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Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America
A groundbreaking investigation into the digital underworld, where far-right operatives wage wars against mainstream America, from a masterful trio of experts in media and tech.
Memes have long been dismissed as inside jokes with no political importance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Memes are bedrock to the strategy of conspiracists such as Alex Jones, provocateurs like Milo Yiannopoulos, white nationalists like Nick Fuentes, and tacticians like Roger Stone. While the media and most politicians struggle to harness the organizing power of the internet, the “redpill right” weaponizes memes, pushing conspiracy theories and disinformation into the mainstream to drag people down the rabbit hole. These meme wars stir strong emotions, deepen partisanship, and get people off their keyboards and into the streets--and the steps of the US Capitol.
Meme Wars is the first major account of how “Stop the Steal” went from online to real life, from the wires to the weeds. Leading media expert Joan Donovan, PhD, veteran tech journalist Emily Dreyfuss, and cultural ethnographer Brian Friedberg pull back the curtain on the digital war rooms in which a vast collection of antiesablishmentarians bond over hatred of liberal government and media. Together as a motley reactionary army, they use memes and social media to seek out new recruits, spread ideologies, and remake America according to their desires.
A political thriller with the substance of a rigorous history, Meme Wars is the astonishing story of how extremists are yanking our culture and politics to the right. And it's a warning that if we fail to recognize these powerful undercurrents, the great meme war for the soul of America will soon be won.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published September 20, 2022
About the author
Joan Donovan
6 books15 followersJoan Donovan, PhD, is the research director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center and one of the foremost experts on media and disinformation in the world.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
September 27, 2022
. . . the internet is an incredible place to build community around a common interest.
And, if we had just stuck with cats, laughing babies, and pizza rats, the world would probably be a better place. But, instead white nationalists, Pepe fans, and Steve Bannon all used the internet as a marketing tool for their own nefarious purposes, and now life as we know it is pretty much in the toilet.
There's an interesting James Burke - Connections feel to this, as the authors patiently explain how Occupy Wall Street somehow led to gamergate, the Proudboys, and on to the January 6th insurgency . . . BUT, basically, if you've paid attention to the news (both the REAL news, AND the altered-FOX version), there's nothing really fresh here.
However, if you're looking for a succinct recap of how it all went pear-shaped, have at it.
And, if we had just stuck with cats, laughing babies, and pizza rats, the world would probably be a better place. But, instead white nationalists, Pepe fans, and Steve Bannon all used the internet as a marketing tool for their own nefarious purposes, and now life as we know it is pretty much in the toilet.
There's an interesting James Burke - Connections feel to this, as the authors patiently explain how Occupy Wall Street somehow led to gamergate, the Proudboys, and on to the January 6th insurgency . . . BUT, basically, if you've paid attention to the news (both the REAL news, AND the altered-FOX version), there's nothing really fresh here.
However, if you're looking for a succinct recap of how it all went pear-shaped, have at it.
August 4, 2022
Meme Wars is yet another entry into social media age political discourse. The work's central claim is borderline ridiculous, e.g. meme magic is threatening American democracy. The authorial team of Joan Donovan, Emily Dreyfuss, and Brian Friedberg recap the birth and evolution of the "red-pilled right," and its culmination in the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the events of January 6th 2021. Their thesis is that despite the great democratizing promise of social media (initially evidenced by movements like Occupy Wallstreet and the Arab Spring), these platforms were hijacked by powerful and/or malicious actors using memes. This is accompanied by the corollary meme that the "left can't meme" and hence is somehow disadvantaged in the meme war.
But come on, these are utterly ridiculous ideas. One of the first serious oversights is that the authors fail to clearly define what a "meme" is. They rely on a mixture of Richard Dawkins' ideas on cultural evolution and colloquial definitions, vacillating between the two throughout the work. Often, "meme" just becomes a byword for the authors whenever they're struggling to develop a point, e.g. "It was the memes!" The work is essentially a qualitative history of one part of one side of the political discourse (i.e. the alt-right) on various media platforms, focusing in on especially fringe figures as if they were enormously influential. The authors are only able to intermittently make the case that some of these figures matter, and the conflation of the truly irrelevant with those who may have had real influence on the discourse is muddling. Plus, the qualitative nature of the narrative makes it difficult to actually invest confidently in any claim.
The only thing you can count on Meme Wars to deliver is a lot of repetitive information about the types of people that frequent the dark corners of the internet, and the things they like to get up to. The authors are quite focused with the "very online" world, but like many of the "very online," their solipsistic perspective precludes actually persuading their readers that internet discourse matters as much as they claim.
*Disclosure: I received this as an ARC through NetGalley.
But come on, these are utterly ridiculous ideas. One of the first serious oversights is that the authors fail to clearly define what a "meme" is. They rely on a mixture of Richard Dawkins' ideas on cultural evolution and colloquial definitions, vacillating between the two throughout the work. Often, "meme" just becomes a byword for the authors whenever they're struggling to develop a point, e.g. "It was the memes!" The work is essentially a qualitative history of one part of one side of the political discourse (i.e. the alt-right) on various media platforms, focusing in on especially fringe figures as if they were enormously influential. The authors are only able to intermittently make the case that some of these figures matter, and the conflation of the truly irrelevant with those who may have had real influence on the discourse is muddling. Plus, the qualitative nature of the narrative makes it difficult to actually invest confidently in any claim.
The only thing you can count on Meme Wars to deliver is a lot of repetitive information about the types of people that frequent the dark corners of the internet, and the things they like to get up to. The authors are quite focused with the "very online" world, but like many of the "very online," their solipsistic perspective precludes actually persuading their readers that internet discourse matters as much as they claim.
*Disclosure: I received this as an ARC through NetGalley.
September 15, 2022
Memes are acorns. Oak trees entice squirrels to carry off their acorns and actually plant them – burying them for the tree, far and wide. Memes are carried off by social media users, enticed by their simplicity and often the laugh they get, spreading them to other users and other media for the benefit of the meme creator. But memes have quickly evolved into weapons of mass destruction, fired into cyberspace to destroy those who might not believe in the politics or religion or rights to hate of the propagator.
Gathering up the acorns, three authors from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Technology and Social Change Research Project have produced Meme Wars, an intensive and worrying examination of memes, the people who exploit them, and the mass armies of the ignorant who promulgate them, and often become their victims. Joan Donovan, Emily Dreyfuss and Brian Friedberg are so comfortable in their topic, it sounds almost normal. But far from normal, memes are a menace and a threat, posing as simplified truths. What could possibly go wrong?
Memes sit over rabbit holes. Once people click around to find more on the meme, they get pummeled with unending extremist takes, “research,” and outright fraudulent websites under the umbrella of the meme. Seemingly normal people get sucked into wacko theories and become (often vile and violent) proponents of them. When Muslims do this, we say they have been radicalized. When young white American males do it, we attribute it to free speech or just dismiss it (though it’s the same disease). It is generally for the benefit of the extreme Right, and it leads to division, violence and rebellion, where most of the country recognizes no such need. From this pool of the radicalized come mass murderers, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Nazis (“Hitler did nothing wrong!”), incels and January 6 insurrectionists.
There is, for example, a chilling chapter on Dylan Roof, a seemingly intelligent teenager who read himself into despising all Blacks. The book follows his online clicks, learning lies, fears and hate, ultimately ending at a Black church, where he gunned down numerous worshippers, who had invited him to join them. Every link he followed deepened his warped understanding of the world. It is a primer on memes and the rabbit hole, and sets up the book just perfectly.
Rabbit holes are so deep, they hook the Dylan Roofs of the country “inspiring people to commit violent acts, abandon their lives, get lost so far down the rabbit hole that their family members had to form support groups to try to pull them out,” the authors say. Aided by tools like gaslighting and dog whistles, memes leverage themselves in the minds of the impressionable.
Memes tend to be visual, thanks to the internet, and the authors have peppered their book with visual representations of the memes and the people they discuss, right below the paragraph where they discuss them, making connections easy. The book is really well organized and effectively presented.
Memes are simplified views of an issue, often employing a line from pop culture – a phrase from a game or song or film, and often used ironically. This leaves it susceptible to doctored images that get laughs galore, causing viewers to want to share them with everyone, and thereby radicalize others.
There are numerous significant memes that the authors cite, develop, and trace to their roots and connect to the real world. Memes like Pepe The Frog, red pills, Gamergate, MAGA, Stop The Steal, FAKE NEWS, alternative facts, Q, Q anon, Kekistan, and He will not replace us.
There is also a long list of meme celebrities, those who leverage memes to gain fame and fortune, often at the expense of others who suffer the consequences of the lies. People like Milo Yiannopoulos, Mike Cernovich, Alex Jones, Richard Spencer, Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn are all profiled in the book, along with many other characters, arrested and prosecuted after Charlottesville or January 6 - memes in themselves.
There is also long discussion of the places where the memes first appear. 8chan and 4chan are most famous for their no holds barred forums, where everyone’s screen name is anon. Reddit is probably the most commonly known by the public. They attract a particular type – young white males, angry and alienated. They do not attract wide audiences like Linked In or Facebook or Tumblr, where everyone has a name and photos, and only too eager to post their status as the originator of whatever creativity they have found or assembled. “They were there to find partners, allies and friends in politics and sex, to share their photography, poetry, art and music and to experiment with gender terminology in memes.” Similarly, Meta/Facebook and Twitter tend to be open and above board by comparison to 4chan and 8chan. Users on those sites hide, allowing them to openly hate. Anything. Intensely.
Sometimes, the memers get a little distance and perspective on what they have wrought: “On November 12, 2017, an anon posted, ‘We’ve become a whorehouse, pimping out slut Q anon vids all over boomer youtube. I hope you’re all real proud of yourselves.’” But such voices fade quickly, and the race to the bottom continues without missing a beat.
