into? I need to get the hell out of here.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: And yet in a certain way they're doing it right, because it's controversial enough that people are tuning in and spreading and sharing on both sides. Either because they love it and they're going look at this. Or they hate it and they're going look at this.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: And now we're also seeing government agencies like DHS and ICE starting to use memes with popular like TikTok songs.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Yeah, they're getting in on the act of existing stuff, insinuating themselves.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: The other side of this too is it's normalizing deportation and trying to appeal to the younger generation. And not only normalizing, it's desensitizing Gen Z to mass deportation right off the bat.
And that's a problem.
[00:21:01] Speaker C: That's an excellent point.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: That's another real dark side of memes is that it desensitizes people to issues that are currently going on. Or I'll be honest, and both of you are going to hate this. I think I've been a bit desensitized to how awful 911 truly was because of all the memes I've seen in my lifetime.
[00:21:23] Speaker C: Desensitizing is a terrific word because things that are probably strange to you, Bobby, disturbing to you, Neils, and absolutely appalling to me, who has lived through a few more decades than either of you are mainstream.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:41] Speaker C: Ideas that are disgust me are mainstream ideas. Now, just as an off the wall example, Flat earth God, my God, that's.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Just a meme to me now. Like I just laugh.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: But there are people who believe this.
[00:21:57] Speaker C: There are people who believe this.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: I know enough in a plane to see the curvature. But yet there are people who believe this.
[00:22:03] Speaker C: And the Internet, besides our piss poor educational system, the Internet has to take its fair share of the blame.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: Also I am going to throw shade at the older generation who told us to not believe everything we saw on the Internet, who are now sharing all the memes with usually incorrect information. And a minion and then believing it shade is valid.
[00:22:29] Speaker C: I didn't say my generation didn't have its fair share of idiots.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: The whole Russia, Ukraine conflict has been a stunning example in meme warfare on both sides, whether it's locally aimed at themselves or each other, or globally aimed at the global audience, particularly us. We've got memes on both sides celebrating wins and losses, talking about the death toll, talking about individuals who have lost their lives, all of them, to motivate us psychologically and emotionally to pick a side and run with it. Whether that's good or bad, as immaterial. It's being done. It's part of the new tactics. It's part of the landscape, the strategy now. And we have to be aware of that.
[00:23:05] Speaker C: I used to live in a world where the mainstream media, and I'm putting that in air quotes, was generally a fairly reliable source of non biased, nonpartisan information.
Yeah, they may have been run and controlled by our corporate overlords, but at least they weren't hewing to the Republican talking points or the Democrat talking points. They were actually trying to provide some sort of balanced view. Yeah, and we no longer have that. Even the mainstream media has been taken over by meme warfare. And we've got to attribute some of that again to the advent of the Internet, because the mainstream media gets less and less and less of the viewers share.
And to compensate for that, they have to be more and more and more sensational and biased and targeted in what they offer us.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Putting chemicals in the water. Turn the freaking frogs gay.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: Turn the frogs gay.
[00:24:12] Speaker C: Chemicals in the water? What about the chemicals the airplanes are dropping on us? Hey, now, what chemicals?
[00:24:17] Speaker A: My God. Yeah, Speaking of conspiracy theories, I mean you. Lee Zelden.
Holy shit. The EPA is now investigating chemtrails like they're real.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: Are you kidding?
[00:24:28] Speaker A: No. This is under Liz Eldon, the new head of the epa. We are investigating chemtrails because the American people deserve to know.
Captain Clown Shoes over here is on a national stage now. And now we're getting this shit.
[00:24:43] Speaker C: All right, kids, let's shift gears and talk about memes as a communication tool. Here is where things get really, truly fascinating and a little scary. We live in an age where complex political ideas can be distilled into a single image with a couple words of text. Think about that for a moment. Centuries of political theory, nuanced policy debates, and sophisticated arguments can now be compressed into something you can understand and share in a second. This is not just about making politics more accessible, although it certainly does that we are witnessing a fundamental transformation in how political messages spread. I remember the old days when you had to wait for the morning newspaper or the evening news to get your political information. Speaking of the old days, I want to talk about one of the OG meme lords.
