Get Ready America, The Left Is Going To Save The Nation ‘With Selfies And Memes’
You have to feel a little sorry for the Left. In 2008 they had the hippest candidate, and for eight years they thought they were the cool kids because they understood pop culture. But the Left does not, and seemingly never has, understood memes the way the Right does.
But that’s all about to change thanks to an MIT engineer who supports Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for president.
Misha Leybovich has a plan to save the nation “with selfies and memes.” He already has a write-up in The New York Times and everything, even though he isn’t even officially associated with Warren’s campaign. In fact, he has tried to talk to her campaign about memes and a job – neither seem to have worked.
Right off the bat one can see an issue. Warren claims she has taken hundreds of “selfies” with her fans, but she’s actually just taking pictures with them because she doesn’t understand what a “selfie” is. Perhaps Leybovich will use her mistake in a humorous way that makes her campaign more endearing (like President Donald Trump does with his most famous Twitter typo, “covfefe.”
“The Right understands the importance of Memes. They approach it like war, and have succeeded in engaging their supporters’ participation,” Leybovich wrote in a 10 page Google document laden with emojis.
There’s the second mistake. The Right doesn’t approach memes “like war.” Memes are fun, and while the Right may joke about “winning the meme war,” that isn’t an actual mentality.
Leybovich told the Times that one thing Trump did well “was crowdsourcing the creativity.”
“If you look at the popular memes, it’s not the stuff his campaign makes. They just amplify it, even if it’s toxic,” he said.
Here’s the third mistake. If you think any of the memes Trump has shared are “toxic,” you don’t understand jokes. A gif of Trump wrestling the CNN logo is not “toxic” unless you are so opposed to the president that a simple joke becomes a violent threat. And if you don’t get that, you’ll never get memes.
Part of the meme campaign involves enlisting creators to design “templates” that Warren’s supporters can use to make their own memes. Yep, that’ll go over well.
The Twitter account for “Warren’s Meme Team” has so far tweeted 76 times, nearly all of which are tweets trying to explain what memes are and what Leybovich would like to do with his campaign. The tweets are taken from the Google document and include even more emojis, because nothing helps boomers understand fun like detailed analytical instructions bracketed by emojis. Here’s just one tweet, comparing various meme styles to existing campaign ads (the quote does not contain the seven emojis in the original tweet, which is shown below).
Note that all these Creative projects are just modern versions of classic political formats:AR selfies are lawn signs.Audio is campaign jingles.GIFs and Memes are bumper stickers.Graphics are candidate posters.Videos are political ads.
OnlyAR and
Audio are truly Templates, where all supporters can easily make their own versions of that content. But the rest are important content types as well, so we’ll leverage the community, capabilities, and network we’re building to improve our game there too.
Note that all theseCreative projects are just modern versions of classic political formats:
GIFs and
Memes are bumper stickers.
Graphics are candidate posters.
Videos are political ads.
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Good luck creating an authentic and organic meme team. Given the fact that it has not happened for the Left so far, surely a lengthy document filled with emojis and technical jargon will be the answer to the party’s meme failings.