Obviously bogus memes get picked up as if they were solidly proven. During the pandemic, a meme regarding adrenochrome (#SaveTheChildren, of all things) caught up young parents into thinking that a shortage of the skin chemical had been resolved by torturing young children and bleeding it from them. The authors point out this is hardly original, that rumor mongers have long promoted the blood libel about impoverished Jews eating children. But mere common sense never stops a good meme. Incredibly, the authors traced it back to images posted by celebrities during the lockdowns – makeup free - making them look worse for wear, like normal human beings. This quickly got attributed to a shortage of adrenochrome, and it was off to the meme races. It fit perfectly among the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers.
Similarly, Pizzagate had the susceptible believing that Hillary Clinton of all people, was running a child pornography and pedophile ring out the basement of a pizzeria in Washington. Anyone who walked in could plainly see that not only were there no children there, but it didn’t even have a basement. Nonetheless, the meme persisted and flourished, to the point of causing an earnest young man to drive hundreds of miles to save the enslaved children and shoot the place up. He could not for the life of him understand why no one had sought to do this before him, since the memes and articles were freely available online.
The book is both fascinating and depressing, with depressing clearly the winner. There are untold millions of Americans who glom onto these memes as if they were gospel. They believe the conspiracy theories as if handed down by God. They trip over themselves spreading them to others, couched in anger, angst and hate. And despite all the proof to the contrary, these worshippers continue to believe in Pizzagate and a New World Order, a Deep State, a Jewish conspiracy and of course, a stolen election. Anyone expressing say, common sense or logic in the face of these theories is hatefully shouted down, harassed into silence and made the subject of virulent public shaming including physical trolling and death threats.
The farce of Q anon is proudly proclaimed from sea to sea. This despite the fact Q has not posted a word since December 2020, and nothing he predicted has come true. That of course never stopped Donald Trump from retweeting Q posts throughout the election (We’re talking about the president of the United States), and never disavowed the movement.
It all served to build Trump’s power over his followers: “Stop the Steal, Trump’s last gamble, showed him ready to exploit the very people who had voted for him and who he surely knew were susceptible to his lies.” They went to prison by the hundreds, while others lost their jobs and split their families. That is the power of memes.
Stop The Steal by the way, has long been an arrow in Trump’s quiver. Roger Stone created a website for it in 2016, in case Trump didn’t win the primary. Trump copyrighted it, along with MAGA, allowing him to profit from merchandise sales. And of course, when he didn’t win re-election, he dusted off Stop The Steal meme and got millions of Americans to donate a quarter of a billion dollars his non-existent charity to fight for reinstatement. The meme business is good business.
What will strike the reader of Meme Wars is the exceptionally low quality of the people involved. Their political and societal theories are absurd. Their human relations are pathetic. Their criminal activity is boundless. Even when they win they lose. After Trump’s election, a huge rally called Unite The Right (UTR) sought to bring all the extreme right factions together. It resulted in arguments, fights, refusals to work together, and unbridled racism, nationalism and hate the participants couldn’t even agree on. They were never able to leverage their gains into anything legitimate, let alone unified. But they all led factions that believed in them totally. An earnest attempt to try again with another UTR fell flat on its face.
It is tragic that it is so easy to manipulate Americans into hate, into ridiculous and intractable positions, into vile and violent actions all in an effort to subvert the whole country into accepting their twisted beliefs as definitive.
Let there be no doubt. After reading this book, readers will understand the meme wars are real. And radicalization is not just for Muslims.
David Wineberg
If you liked this review, I invite you to read more in my book The Straight Dope. It’s an essay collection based on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be fascinating and a superfast read. And you already know it is well-written. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...
Gathering up the acorns, three authors from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Technology and Social Change Research Project have produced Meme Wars, an intensive and worrying examination of memes, the people who exploit them, and the mass armies of the ignorant who promulgate them, and often become their victims. Joan Donovan, Emily Dreyfuss and Brian Friedberg are so comfortable in their topic, it sounds almost normal. But far from normal, memes are a menace and a threat, posing as simplified truths. What could possibly go wrong?
Memes sit over rabbit holes. Once people click around to find more on the meme, they get pummeled with unending extremist takes, “research,” and outright fraudulent websites under the umbrella of the meme. Seemingly normal people get sucked into wacko theories and become (often vile and violent) proponents of them. When Muslims do this, we say they have been radicalized. When young white American males do it, we attribute it to free speech or just dismiss it (though it’s the same disease). It is generally for the benefit of the extreme Right, and it leads to division, violence and rebellion, where most of the country recognizes no such need. From this pool of the radicalized come mass murderers, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Nazis (“Hitler did nothing wrong!”), incels and January 6 insurrectionists.
There is, for example, a chilling chapter on Dylan Roof, a seemingly intelligent teenager who read himself into despising all Blacks. The book follows his online clicks, learning lies, fears and hate, ultimately ending at a Black church, where he gunned down numerous worshippers, who had invited him to join them. Every link he followed deepened his warped understanding of the world. It is a primer on memes and the rabbit hole, and sets up the book just perfectly.
Rabbit holes are so deep, they hook the Dylan Roofs of the country “inspiring people to commit violent acts, abandon their lives, get lost so far down the rabbit hole that their family members had to form support groups to try to pull them out,” the authors say. Aided by tools like gaslighting and dog whistles, memes leverage themselves in the minds of the impressionable.
Memes tend to be visual, thanks to the internet, and the authors have peppered their book with visual representations of the memes and the people they discuss, right below the paragraph where they discuss them, making connections easy. The book is really well organized and effectively presented.
Memes are simplified views of an issue, often employing a line from pop culture – a phrase from a game or song or film, and often used ironically. This leaves it susceptible to doctored images that get laughs galore, causing viewers to want to share them with everyone, and thereby radicalize others.
There are numerous significant memes that the authors cite, develop, and trace to their roots and connect to the real world. Memes like Pepe The Frog, red pills, Gamergate, MAGA, Stop The Steal, FAKE NEWS, alternative facts, Q, Q anon, Kekistan, and He will not replace us.
There is also a long list of meme celebrities, those who leverage memes to gain fame and fortune, often at the expense of others who suffer the consequences of the lies. People like Milo Yiannopoulos, Mike Cernovich, Alex Jones, Richard Spencer, Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn are all profiled in the book, along with many other characters, arrested and prosecuted after Charlottesville or January 6 - memes in themselves.
There is also long discussion of the places where the memes first appear. 8chan and 4chan are most famous for their no holds barred forums, where everyone’s screen name is anon. Reddit is probably the most commonly known by the public. They attract a particular type – young white males, angry and alienated. They do not attract wide audiences like Linked In or Facebook or Tumblr, where everyone has a name and photos, and only too eager to post their status as the originator of whatever creativity they have found or assembled. “They were there to find partners, allies and friends in politics and sex, to share their photography, poetry, art and music and to experiment with gender terminology in memes.” Similarly, Meta/Facebook and Twitter tend to be open and above board by comparison to 4chan and 8chan. Users on those sites hide, allowing them to openly hate. Anything. Intensely.
Sometimes, the memers get a little distance and perspective on what they have wrought: “On November 12, 2017, an anon posted, ‘We’ve become a whorehouse, pimping out slut Q anon vids all over boomer youtube. I hope you’re all real proud of yourselves.’” But such voices fade quickly, and the race to the bottom continues without missing a beat.
Obviously bogus memes get picked up as if they were solidly proven. During the pandemic, a meme regarding adrenochrome (#SaveTheChildren, of all things) caught up young parents into thinking that a shortage of the skin chemical had been resolved by torturing young children and bleeding it from them. The authors point out this is hardly original, that rumor mongers have long promoted the blood libel about impoverished Jews eating children. But mere common sense never stops a good meme. Incredibly, the authors traced it back to images posted by celebrities during the lockdowns – makeup free - making them look worse for wear, like normal human beings. This quickly got attributed to a shortage of adrenochrome, and it was off to the meme races. It fit perfectly among the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers.
Similarly, Pizzagate had the susceptible believing that Hillary Clinton of all people, was running a child pornography and pedophile ring out the basement of a pizzeria in Washington. Anyone who walked in could plainly see that not only were there no children there, but it didn’t even have a basement. Nonetheless, the meme persisted and flourished, to the point of causing an earnest young man to drive hundreds of miles to save the enslaved children and shoot the place up. He could not for the life of him understand why no one had sought to do this before him, since the memes and articles were freely available online.
The book is both fascinating and depressing, with depressing clearly the winner. There are untold millions of Americans who glom onto these memes as if they were gospel. They believe the conspiracy theories as if handed down by God. They trip over themselves spreading them to others, couched in anger, angst and hate. And despite all the proof to the contrary, these worshippers continue to believe in Pizzagate and a New World Order, a Deep State, a Jewish conspiracy and of course, a stolen election. Anyone expressing say, common sense or logic in the face of these theories is hatefully shouted down, harassed into silence and made the subject of virulent public shaming including physical trolling and death threats.
The farce of Q anon is proudly proclaimed from sea to sea. This despite the fact Q has not posted a word since December 2020, and nothing he predicted has come true. That of course never stopped Donald Trump from retweeting Q posts throughout the election (We’re talking about the president of the United States), and never disavowed the movement.
It all served to build Trump’s power over his followers: “Stop the Steal, Trump’s last gamble, showed him ready to exploit the very people who had voted for him and who he surely knew were susceptible to his lies.” They went to prison by the hundreds, while others lost their jobs and split their families. That is the power of memes.
Stop The Steal by the way, has long been an arrow in Trump’s quiver. Roger Stone created a website for it in 2016, in case Trump didn’t win the primary. Trump copyrighted it, along with MAGA, allowing him to profit from merchandise sales. And of course, when he didn’t win re-election, he dusted off Stop The Steal meme and got millions of Americans to donate a quarter of a billion dollars his non-existent charity to fight for reinstatement. The meme business is good business.