Up until the mid to late 60s, the only time you saw a politician on TV was at a press conference or a political debate. Then in 1968, brace yourself, kids. Richard Nixon became the OG meme.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Lord God, you're not wrong.
[00:26:04] Speaker C: Back in the day, Laughing was the Saturday Night Live of its time. In fact, Saturday Night Live has said that they modeled a lot of their comedy off of what Laughing was doing five or five or ten years earlier. Richard Nixon, facing an uphill battle in the 1968 presidential contest a couple months before the election, decided that he was going to appear on Laughing and utter one of their catchphrases, which was sock it to me. The poor guy had to go through eight or 10 takes to get the sound to get the sound that the people were looking for.
But he did it.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: That's actually a really great one to bring up because you, you say Nixon. And I'm thinking about how now you can pull a meme from Futurama from any episode that they pull Nixon from that they use Nixon in. And that's complex political idea, complex political person.
And you can, you pull it still from Futurama and people are like, are like, oh yeah, Nixon, he was fucked up.
[00:27:16] Speaker C: And once he opened that door to these cultural touchstones, it just kept going and going to think about 92, Bill Clinton playing the saxophone on Arsenio hall late night.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: I did not have sexual relations with, with that woman.
Yeah, you know what? That's also a good one though, actually, the whole Clinton thing. I didn't actually know what happened with the whole Monica Lewinsky. Like, I didn't know what happened, but I knew the. I did not have sexual relations with that woman because that became a meme.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah.
[00:27:53] Speaker C: Okay, you're a little older now. Do you understand what happened?
[00:27:56] Speaker B: Yes, I understand what happened now, thank you very much.
Or, or, you know, almost Watergate in itself has almost become a meme. That's how we call things like signal gate and things like that now.
[00:28:08] Speaker C: Everything is a gate. Exactly.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Everything is a gate now.
[00:28:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And memes are used all the time on the Internet to try to sway people politically. And sometimes honestly it happens a lot with the. Right. When they're trying to make these anti gay memes that they put this whole thing together and Then the queer community sees it and they're like that, that sick as fuck. We're gonna take that now.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: But you know where that comes from. There's a certain power in simplification that memes really, really leverage. Memes can take really complex political ideas, like Bill said, and down them into something small, into just a concept that can be attached to an image or a photo or video, right? And that concept can be something like DEI or defund the police.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: I bring up 1984 all the time, but you know how they were deleting words? That was a whole thing. And actually seeing memes do it to a point where like, I can't even imagine what textbooks are going to look like in the next 50 years, you know, or the thing archaeologists are going to look back hundreds of years from now and have no idea what the anyone was talking about because it's a word and a picture.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: But you want to talk about memes that will stand the test of time. MAGA is the ultimate meme magnet.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: And I mean, I also have to talk about how Pepe the Frog got brought into this, because when I was in, I don't know, middle school, it was a long time ago for me.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: A long time ago.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: But like, Pepe the Frog was just an innocent, badly drawn frog.
It, it had no political association. It was literally just, just in its truest form, was just a meme. It was one of those reactionary memes and that's all it was going to be. And then it got taken by the right. What was it, QANON or something. In the same way they take symbols and decide that, you know, they mean new things now they just. Pepe the Frog used to be innocent. Now I see Pepe the Frog and I'm like, oh, it's the mag.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: And like it is almost mind numbing to really think about how that pipeline happened. I don't even know what you want to call it. We got a fucking Republican frog now. I don't get it, right?
[00:30:34] Speaker C: We're riding that double edged sword to our possible own demise here. We've dumbed it down to the point where even the simplest among us can comprehend a political message, but with none of the subtleties that are so necessary to truly understanding what's happening.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: I just hate the fact that you said among us. And my brain went, oh, the among us memes. Like it really is every part of our culture, you put a couple words together and people go, oh, I know.
[00:31:05] Speaker C: That meme, memes, memes, give us some bottom up Political power versus the top down.
That was prevalent right up until Nixon went on laughing.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: Yep, yep, that's a very good point.