What will strike the reader of Meme Wars is the exceptionally low quality of the people involved. Their political and societal theories are absurd. Their human relations are pathetic. Their criminal activity is boundless. Even when they win they lose. After Trump’s election, a huge rally called Unite The Right (UTR) sought to bring all the extreme right factions together. It resulted in arguments, fights, refusals to work together, and unbridled racism, nationalism and hate the participants couldn’t even agree on. They were never able to leverage their gains into anything legitimate, let alone unified. But they all led factions that believed in them totally. An earnest attempt to try again with another UTR fell flat on its face.
It is tragic that it is so easy to manipulate Americans into hate, into ridiculous and intractable positions, into vile and violent actions all in an effort to subvert the whole country into accepting their twisted beliefs as definitive.
Let there be no doubt. After reading this book, readers will understand the meme wars are real. And radicalization is not just for Muslims.
David Wineberg
If you liked this review, I invite you to read more in my book The Straight Dope. It’s an essay collection based on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be fascinating and a superfast read. And you already know it is well-written. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...
June 25, 2022
Transparency Note: I received an advance copy of this book free of charge courtesy of the publisher.
The title Meme Wars made me uncomfortable—that was my first impression. Why did I have such a visceral reaction to seeing the word “meme” on the cover of a book? I hesitated to read it, with a worrying question on loop in my head: “Is this going to be based or cringe?”
The source of my discomfort was the blatant crossover between the online world and the “real world.” If you grew up online in the 2000s, you bore witness to the rise of modern online culture. Drenched in the primordial soup of the digital age, you tacitly understood that memes are not to be talked about in real life. You understood that your online identity was separate from your “real identity” and that the worst possible thing to happen to you would be someone other than your absolute closest friends finding out that you use Reddit or 4chan.
By the 2010s, Facebook and other social media companies dominated the internet. No longer was online culture a secret clubhouse for weird nerds—it was a place where your family and friends, using their real names and faces, would swap image macros and argue about news articles. Do you remember the first time you heard the word “meme” in real life? For me, it was almost like a bizarre culture shock; it was a crossover between two worlds that were never meant to meet.
In 8th grade, I saw a 14-year-old wearing a rage comic t-shirt. Was this an omen? Like finding a crow dead on the sidewalk, did that Me Gusta t-shirt try to warn me what would come next?
The 2016 election was the first presidential election in which tech-savvy social engineers fully recognized online culture’s powerful place in the American superstructure; those who grew up understanding cyberspace and meatspace as distinct and separate had already mastered memetics, but as the two worlds continued to converge, it became apparent that online culture could function as powerful propaganda: the viral nature of internet memes allows ideas, like viruses, to spread and mutate across a population. And by 2016, of course, the primary population of the internet was real human beings with real names and faces.
I felt uncomfortable reading Meme Wars. It’s discomforting to see words like “normies” and “redpilled” used in earnest. That discomfort stems from acknowledging the horrific truth that these words and memes are not detached from the real world at all. But even if they’re connected, does online culture really have much influence on the material world?
I would not say that Meme Wars argues that Donald Trump was actually “memed into office,” but it makes clear that the currents leading to his election were visible online long before they were offline. There’s no easy or guaranteed way to turn online hype into real life hype, but Meme Wars provides an analysis of the bizarre symbiosis between the extremely online and the political that is now eternally present in American politics.
I would have preferred if the book focused a bit more on how the rise of the online alt-right found its roots in the material conditions of offline America, as the chosen framing of Meme Wars could inadvertently misconstrue the idea that these things start on the internet, which is not the case. I also would have liked a bit more about how the propagation of disinformation through memetic warfare often stems from an intentional distortion of actual fringe ideas—the authors briefly touch on the mysterious circumstances of Jeffrey Epstein’s death, but at no point seriously engage with any legitimate non-alt-right reading of conspiratorial content that does have a basis in reality. There’s room for an analysis of how the ruling class and alt-right benefit via the absurd obfuscation of legitimate scandals, but it’s not here.
Meme Wars is not cringe. Am I, though, for saying that? Your answer to that question depends on the extent to which you’ve accepted the reality of American culture today. I’ll leave you to ponder that as you scroll through Instagram, swiping from wedding photo to political infographic to self-deprecating meme.
The title Meme Wars made me uncomfortable—that was my first impression. Why did I have such a visceral reaction to seeing the word “meme” on the cover of a book? I hesitated to read it, with a worrying question on loop in my head: “Is this going to be based or cringe?”
The source of my discomfort was the blatant crossover between the online world and the “real world.” If you grew up online in the 2000s, you bore witness to the rise of modern online culture. Drenched in the primordial soup of the digital age, you tacitly understood that memes are not to be talked about in real life. You understood that your online identity was separate from your “real identity” and that the worst possible thing to happen to you would be someone other than your absolute closest friends finding out that you use Reddit or 4chan.
By the 2010s, Facebook and other social media companies dominated the internet. No longer was online culture a secret clubhouse for weird nerds—it was a place where your family and friends, using their real names and faces, would swap image macros and argue about news articles. Do you remember the first time you heard the word “meme” in real life? For me, it was almost like a bizarre culture shock; it was a crossover between two worlds that were never meant to meet.
In 8th grade, I saw a 14-year-old wearing a rage comic t-shirt. Was this an omen? Like finding a crow dead on the sidewalk, did that Me Gusta t-shirt try to warn me what would come next?
The 2016 election was the first presidential election in which tech-savvy social engineers fully recognized online culture’s powerful place in the American superstructure; those who grew up understanding cyberspace and meatspace as distinct and separate had already mastered memetics, but as the two worlds continued to converge, it became apparent that online culture could function as powerful propaganda: the viral nature of internet memes allows ideas, like viruses, to spread and mutate across a population. And by 2016, of course, the primary population of the internet was real human beings with real names and faces.
I felt uncomfortable reading Meme Wars. It’s discomforting to see words like “normies” and “redpilled” used in earnest. That discomfort stems from acknowledging the horrific truth that these words and memes are not detached from the real world at all. But even if they’re connected, does online culture really have much influence on the material world?
I would not say that Meme Wars argues that Donald Trump was actually “memed into office,” but it makes clear that the currents leading to his election were visible online long before they were offline. There’s no easy or guaranteed way to turn online hype into real life hype, but Meme Wars provides an analysis of the bizarre symbiosis between the extremely online and the political that is now eternally present in American politics.
I would have preferred if the book focused a bit more on how the rise of the online alt-right found its roots in the material conditions of offline America, as the chosen framing of Meme Wars could inadvertently misconstrue the idea that these things start on the internet, which is not the case. I also would have liked a bit more about how the propagation of disinformation through memetic warfare often stems from an intentional distortion of actual fringe ideas—the authors briefly touch on the mysterious circumstances of Jeffrey Epstein’s death, but at no point seriously engage with any legitimate non-alt-right reading of conspiratorial content that does have a basis in reality. There’s room for an analysis of how the ruling class and alt-right benefit via the absurd obfuscation of legitimate scandals, but it’s not here.
Meme Wars is not cringe. Am I, though, for saying that? Your answer to that question depends on the extent to which you’ve accepted the reality of American culture today. I’ll leave you to ponder that as you scroll through Instagram, swiping from wedding photo to political infographic to self-deprecating meme.
October 6, 2022
First off I hate the title.
I have a lot of gripes with this books so I'll break them down individually.
It seems as the authors had they're conclusion before they had even done the research. I don't agree with their thesis that the natural result of memes in the early 2010s led to Trump and the 6 Jan insurrection. They also didn't even seem to argue about it that heavily. This book did talk about memes but more generally talked about the rise of the alt-right and the fractions within it. It felt like more of a history of the latter with a few asides to explain popular right-wing internet memes and how they tied in, but definitely weren't the focus.
The grammar is clunky. So many sentences had more than 4 comma breaks to the point where I'd have to read a sentence multiple times to try and understand the flow and what it was trying to communicate. Also a few egregious typos, but I don't think typos make or break a book.
Most of the chapters had one particular event they were trying to explain, but they aren't told in chronological order and jump around so much it was easy to get confused about what was going on.
The tone is also just weird. I felt like sometimes the authors were trying to put on a more professional or academic tone, but would then have paragraphs where they spoke almost like they were a so-called "memer". Just genuinely weird and disorienting.
I will say the book is interesting but the content in the book doesn't feel like the content it was advertised as holding. Some of the earlier stuff I really did enjoy reading about since I grew up around it, and the authors do a good job of not misinterpreting too much of those memes like news channels have done. It was a depressing walk through memory lane as I remember Gamergate and Joker politics being a very big thing with people I interacted with since I was very online. I'm just happy I didn't turn out like these schmucks in the book.
I have a lot of gripes with this books so I'll break them down individually.
It seems as the authors had they're conclusion before they had even done the research. I don't agree with their thesis that the natural result of memes in the early 2010s led to Trump and the 6 Jan insurrection. They also didn't even seem to argue about it that heavily. This book did talk about memes but more generally talked about the rise of the alt-right and the fractions within it. It felt like more of a history of the latter with a few asides to explain popular right-wing internet memes and how they tied in, but definitely weren't the focus.
The grammar is clunky. So many sentences had more than 4 comma breaks to the point where I'd have to read a sentence multiple times to try and understand the flow and what it was trying to communicate. Also a few egregious typos, but I don't think typos make or break a book.
Most of the chapters had one particular event they were trying to explain, but they aren't told in chronological order and jump around so much it was easy to get confused about what was going on.
The tone is also just weird. I felt like sometimes the authors were trying to put on a more professional or academic tone, but would then have paragraphs where they spoke almost like they were a so-called "memer". Just genuinely weird and disorienting.
I will say the book is interesting but the content in the book doesn't feel like the content it was advertised as holding. Some of the earlier stuff I really did enjoy reading about since I grew up around it, and the authors do a good job of not misinterpreting too much of those memes like news channels have done. It was a depressing walk through memory lane as I remember Gamergate and Joker politics being a very big thing with people I interacted with since I was very online. I'm just happy I didn't turn out like these schmucks in the book.
Read
January 9, 2023this book gave me PTSD of 2015-2021. ppl be fuckin crazy
June 25, 2022
This is an astonishing piece of nonfiction that will inform you and leave you even more terrified than the news likely already does.
I have been keeping up with the news on the rise of the alt-right for the last few years, so a lot of the book was not shocking or surprising information. However, the three authors have done a great job of condensing what has happened in about the last decade on the internet into a very accessible and readable guide. The book begins back in the early 2010s with the growth of memes on sites like 4chan, and traces how these groups developed through Gamergate, Trump's Presidency, Q Anon, the pandemic, and culminating in the January 6th insurrection. There were a lot of photos throughout the book, which were very helpful since a lot of the information being passed between and among these groups were image-based.
I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about the power of social media and dangerous coming from people on the Internet. It is well researched and so detailed, while remaining very organized within chapters so it is easy to follow. The authors show that what happens on the internet has an effect on the world and if we continue to not pay attention, then things may only get worse.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for a copy of the book.
I have been keeping up with the news on the rise of the alt-right for the last few years, so a lot of the book was not shocking or surprising information. However, the three authors have done a great job of condensing what has happened in about the last decade on the internet into a very accessible and readable guide. The book begins back in the early 2010s with the growth of memes on sites like 4chan, and traces how these groups developed through Gamergate, Trump's Presidency, Q Anon, the pandemic, and culminating in the January 6th insurrection. There were a lot of photos throughout the book, which were very helpful since a lot of the information being passed between and among these groups were image-based.
I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about the power of social media and dangerous coming from people on the Internet. It is well researched and so detailed, while remaining very organized within chapters so it is easy to follow. The authors show that what happens on the internet has an effect on the world and if we continue to not pay attention, then things may only get worse.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for a copy of the book.
July 4, 2022
Meme Wars brings together many of the things most of us have come to understand about the online aspect of today's political "discourse" with in-depth analysis and a fuller history than what is on the surface for most of us to see.
You know this book has important information when the fake educator on one of the review sites spews his nonsense without either reading the book or, though this may be beyond him, thinking about what is said. Oh well, stupid is as stupid does. He hides behind his member number, like all those "patriots" hide behind their masks and their compensatory phallic symbols, I mean, their guns.
Like so many books that drill into a specific area, this is not the entire story. This is about the online virtual environment and how it has been used and abused to limit discussion, spread misinformation, and empower weak minds. Do many of the people have some genuine complaints at the origin of their straying into intentional dishonesty and/or unintentional gullibility? Yes, of course. But these aren't historians, they are tech experts explaining what is happening with technology and the communities using them. There are plenty of other books that discuss the social, cultural, and economic reasons these people have opted to do these things. To roll all those books into this one is unreasonable and impractical. If you don't have some idea of what motivates these people at their core, read books with that as the purpose.
Having said all that, this book does an excellent job of examining just how groups that largely have different complaints and different scapegoats for their problems have come together against what they consider a common enemy. It isn't nearly as surprising to those who remember how many relatively hidden groups formed in the early days. I remember a relatively harmless foray into such an environment as early as 1998 and others no doubt can go further back. The online world was more basic then but also easy to manipulate for your purposes.
The takeaways here will hopefully be that through a better understanding we can better combat the harm being done, to both institutions and individuals. That said, we can't ignore that one way to help minimize the appeal of being disruptive is to make life better for all people and not a select few. For me, we need actual real-life change to cut down on the domestic aspect and virtual strategies to combat those from outside who want to drive us apart for their own gains.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
You know this book has important information when the fake educator on one of the review sites spews his nonsense without either reading the book or, though this may be beyond him, thinking about what is said. Oh well, stupid is as stupid does. He hides behind his member number, like all those "patriots" hide behind their masks and their compensatory phallic symbols, I mean, their guns.
Like so many books that drill into a specific area, this is not the entire story. This is about the online virtual environment and how it has been used and abused to limit discussion, spread misinformation, and empower weak minds. Do many of the people have some genuine complaints at the origin of their straying into intentional dishonesty and/or unintentional gullibility? Yes, of course. But these aren't historians, they are tech experts explaining what is happening with technology and the communities using them. There are plenty of other books that discuss the social, cultural, and economic reasons these people have opted to do these things. To roll all those books into this one is unreasonable and impractical. If you don't have some idea of what motivates these people at their core, read books with that as the purpose.
Having said all that, this book does an excellent job of examining just how groups that largely have different complaints and different scapegoats for their problems have come together against what they consider a common enemy. It isn't nearly as surprising to those who remember how many relatively hidden groups formed in the early days. I remember a relatively harmless foray into such an environment as early as 1998 and others no doubt can go further back. The online world was more basic then but also easy to manipulate for your purposes.
The takeaways here will hopefully be that through a better understanding we can better combat the harm being done, to both institutions and individuals. That said, we can't ignore that one way to help minimize the appeal of being disruptive is to make life better for all people and not a select few. For me, we need actual real-life change to cut down on the domestic aspect and virtual strategies to combat those from outside who want to drive us apart for their own gains.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
December 16, 2022
If you’re chronically online and have been closely following the news over the past decade, a lot of the events discussed in this book will be familiar to you. But it is in familiarity that patterns are formed and recognized, and this book helps connect events in a succinct, logical way. I read a review on here that said the book offered no solutions, but I’m not sure any solutions exist.
September 30, 2022
Ugh ⚰️
November 2, 2022
A surprisingly very well done historical and theoretical account of the last decade politically -specifically from the angle of "The Meme War(s)," and how online trolling turns into IRL Hooliganing, and "Happenings".
Starting from the Occupy Movement (with some recent historical background) and going all the way to the Jan. 6... [insert whatever you choose to label it]. The book's 2 primary theses seem to be:
1. Memes and online politics Can bubble up (or leak) into IRL or real "normie" politics; i.e. "Memes Matter!" [Theoretical Thesis] This can be called their 'From Wires to Weeds Thesis'
2. The Rise of Trump/The Alt-Right (and fractioned New Right)/and Jan. 6 can largely be seen as a result of right-wing actors using memes [Historical Thesis]
Ultimately this is a very useful read when trying to truly understand the political happenings of the last 10-15 years in the US.
It also can serve as a manual of sorts; just as real generals read books on Napoleon, Clausewitz, or WW2, so too can contemporary online political actors (of the left or right) now read about the Meme 'Wars' and 'battles' of the past. This book discusses what we might call "political memeology".
Unfortunately, the work does suffer from problems, most minor, some major.
Minor:
>While I am immensely glad they decided to put images and memes in this book about memes rather than merely text, many are stale "boomer memes" (113 and 171 are particularly cringe). However, many of these that I noticed when initially flipping through the book were justified once I reached that part of the reading. Still, for a book about the Meme War(s) of the 2010s to have few dank memes is a true travesty.
>They include pictures (1 a meme) of 2 (sort of 3) mass shooters which, in my opinion, wasn't necessary.
>They in at least 1 place seem to equate gender realism (which is a belief held by many even mainstream conservatives and independents in the US, and probably most of the people on earth rn) with Race Realism, or even Essentialism.
>When discussing the "He Will Not Divide Us" debacle, they don't go into real detail about anything other than the first location.
>They don't discuss the manhunt for the Bike Lock Bandit
>While they do a surprisingly good job of affirming and explaining the "The Left Can't Meme" phenomenon, their heavy focus on the right-wing memes (due in part to their apparent Historical Thesis) causes them to (mostly) ignore the gradual rise of left-wing memers; not only online, but also with "wires to weeds".
>Their focus on the Alt-Right (and then fractured and largely Paleoconservative New Right) causes them to (mostly) ignore the Libertarians, especially when it comes to memes, both online and how those translated to "wires to weeds". They do a little bit, but not nearly enough considering this was the decade with what many on the right now see as the bygone "Libertarian Moment".
>Since their focus is meme war, rather than culture war, they mostly overlook a lot of the relevant cultural battles (Star Wars for example), and the more "intellectual right". On the latter, aside from discussing some blog posts and shooter-manifestos, they fail to include the relevant books and speeches that have led us to where we are today.
Major Criticisms:
>The combination of what I see as their 2 theses causes them to overlook, or only scratch the surface of 2 important phenomena of this decade relevant to the topic:
1. Their bottum-up focus on far-right memes luring normies down the rabbit-hole and red-pilling them, or alternatively just trolling NPCs, causes them to (mostly) overlook the more top-down pipeline radicalization that often played a near-equal or perhaps even more significant form of right-wing radicalization over the last few years. The authors tend to push the narrative that meme forces were shanghaied more than they were recruited, or at the least drafted. Somewhat ironically.. their narrative is somewhat like that in the the early 2010s, a cabal of far-right racists and trolls used meme warfare (along with historical circumstances) to shanghai a bunch of american normies (mostly young and impressionable white men) into their online legions, and that this mass gradually escaped the digital and influenced the actual. While they do a detailed and excellent job of explaining this, they tend to overlook the agency and gradual pipeline of radicalization that occured; arguably en mass. The authors tend to overemphasize the revolutionary, and overlook the larger reactionary of what occurred (and still is).
2. This book tried to shed light on an extremely complex phenomenon. But to the uninitiated the theses will likely seem like a stretch, and to the initiated the details will likely be seen as barely scratching the surface. On the latter, we might imagine (stretching the 'meme war' analogy to the limit) WW2 veterans watching a shallow cleaned-up Hollywood War movie; it has the right battle names and uniforms but lacks many of the important details of those who were there.
But ultimately, definitely an enjoyable book, well written and researched, surprisingly largely nonbiased, and worth the read.