[00:31:21] Speaker C: But it, it allows, it allows ideas to spread rapidly over the Internet. But are they good ideas or are they bad ideas?
[00:31:30] Speaker B: Are they the actual, you know, the original meme was supposed to make? Is it exactly true? Is it made up? Bullshit?
[00:31:38] Speaker A: That's part of my mental definition of a meme, Bobby. Is, is it moving too fast to be fact checked? That makes it a meme. If it's not, it's more likely a story.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: So that's a good one. I didn't even think about it.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: That's just a way that I look at it.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: So far we've been exploring the reach and power of memes. And honestly, it's pretty incredible stuff. But here's where I need to level with you. With great power comes great responsibility. And unfortunately, not everyone got that memo. We're about to venture into some darker territory here. Think of this as the moment in every superhero movie where we meet the villain. Except in this case, the. The villain might be that innocent looking meme in your feed.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: So you, you've got the obvious when it comes to this. You've got memes that spread misinformation or memes that spread conspiracy theories, or memes that spread propaganda or extremist ideas or indoctrinating ideas.
And that's obvious.
[00:32:37] Speaker C: ISIS used memes and the Internet to recruit and they were very successful.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Now we have ICE doing the same damn thing.
[00:32:46] Speaker C: There you go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: And there's a point where you have to look at it and go, okay, where, where is the dark side? And the dark side to me is in two places. One is harassment.
Memes can become target political harassment really fast, especially when they're aimed at an individual, particularly if that individual is not in the public sphere.
So there's that piece of things. But even scarier to me is the technology and the mechanics behind the memes.
We work with a lot of AI and a lot of voice synthesis and a lot of image synthesis and a lot of things that we use artistically in various ways.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: When deep fakes became a thing, it was especially bad for.
I remember, I think it was Selena Gomez who was one of the first, who was like really targeted with deepfakes that then went on to pornhub and stuff.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: God.
[00:33:42] Speaker B: And yeah, that, that technology can be like really scary. Especially when you could put someone's face on someone else's body and make sex tape look almost real.
[00:33:53] Speaker C: Yeah, it Used to be. It used to be Photoshop. Alter a photograph and post it with a couple of words or a little and you could ruin somebody where Photoshop.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: MS.13 on someone's knuckles.
It really can become harassment when you could take someone's face and make it so that they're saying something they never said. We could. We have the technology to literally put words in people's mouths now.
[00:34:23] Speaker A: Yeah, we have it. So imagine what these political operators have. Yeah, because we have it. We pay 30 bucks a month for it from Descript. Highly recommended, by the way.
[00:34:33] Speaker C: Yeah, you, you and I could do it.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: Anyone could do it. These Gen Z kids pick up on technology so quickly that that's part of how it's so scary too, when you have like 12 year old thinking they're just like around and playing with this. But it can very quickly turn into harassment. I can't even imagine what the world of cyber bullying looks like now in middle schools.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Oh my God. Thank God I'm old.
So that was all pretty heavy. And if you're feeling a bit overwhelmed right now, that's pretty normal. We just took a deep dive into some very serious stuff. But here's the thing, and this is why I love doing this show. We're not just here to identify problems. We're here to talk solutions. So think of this next section as the part of the movie where the heroes start fighting back. Because the truth is, people are fighting back. Institutions, platforms, even everyday users like you and me are developing ways to combat meme warfare.
So let's talk about the counterpunch, shall we? Oh, Bill, you want to take this?
[00:35:37] Speaker C: I would like to, because one of the first bullet points I. On my outline here is a question that says, how are political institutions, traditional media and platforms responding? Well, I would like to hail one person in particular who I think has discovered the best of all possible responses.
And he's not necessarily a long standing hero of mine. He's the Governor of California. Who are you? Who I thought was a little, you know, maybe not quite all pulled together there for a while, but he's taken to responding to some of the MAGA memes and the administration tweets by mimicking them.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: And yeah, I've heard about this.
[00:36:21] Speaker A: Oh my. He has started a trend of Democrats.
He started a trend of Democrats who tweet in all caps online and comment on what Tiny Hands is doing today. That's what they call him, Tiny Hands.