Starting from the Occupy Movement (with some recent historical background) and going all the way to the Jan. 6... [insert whatever you choose to label it]. The book's 2 primary theses seem to be:
1. Memes and online politics Can bubble up (or leak) into IRL or real "normie" politics; i.e. "Memes Matter!" [Theoretical Thesis] This can be called their 'From Wires to Weeds Thesis'
2. The Rise of Trump/The Alt-Right (and fractioned New Right)/and Jan. 6 can largely be seen as a result of right-wing actors using memes [Historical Thesis]
Ultimately this is a very useful read when trying to truly understand the political happenings of the last 10-15 years in the US.
It also can serve as a manual of sorts; just as real generals read books on Napoleon, Clausewitz, or WW2, so too can contemporary online political actors (of the left or right) now read about the Meme 'Wars' and 'battles' of the past. This book discusses what we might call "political memeology".
Unfortunately, the work does suffer from problems, most minor, some major.
Minor:
>While I am immensely glad they decided to put images and memes in this book about memes rather than merely text, many are stale "boomer memes" (113 and 171 are particularly cringe). However, many of these that I noticed when initially flipping through the book were justified once I reached that part of the reading. Still, for a book about the Meme War(s) of the 2010s to have few dank memes is a true travesty.
>They include pictures (1 a meme) of 2 (sort of 3) mass shooters which, in my opinion, wasn't necessary.
>They in at least 1 place seem to equate gender realism (which is a belief held by many even mainstream conservatives and independents in the US, and probably most of the people on earth rn) with Race Realism, or even Essentialism.
>When discussing the "He Will Not Divide Us" debacle, they don't go into real detail about anything other than the first location.
>They don't discuss the manhunt for the Bike Lock Bandit
>While they do a surprisingly good job of affirming and explaining the "The Left Can't Meme" phenomenon, their heavy focus on the right-wing memes (due in part to their apparent Historical Thesis) causes them to (mostly) ignore the gradual rise of left-wing memers; not only online, but also with "wires to weeds".
>Their focus on the Alt-Right (and then fractured and largely Paleoconservative New Right) causes them to (mostly) ignore the Libertarians, especially when it comes to memes, both online and how those translated to "wires to weeds". They do a little bit, but not nearly enough considering this was the decade with what many on the right now see as the bygone "Libertarian Moment".
>Since their focus is meme war, rather than culture war, they mostly overlook a lot of the relevant cultural battles (Star Wars for example), and the more "intellectual right". On the latter, aside from discussing some blog posts and shooter-manifestos, they fail to include the relevant books and speeches that have led us to where we are today.
Major Criticisms:
>The combination of what I see as their 2 theses causes them to overlook, or only scratch the surface of 2 important phenomena of this decade relevant to the topic:
1. Their bottum-up focus on far-right memes luring normies down the rabbit-hole and red-pilling them, or alternatively just trolling NPCs, causes them to (mostly) overlook the more top-down pipeline radicalization that often played a near-equal or perhaps even more significant form of right-wing radicalization over the last few years. The authors tend to push the narrative that meme forces were shanghaied more than they were recruited, or at the least drafted. Somewhat ironically.. their narrative is somewhat like that in the the early 2010s, a cabal of far-right racists and trolls used meme warfare (along with historical circumstances) to shanghai a bunch of american normies (mostly young and impressionable white men) into their online legions, and that this mass gradually escaped the digital and influenced the actual. While they do a detailed and excellent job of explaining this, they tend to overlook the agency and gradual pipeline of radicalization that occured; arguably en mass. The authors tend to overemphasize the revolutionary, and overlook the larger reactionary of what occurred (and still is).
2. This book tried to shed light on an extremely complex phenomenon. But to the uninitiated the theses will likely seem like a stretch, and to the initiated the details will likely be seen as barely scratching the surface. On the latter, we might imagine (stretching the 'meme war' analogy to the limit) WW2 veterans watching a shallow cleaned-up Hollywood War movie; it has the right battle names and uniforms but lacks many of the important details of those who were there.
But ultimately, definitely an enjoyable book, well written and researched, surprisingly largely nonbiased, and worth the read.
February 16, 2024
Meme Wars sets out on a journey that is altogether daunting and immense: how online presence and “memes” have influenced social culture into true political conflict. The idea is a good one, as globalization has increased exponentially due to access to information and the sharing of ideas via the internet; propaganda and misinformation has never been so easily digested. And Meme Wars confronts this head on, albeit misjudging the force with which it may need to collide with this particular wall in order to break it open. That its authors are chronically online is admitted in the introduction, but it’s also apparent in the writing. They include a sentence that simply says, You know, normal shit when describing something outrageous an alt right individual has done, use posted pics rather than “posted photos,” and wrote this wreck of a sentence:
Most anons on /pol/ hated Obama, kind of because he was a democrat, and primarily because he was black.
Seemingly attempting to come off unbiased, Meme Wars fails to obscure its distaste for the alt right and its reverence for their opponent. This is not to say that this is a poor stance (it isn’t); rather we are aware as readers that personal beliefs are fueling the research and coloring the report, and as such, risking utilizing media such as itself as a means to alienate rather than inform. Again: my argument is not that alt right perspectives ought to be accepted or consumed without significant criticism and skepticism. Rather, should a book such as this claim to be investigative, it ought to report the information without the personal take.
Perhaps the biggest struggle of Meme Wars is its failure to define a meme. The closest to a definition is found in the introduction, where we find the following:
The video clip of her was reconceptualized, remixed, and redistributed, carrying all sorts of meaning. That’s the definition of a meme, first coined by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 text The Selfish Gene.
And you must be thinking, surely, Paige, you’ve left some of this out, because that’s not a definition!
I have not.
Memes as we know them colloquially are generally images or phrases shared on social media sites such as Instagram, X, Reddit, etc. Perhaps from a sociopolitical standpoint their definition must include some psychological or sociopolitical undercurrent, but the authors never really push in this area. Memes are a catch-all for, yes, the digital information as we know them to be but also general online activity. Just as the Occupy movement failed to have a clear goal and thus was never fated to be successful, without a clear definition of a meme, Meme Wars pursues a thesis it can never quite reach. Tied to its refusal to define a meme, Meme Wars rather liberally labels any and every conflict a “war;” with no evidence to support this description, the narrative tone comes off as dramatic and unserious, which is perhaps a fatal flaw in a book that by its very nature must refer regularly to the Pepe meme as a legitimate driver of political conflict.
Finally, Meme Wars spends a lot of time talking about political conflict and just…not that much time talking about memes. We are provided a relatively thorough play by play of the 2016 election, which is, notably, almost entirely devoid of memes. The individual who murdered a group of people after penning his Rhodesian manifesto or whatever the hell it was had a mini biography that included the supreme gentleman meme but largely didn’t dwell on it. Meme Wars effectively disgorges some of the more horrific details about the rat nests of the internet where incels and various other alt right groups have gone to live, but it does not do the work to showcase that memes and alt right meme culture are the catalyst for much of the American political unrest of the last decade. Rather, the picture it paints is cyclical, in which some people have a strong emotional expression that results in a meme (either intentionally or unintentionally), others react to and spread the meme, additional emotions rise from the meme, which results in some level of public behavior outside of the internet, which then fuels more emotion, which then fuels more memes, and on and on forever. All the while, political discourse runs, for the most part, parallel to and somewhat separate from these darker corners of the world.
It’s a shame that Meme Wars presents the thesis that it does; the body doesn’t match the introduction, and it shows.
Most anons on /pol/ hated Obama, kind of because he was a democrat, and primarily because he was black.
Seemingly attempting to come off unbiased, Meme Wars fails to obscure its distaste for the alt right and its reverence for their opponent. This is not to say that this is a poor stance (it isn’t); rather we are aware as readers that personal beliefs are fueling the research and coloring the report, and as such, risking utilizing media such as itself as a means to alienate rather than inform. Again: my argument is not that alt right perspectives ought to be accepted or consumed without significant criticism and skepticism. Rather, should a book such as this claim to be investigative, it ought to report the information without the personal take.
Perhaps the biggest struggle of Meme Wars is its failure to define a meme. The closest to a definition is found in the introduction, where we find the following:
The video clip of her was reconceptualized, remixed, and redistributed, carrying all sorts of meaning. That’s the definition of a meme, first coined by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 text The Selfish Gene.
And you must be thinking, surely, Paige, you’ve left some of this out, because that’s not a definition!
I have not.
Memes as we know them colloquially are generally images or phrases shared on social media sites such as Instagram, X, Reddit, etc. Perhaps from a sociopolitical standpoint their definition must include some psychological or sociopolitical undercurrent, but the authors never really push in this area. Memes are a catch-all for, yes, the digital information as we know them to be but also general online activity. Just as the Occupy movement failed to have a clear goal and thus was never fated to be successful, without a clear definition of a meme, Meme Wars pursues a thesis it can never quite reach. Tied to its refusal to define a meme, Meme Wars rather liberally labels any and every conflict a “war;” with no evidence to support this description, the narrative tone comes off as dramatic and unserious, which is perhaps a fatal flaw in a book that by its very nature must refer regularly to the Pepe meme as a legitimate driver of political conflict.
Finally, Meme Wars spends a lot of time talking about political conflict and just…not that much time talking about memes. We are provided a relatively thorough play by play of the 2016 election, which is, notably, almost entirely devoid of memes. The individual who murdered a group of people after penning his Rhodesian manifesto or whatever the hell it was had a mini biography that included the supreme gentleman meme but largely didn’t dwell on it. Meme Wars effectively disgorges some of the more horrific details about the rat nests of the internet where incels and various other alt right groups have gone to live, but it does not do the work to showcase that memes and alt right meme culture are the catalyst for much of the American political unrest of the last decade. Rather, the picture it paints is cyclical, in which some people have a strong emotional expression that results in a meme (either intentionally or unintentionally), others react to and spread the meme, additional emotions rise from the meme, which results in some level of public behavior outside of the internet, which then fuels more emotion, which then fuels more memes, and on and on forever. All the while, political discourse runs, for the most part, parallel to and somewhat separate from these darker corners of the world.
It’s a shame that Meme Wars presents the thesis that it does; the body doesn’t match the introduction, and it shows.
August 27, 2023
I think in some ways I’m too close to the subject to provide an objective review. I supported our local Occupy, I was an extremely online feminist making me a repeated target of hate from the alt right, then I did my PhD research on memes and online hate. So, this was like reading something I could have written about something I lived through.
Which is to say, it seems to do a really good job of explaining the roots of these movements and their impacts in an accessible way. But I was there, so I’m not sure I would know if it wasn’t accessible! And I think it’s interesting, because I was there!
All that said, I recommend it, especially for the early chapters on occupy and gamer gate and the final chapters on trump and Jan 6.
Which is to say, it seems to do a really good job of explaining the roots of these movements and their impacts in an accessible way. But I was there, so I’m not sure I would know if it wasn’t accessible! And I think it’s interesting, because I was there!
All that said, I recommend it, especially for the early chapters on occupy and gamer gate and the final chapters on trump and Jan 6.
Shelved as 'abandoned'
November 12, 2022I'm afraid I'm DNF'ing this one for the entirely non-substantive reason that I like to read nonfiction on my commute and it's a large, heavy book. After a few decisions to leave it at home for bag-packing reasons I had to conclude I just wasn't gonna get to it. Really appreciated some of the connections the first chapters drew between early (well, early as in 2008 or so, so sort of the early times for Facebook/Twitter versus the early internet) online movements and the state of the far-right internet now. I think the authors had a good balance of writing for the terminally online without alienating readers who don't live and breathe twitter.
November 16, 2022
Veľká nálož z internetového pozadia, hlas ľudu v online priestore ovplyvňujúci americkú politiku. Všetko, čo je v Amerike zlé a báli ste sa opýtať. Na čítanie je to dosť náročné, pretože je tam enormné množstvo americkéko kontextu, čiže veľa nových mien a bizarných online hnutí... ale závery autorov knihy sú jasné. Zjednodušený, obsahovo redukovaný humor v podobe memečiek je síce silným nástrojom na ovplyvňovanie verejnej mienky a budovanie identity nespokojných ľudí, no v konečnom dôsledku neprináša nič dobré ani demokracii ako takej, ani samotným ľuďom, ktorí sa v "meme" kultúre angažujú a pohybujú. Je to skrátka zle nasmerovaná nenávisť a hnev, ktoré sa často otočia aj voči samotným autorom a šíriteľom a mali by sme sa tejto lákavej vojny pokiaľ možno vyhýbať.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 15, 2022
In short, this book makes the last decade make sense.
I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
November 22, 2023
Very scary, and very important. I disagree with the reviewers who thought this book too academic. If this is the dull version of the story—especially the history of the alt-right—then I’d hate to read the more dramatic ones.
October 26, 2022
This is a very good account of how memes have shifted political narratives over the past decade. Currently revisiting the era of pastel-Qanon posts and the inanity of the SaveTheChildren hashtag when the old SatanicPanic moral panic got rebranded for the new age wellness community. It’s hard not look back on disbelief at … (checks notes) 2020 … at the adrenochrome-bloodline-Wayfair period and not be disgusted by the barely concealed antisemitism lurking underneath.
Anyway, this is a good book. Recommended for non-experts/academics etc
Anyway, this is a good book. Recommended for non-experts/academics etc
September 16, 2022
Meme Wars offers a fascinating yet terrifying look into the everchanging world of the internet & social media. The authors illustrated how social media has been used to weaponized & amplified the bad elements of our society primarily using memes. I found this book particularly fascinating but also alarming. In the last several years, the internet & social media has been used to spread misinformation. It has also offered a safe harbor to the dark corners of society. I found this book very informative & worth the read. I would recommend it to the others interested in learning more about this topic.
A huge thanks to Netgalley & Bloomsbury USA for the advance copy of this book.
A huge thanks to Netgalley & Bloomsbury USA for the advance copy of this book.
October 28, 2022
While it was interesting and informative, I did not love this book. Possibly because of the three authors, the writing style changes frequently, many subjects are belabored and/or repeated in multiple chapters, and many spelling and grammar mistakes remain in the ebook I borrowed from Libby. I wanted to give up around chapter 6 but slogged through because I wanted to see where it was all going. It seems like the authors did a lot of research and I liked the idea of tracing recent political events through memes, but it could use a lot of editing.
July 15, 2022
Meme Wars looks at the use and weaponization of memes between Occupy Wall Street and January 6th (2011-2021). Overall, Meme Wars is well researched, organized, and perfect for people who are new to this topic/not terminally online. Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for early access to the e-arc.
November 11, 2022
This book takes you to places you don't want to know about. However, knowing about the darker places of the internet where the trolls and anonymous bloggers meme is instructive. Boomers and younger folks who rely on mainstream media should be aware of the power of these memes and their potential to spread lies and set the tone for debate.
June 23, 2023
I expected much more insight from a group of authors calling themselves internet experts. Not much new information here.
June 19, 2023
Surprises Surrounding US Politics - Wanting to learn more about memes, I picked up this title looking for a kind of primer on this form that has come to be prominent in our digital era (e.g., visual images/text that are kind of inside jokes shared via internet and social media). I was surprised to find such detail surrounding the major political events, particularly over the past 10 years and how key memes have contributed these occurrences. Often dismissed, the authors show how influential memes have been.
More specifically, the book’s contents include an Introduction and 10 chapters: (1) We are the 99 Percent, (2) A Safe Space for Hate, (3) Gamers Rise Up, (4) Troll in Chief, (5) He Will Not Divide Us, (6) Unite the Right, (7) Joker Politics, (8) These People are Sick, (9) **** [expletive deleted] Around and Find Out, and (10) Stop the Steal. In particular, the Introduction starts with the January 6th 2021 Insurrection at the US Capitol and then traces occurrences and related memes that seemed to figure prominently in the lead up to this event. For instance, among the movements and incidents that are covered include Occupy Wallstreet, the Ron Paul Presidential Campaigns, reaction to Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and South Carolina AME Church deaths, the rise of Fox News, Conspiracy Channels/Sites, Donald Trump as well as the empowerment of white nationalists and QAnon groups.
Aspects that stood out for me included the commentary on the digital environment that has taken shape over this period and co-author Donovan’s “life cycle model of media manipulation.” For instance, early on (p. 17), there is commentary that the internet’s growth “. . . resulted in a digital economy built on engagement . . . content farms and clickbait mimicked the tone and style of news websites, but whose real intention was to make money off advertising.” The authors’ go on (p. 18) to indicate that “. . . this created an influencer culture, where entrepreneurial creators cultivated networks of followers and subscribers and then monetized them through donations, subscriptions, or sponsored content.” They further explain (p.19) that “This design confers incredible power on people able to harness what we call the four Rs of media manipulation: repetition, redundancy, responsiveness, and reinforcement. These four Rs are integral to successful memes.”
While books such as Parker et al’s “Platform Revolution” and Bolter’s “Digital Plenitude” convey more detail on the origins of these capabilities (see my reviews), this book provides more on potential insidious consequences. Namely, these conditions enable what the authors term (pg. 20-21) “going from weeds to wires” where “. . . someone makes an appeal online (wires) that leads to a real-life event (weeds), and at this event violence, conflict, or spectacle breaks out, which leads to media attention, which leads to conversation and action online (wires), which leads to a new event in the real world (weeds), which causes violence or spectacle, which leads to media attention, which leads to online discussion or planning (wires), which leads to another event in real life (weeds). This recursive cycle is a meme war.”
Among the drawbacks to the book are that while it is very comprehensive in its coverage it does not seem to fully articulate how the digital media environment resulting in such effects continues to be shaped and used. As an example (p. 133) the authors opine that “. . . . . . the 2016 presidential election usually becomes one of international intrigue . . . hacks, such as Russia’s Internet Research Agency . . . seeded disinformation . . . emails from the DNC released by WikiLeaks . . . muddied the waters around [Clinton] and the DNC’s ongoing email scandals . . . But that narrative overplays those contributions and underplays how hard this national, homegrown insurgency had worked to get Trump the nomination, and then the election.” Then later they question (p. 159) “How could his supporters outnumber the mainstream electorate, if their ideas were such a transgression against America’s fundamental beliefs . . . .[leading to an] electoral college victory [?]. While the narrative does not answer this and similar other questions it appears there have been concerted strategies with deliberate targeting and harnessing of such forces to achieve these ends.
None the less, this book offers a good companion to such titles as “The Mueller Report,” Katyal and Koppelman’s “Impeach” or Wilkerson’s “Caste” as well as those such as Gavelis’s “Vilnius Poker” (see my reviews) regarding circumstances worth avoiding or reversing. Troubling is the continued support for those who fomented such activities and the Insurrection, read this book to also get an idea of what may be instore as we go into 2024 and beyond.
More specifically, the book’s contents include an Introduction and 10 chapters: (1) We are the 99 Percent, (2) A Safe Space for Hate, (3) Gamers Rise Up, (4) Troll in Chief, (5) He Will Not Divide Us, (6) Unite the Right, (7) Joker Politics, (8) These People are Sick, (9) **** [expletive deleted] Around and Find Out, and (10) Stop the Steal. In particular, the Introduction starts with the January 6th 2021 Insurrection at the US Capitol and then traces occurrences and related memes that seemed to figure prominently in the lead up to this event. For instance, among the movements and incidents that are covered include Occupy Wallstreet, the Ron Paul Presidential Campaigns, reaction to Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and South Carolina AME Church deaths, the rise of Fox News, Conspiracy Channels/Sites, Donald Trump as well as the empowerment of white nationalists and QAnon groups.