[00:36:36] Speaker C: And he has. He's got to have a team writing for him, but he has done it so expertly, you look at one of his tweets, and if you don't take the time to read it, you just see the capitalization all over the place. It looks like you're reading something that came from the White House a couple hours ago.
[00:36:54] Speaker B: It's a perfect example of fight fire with fire.
[00:36:57] Speaker C: Yes. And this is what the Democrats have been afraid to do for a decade.
They take the low road, we take the high road. How's that working out for you? How's that working out for you kids?
[00:37:11] Speaker B: I don't think you're getting to the wishing star first.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: That way took the low road, got to the foundation of this country. We need to catch up to them.
[00:37:19] Speaker B: We're talking about what we can do or what listeners, everyone can do when it comes to meme warfare. And I think the biggest thing is fact check it, even if you do it on your own. Because I'll be honest, I've seen memes and gone, holy shit. And then I do some digging and try to look at some reliable news sources, and I find out, oh, that's not happening. It's a meme.
So, like, that's just baseline. Don't believe everything you see on the Internet.
[00:37:49] Speaker A: Now, speaking of believing, do we believe that there is such a thing as a good meme?
[00:37:53] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:37:53] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: Because I've seen memes that, you know, promote civic engagement or promote community or promote critical thinking or promote the bridging of divides between communities of people.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: So there is that end of it.
[00:38:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Memes can be used for good, but again, fact checking. And even I'm pretty sure there are tools now where you can, like, Niels, you'll probably know the better words for this, but I know there's stuff where you can put like a reverse image search almost and see where something originated. Yeah, yeah. Or what the original content was.
[00:38:33] Speaker C: Do they inherently oversimplify? More often than not, yeah. But if you're over oversimplifying valid information, it can go a lot farther than oversimplifying a conspiracy theory.
[00:38:47] Speaker A: But again, with great power comes great responsibility.
[00:38:52] Speaker B: You really gotta think about what you're seeing on the Internet and what these memes are saying. And it's crazy to me to even say this, but yeah, sometimes memes have factual information, but again, sometimes they don't. So don't just be like, I'm trying to think of the last meme I saw that I really thought was real. And then you know what? Trump's tweets get memed so hard that.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: It'S hard to tell what's real and what's a parody.
[00:39:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Because his actual tweets are so unhinged that when people meme them or tweak them, I have to, like, read it a few times and then go look into it. And because, like, that's a big one, man. I can never fucking tell.
[00:39:37] Speaker C: Yeah, and that's a good point. I want to say research everything, but I've heard the phrase, do your own research so often that I hate. I hesitate to use the word research.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Well, and sometimes it turns into that guy who's like, I've seen a YouTube video. You're all wrong. Yeah, yeah. So you gotta watch out for that.
So in today's episode, we explored how memes have fundamentally transformed modern political engagement, evolving from simpler Internet humor to influential tools that shape public discourse, forge group identities, and impact political outcomes.
[00:40:20] Speaker C: We've examined how while memes can democratize political participation, they also increase the risks of polarization, misinformation, and manipulation.
Understanding memes as both grassroots activism tools and weapons of political warfare is critical for navigating today's information landscape.
[00:40:44] Speaker B: Next week, we'll be diving into beyond the Evolution of Libraries, where we'll explore how these vital community institutions are adapting and transforming in the digital age.
Join us as we discover the innovative ways libraries are reimagining their role in modern society.
[00:41:05] Speaker C: Your hosts and producers are Nils, Bobby Socks, and myself, Bill.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: Behind the scenes, the audio magic is woven by Niels and Jack, with crucial feedback and assistance from our associate producers, Tyler and Turbo.
[00:41:20] Speaker A: Our writers room is composed of everyone we just mentioned, with help from our friends Skeeter and Jimmy.
[00:41:25] Speaker C: We absolutely could not do any of this without our incredible contributing members, who not only support us, but help steer the ship on episode topics and formatting.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: Finally, I'd like to thank our freaky little goblins, Jack and Tyler, for sharing every unique and weird meme they see back on up to us and sometimes creating their own.