Aspects that stood out for me included the commentary on the digital environment that has taken shape over this period and co-author Donovan’s “life cycle model of media manipulation.” For instance, early on (p. 17), there is commentary that the internet’s growth “. . . resulted in a digital economy built on engagement . . . content farms and clickbait mimicked the tone and style of news websites, but whose real intention was to make money off advertising.” The authors’ go on (p. 18) to indicate that “. . . this created an influencer culture, where entrepreneurial creators cultivated networks of followers and subscribers and then monetized them through donations, subscriptions, or sponsored content.” They further explain (p.19) that “This design confers incredible power on people able to harness what we call the four Rs of media manipulation: repetition, redundancy, responsiveness, and reinforcement. These four Rs are integral to successful memes.”
While books such as Parker et al’s “Platform Revolution” and Bolter’s “Digital Plenitude” convey more detail on the origins of these capabilities (see my reviews), this book provides more on potential insidious consequences. Namely, these conditions enable what the authors term (pg. 20-21) “going from weeds to wires” where “. . . someone makes an appeal online (wires) that leads to a real-life event (weeds), and at this event violence, conflict, or spectacle breaks out, which leads to media attention, which leads to conversation and action online (wires), which leads to a new event in the real world (weeds), which causes violence or spectacle, which leads to media attention, which leads to online discussion or planning (wires), which leads to another event in real life (weeds). This recursive cycle is a meme war.”
Among the drawbacks to the book are that while it is very comprehensive in its coverage it does not seem to fully articulate how the digital media environment resulting in such effects continues to be shaped and used. As an example (p. 133) the authors opine that “. . . . . . the 2016 presidential election usually becomes one of international intrigue . . . hacks, such as Russia’s Internet Research Agency . . . seeded disinformation . . . emails from the DNC released by WikiLeaks . . . muddied the waters around [Clinton] and the DNC’s ongoing email scandals . . . But that narrative overplays those contributions and underplays how hard this national, homegrown insurgency had worked to get Trump the nomination, and then the election.” Then later they question (p. 159) “How could his supporters outnumber the mainstream electorate, if their ideas were such a transgression against America’s fundamental beliefs . . . .[leading to an] electoral college victory [?]. While the narrative does not answer this and similar other questions it appears there have been concerted strategies with deliberate targeting and harnessing of such forces to achieve these ends.
None the less, this book offers a good companion to such titles as “The Mueller Report,” Katyal and Koppelman’s “Impeach” or Wilkerson’s “Caste” as well as those such as Gavelis’s “Vilnius Poker” (see my reviews) regarding circumstances worth avoiding or reversing. Troubling is the continued support for those who fomented such activities and the Insurrection, read this book to also get an idea of what may be instore as we go into 2024 and beyond.
February 7, 2024
Este libro me ayudó a entender mucho mejor el fenómeno del ascenso de Donald Trump como fanfarrón mediático hasta la presidencia de EEUU. El libro es una investigación muy detallada sobre los personajes, las maneras, las fechas y a través de qué redes se construyeron los grupos sociales fanáticos que vieron en la figura del 45 Presidente una manera de revivir resentimientos, miedos, paranoias y conspiraciones que permanecían empantanados como bases malsanas de la que se jacta de ser la sociedad democrática más poderosa del planeta.
Lo más valioso es que presenta una línea de tiempo desde el punto de vista de los ciudadanos de la ultra derecha. Es la narración in crescendo desde su rabia por sentirse amenazados y excluidos de un Gobierno "socialista", pasando por convertirse en su propia parodia al ser los acérrimos defensores del Presidente de turno, hasta la frustración generada por un ídolo incapaz de mantener un espejismo populista y llevada al límite del absurdo en la jornada de circense vandalismo contra el Capitolio en enero del 2021.
El dolor de las víctimas muchas veces termina convirtiéndolas en una fuerza política capaz de mover el centro de poder hasta su propias manos. El miedo, la paranoia, el fanatismo anidan mejor en sectores de la sociedad que han sido tradicionalmente excluidos. Esas emociones, fuerzas e impulsos combinan de forma muy natural con un universo tan fogoso como las redes sociales, los rasgos de la cultura de los gamers y otras características del universo virtual que hace parte inevitable de la cotidianidad de los votantes del mundo. Lo que el libro muestra (y en buena parte por esto se ha ganado mis cinco estrellas) es que cómo aquellas cualidades reservadas antes para minorías marginales se convirtió en una marea incontenible de maniqueísmo y beligerancias que nos arrastra a todos. Unos navegarán por encima de sus olas, otros serán sepultados sin remedio por su peso insospechado.
Lo que en estas páginas de desfine vagamente como "memes" de este libros es un mapa de eslóganes, trinos, prácticas, códigos, símbolos, protocolos y siglas que construyeron una mayoría racista y combativa que aprovechó los privilegios del anonimato y la navegabilidad oscura de las redes. La desinformación, las teorías de conspiración ( el “deep state” a la cabeza) y la constante ansiedad de creerse perseguidos por un nuevo orden mundial son la base de una nueva comunidad sin la cual no se puede pensar en las próximas elecciones. Una "meme-cultura" no es una amenaza a la democracia, sino una fuerza (para muchos de nosotros indeseable) que debemos, nos guste o no, incluir en nuestros debates. La confusión por el exceso de información, la ansiedad que produce el creernos salvados por alguien que sabe presentarse como un salvador y las de nuevas dinámicas de la violencia permitidas por el anonimato y los “rabbit holes” son una combinación más de nuestra era.
El libro cierra explicando la conexión que existe entre el nombramiento de Barack Obama como primer presidente afroamericano, la subsiguiente victoria de Trump (y el desencanto que terminó produciendo su presidencia para buena parte de los supremacistas blancos de su país) y la explosión de Qanon como fenómeno mediática no convencional que llevó a ignorar las medidas que desde la ciencia se establecieron para protegerse contra la pandemia. Este último (como los memes) tuvo un principio irrisorio por su vocación de locura paranoide, pero ahora (como los memes) es reconocido por su capacidad de moldear la democracia del planeta.
Lo más valioso es que presenta una línea de tiempo desde el punto de vista de los ciudadanos de la ultra derecha. Es la narración in crescendo desde su rabia por sentirse amenazados y excluidos de un Gobierno "socialista", pasando por convertirse en su propia parodia al ser los acérrimos defensores del Presidente de turno, hasta la frustración generada por un ídolo incapaz de mantener un espejismo populista y llevada al límite del absurdo en la jornada de circense vandalismo contra el Capitolio en enero del 2021.
El dolor de las víctimas muchas veces termina convirtiéndolas en una fuerza política capaz de mover el centro de poder hasta su propias manos. El miedo, la paranoia, el fanatismo anidan mejor en sectores de la sociedad que han sido tradicionalmente excluidos. Esas emociones, fuerzas e impulsos combinan de forma muy natural con un universo tan fogoso como las redes sociales, los rasgos de la cultura de los gamers y otras características del universo virtual que hace parte inevitable de la cotidianidad de los votantes del mundo. Lo que el libro muestra (y en buena parte por esto se ha ganado mis cinco estrellas) es que cómo aquellas cualidades reservadas antes para minorías marginales se convirtió en una marea incontenible de maniqueísmo y beligerancias que nos arrastra a todos. Unos navegarán por encima de sus olas, otros serán sepultados sin remedio por su peso insospechado.
Lo que en estas páginas de desfine vagamente como "memes" de este libros es un mapa de eslóganes, trinos, prácticas, códigos, símbolos, protocolos y siglas que construyeron una mayoría racista y combativa que aprovechó los privilegios del anonimato y la navegabilidad oscura de las redes. La desinformación, las teorías de conspiración ( el “deep state” a la cabeza) y la constante ansiedad de creerse perseguidos por un nuevo orden mundial son la base de una nueva comunidad sin la cual no se puede pensar en las próximas elecciones. Una "meme-cultura" no es una amenaza a la democracia, sino una fuerza (para muchos de nosotros indeseable) que debemos, nos guste o no, incluir en nuestros debates. La confusión por el exceso de información, la ansiedad que produce el creernos salvados por alguien que sabe presentarse como un salvador y las de nuevas dinámicas de la violencia permitidas por el anonimato y los “rabbit holes” son una combinación más de nuestra era.
El libro cierra explicando la conexión que existe entre el nombramiento de Barack Obama como primer presidente afroamericano, la subsiguiente victoria de Trump (y el desencanto que terminó produciendo su presidencia para buena parte de los supremacistas blancos de su país) y la explosión de Qanon como fenómeno mediática no convencional que llevó a ignorar las medidas que desde la ciencia se establecieron para protegerse contra la pandemia. Este último (como los memes) tuvo un principio irrisorio por su vocación de locura paranoide, pero ahora (como los memes) es reconocido por su capacidad de moldear la democracia del planeta.
January 27, 2023
File this one under I Didn’t Know How Much I Didn’t Know. Even as a member of the Millennial generation, anyone who knows me knows how out of touch I am with trends and gossip and pop because of how offline I live, and it’s even to the point where it’s become a running joke that since I don’t have a TV or a smartphone, I have to stare at my walls every night for entertainment. Obviously, I think that there’s an advantage to this tech-unsavvy lifestyle, but then in reading books like Meme Wars I’m forced to concede that there’s a whole lot of the world that I’m missing right now as, it turns out, a whole lot of the world hangs out on the internet. Now, I know about memes, and even know a bit about Richard Dawkins’ efforts to establish the meme as the building block of information (the genes of data), but I had no idea about the world of incels and 4chan and shitlords and Groypers and how so much of what came to be called the alt-right was fashioned in the crucible of anonymous message boards. What the authors, Donovan, Dreyfuss, and Friedberg, present here is the decade-long history of what they call the meme wars, starting with OWS in 2011 and ending with the Capitol insurrection in 2021, by way of memes, or, more specifically, how the use of memes on the internet (the wires) eventually manifested in real-world action (the weeds). The memes themselves are interesting, in an academic sense, and so I would have liked even more than the ones published with the book, but the really interesting part is, as Dawkins would have it, how successful the meme is at achieving its goal of convincing someone of something. As you likely already know, the danger in this comes from how memesters – who have agendas, who mean to convince people of something (often something hateful) – are so good at convincing otherwise neutral parties that the position espoused by the meme is true and real and the entry point for a conspiracy known only to the internet’s mysterious anon community. This process is called “red-pilling,” and is the stuff of nightmares. As is often the case, the thing that I was most interested in reading about was the disposition of the meme creators and the anons who continue to gobble them up—meaning, whether they were sincere in their behavior or not. This is something that Catherine Cross wrote about a while back now, but the answer seems to be that some dress up their actual sensibilities in irony to make those sensibilities more palatable and therefore more effective in the memesphere while others no longer need to as their audience has already been red-pilled, an answer I find to be both frustrating and instructional. There were more than a few typos here, as well as times when the writing read like the work of several authors, but this was compelling reading and, for me at least, highly informative.
November 27, 2022
This is a book that, based on its methodology, did its best. While I politically believe the vast majority of the arguments here, there's no way to show they're true unless you already believed them. That's not academic. That's just feeding into exactly the same fodder that conservative pundits have argued is the stupidity of "Cultural Marxism." This doesn't solve anything. This is preaching to the choir for the worse of the moment. While the book says that it does not intend to frighten, it is full of frightening content, and its central claims could have avoided many of the pains it pushes on the reader. Despite the authors suggesting the book was not supposed to be fear mongering, this book means to spark fear into a reader, and it does that well.
This book does have one academic argument which provides a basis for a theory about political organization in the digital era of politics. That is, much of decentralized political organizations have Occupy Wallstreet to thank no matter where in the political spectrum ideologies fall into. However, that argument didn't require a book.
Further, this book claims to be about memes. And while it does look at a lot of digital content, the meme of the book is more the organizational argument, less the media artifacts described in the book. Those are just images which capture how memes might be used. There is not really an analysis of Internet memes here.
Otherwise, this book is mostly a summary of news events that someone who lived on Twitter could mostly retell from memory. If you don't spend a lot of time on the internet, this book actually does a pretty good job of getting you up to speed, but it doesn't give you any reason to believe those arguments.
This book does have one academic argument which provides a basis for a theory about political organization in the digital era of politics. That is, much of decentralized political organizations have Occupy Wallstreet to thank no matter where in the political spectrum ideologies fall into. However, that argument didn't require a book.
Further, this book claims to be about memes. And while it does look at a lot of digital content, the meme of the book is more the organizational argument, less the media artifacts described in the book. Those are just images which capture how memes might be used. There is not really an analysis of Internet memes here.
Otherwise, this book is mostly a summary of news events that someone who lived on Twitter could mostly retell from memory. If you don't spend a lot of time on the internet, this book actually does a pretty good job of getting you up to speed, but it doesn't give you any reason to believe those arguments.
March 18, 2024
This is a deep dive into internet culture wars, one which will feel familiar to those of us who have read extensively about extremism since January 6th and yet still feel new in bathing you in disgust. Using a very broad definition of "meme," which applies to symbols in a pretty broad sense, it traces the history of this unique symbology of internet politics. Though it touches on left-wing advocacy, and I wish it had done so more, it is primarily focused on Donald Trump's adoption of meme wars as metaphorical and then literal insurrection. What is within is not surprising, yet it is still frequently shocking.
How internet culture develops is analyzed in details by the three authors, whose scholarship on this issue is complex and driven. Appropriation of neutral memes into hateful content, alongside the appropriation of minority cultures and the distortion of facts themselves, is key to the right-wing meme wars. What this book reflects is not just those failed causes, however, and by and large they did fail; it reflects a larger trend in American culture. As the authors argue, "America itself is a meme," and we as voters should be aware of that.
In an increasingly polarized nation, memes have only sought to divide us even more. Although I would argue that the book is too harsh on internet culture, focusing on a hateful minority and ignoring a largely positive majority, this is also the effect of reading a book with a limited focus. I recommend this book to those who frequently read about the Trump era and want to dive deeper into the foundational internet cultures changing our world.
How internet culture develops is analyzed in details by the three authors, whose scholarship on this issue is complex and driven. Appropriation of neutral memes into hateful content, alongside the appropriation of minority cultures and the distortion of facts themselves, is key to the right-wing meme wars. What this book reflects is not just those failed causes, however, and by and large they did fail; it reflects a larger trend in American culture. As the authors argue, "America itself is a meme," and we as voters should be aware of that.
In an increasingly polarized nation, memes have only sought to divide us even more. Although I would argue that the book is too harsh on internet culture, focusing on a hateful minority and ignoring a largely positive majority, this is also the effect of reading a book with a limited focus. I recommend this book to those who frequently read about the Trump era and want to dive deeper into the foundational internet cultures changing our world.
November 21, 2023
The authors have been involved in meme, social media, disinformation and related research and reporting (separately and now together) for a while. This book focuses heavily on disinformation as related to the recent "Meme Wars" around Donald Trumps election and presidency... related to the "Meme War Veteran" patch. After some (very) brief history and background they begin with the Occupy Wall Street movement which began online and spread into real life - an important factor to their subtitle thesis. It ends with January 6 - another key real life event. In certain ways January 6 is also the start of the book since many of the figures, groups and memes showing up in DC the ones the authors traced back to related sources online.
I was not unaware of many of the individuals and memes discussed (though there were some surprises) but seeing such recent history all laid out and where they tied together was striking. I think it's also important as many of the ideas and some individuals are still relevant to politics today.
The writing across the book was varied, maybe from the 3 authors. There was some neutral political reporting, some jargon, some colorful mini-biographies, some sociological research, some barely-restrained rants against disinformation. There was also missing background, occasionally acknowledging the reader may be unfamiliar with certain chat groups and acronyms, but more often just diving right into the details. The mix of casual slang and about 4 uses of "antidisestablishmentarianism" was also a little jarring. The book is still worth reading, and reminded me that recent history is worth revisiting.
I was not unaware of many of the individuals and memes discussed (though there were some surprises) but seeing such recent history all laid out and where they tied together was striking. I think it's also important as many of the ideas and some individuals are still relevant to politics today.
The writing across the book was varied, maybe from the 3 authors. There was some neutral political reporting, some jargon, some colorful mini-biographies, some sociological research, some barely-restrained rants against disinformation. There was also missing background, occasionally acknowledging the reader may be unfamiliar with certain chat groups and acronyms, but more often just diving right into the details. The mix of casual slang and about 4 uses of "antidisestablishmentarianism" was also a little jarring. The book is still worth reading, and reminded me that recent history is worth revisiting.
December 13, 2022
There’s no better book for understanding what's going on now with Twitter than Meme Wars, Joan Donovan, Emily Dreyfuss and Brian Friedberg’s new tour-de-farce guide to what they call “the online battles upending democracy in America.” Here’s how they explain our times:
--“Meme wars are culture wars, accelerated and intensified because of the infrastructure and incentives of the internet, which trade outrage and extremity as currency, rewards speed and scale, and flattens the experience of the world into a never-ending scroll of images and words, a morass capable of swallowing patience, kindness and understanding.”
--“The meme warriors of the past decade were not initially fighting for a common goal like Stop the Steal….Depending on their world-view, those summoned into the meme wars blamed varying enemies: the national banks, capitalism, immigrants coming to ‘take all our jobs,’ Communist liberals who wanted everyone to be gay and socialist, and so on. As the meme wars wore on, they became about replacement anxiety—white Americans’ anxiety that immigrants and people of other races would displace their position at the top of the social hierarchy, and men’s anxiety that women would displace them.”
--Meme warriors evangelize by using “red pills,” provocative ideas that challenge the status quo, which they scatter across the open internet, hoping to destabilize people’s thinking and pull them down rabbit holes of “alternative facts” that, through repetition, redundancy, social proof (look how many likes!), and algorithmic reinforcement, convince people that they’ve “done their own research” and discovered some hidden truth. (The fact that many American evangelicals already come predisposed to question secular media and trust textual analysis that reminds them of Bible study makes them especially vulnerable to red-pilling.)
--These people all position themselves against the liberal consensus, against multiracial liberal democracy and against government involvement in social life. Donovan and her co-authors use the term “the red-pilled right” as a catch-all for this anti-establishment collection of factions, which also includes “the alt-right, white nationalists, fascists, incels, men in the manosphere, trolls, red-pilled gamers, New World Order conspiracists, and militias.”
--The truth is a poor defense against meme warriors’ main strategy, which is to overwhelm their audience with false and twisted claims. As Steve Bannon told journalist Michael Lewis in 2018, “We got elected on Drain the Swamp, Lock Her Up, Build a Wall. That was pure anger. Anger and fear are what gets people to the polls….The Democrats don’t matter. The opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to ‘flood the zone with shit.’”
--“Meme wars are culture wars, accelerated and intensified because of the infrastructure and incentives of the internet, which trade outrage and extremity as currency, rewards speed and scale, and flattens the experience of the world into a never-ending scroll of images and words, a morass capable of swallowing patience, kindness and understanding.”
--“The meme warriors of the past decade were not initially fighting for a common goal like Stop the Steal….Depending on their world-view, those summoned into the meme wars blamed varying enemies: the national banks, capitalism, immigrants coming to ‘take all our jobs,’ Communist liberals who wanted everyone to be gay and socialist, and so on. As the meme wars wore on, they became about replacement anxiety—white Americans’ anxiety that immigrants and people of other races would displace their position at the top of the social hierarchy, and men’s anxiety that women would displace them.”
--Meme warriors evangelize by using “red pills,” provocative ideas that challenge the status quo, which they scatter across the open internet, hoping to destabilize people’s thinking and pull them down rabbit holes of “alternative facts” that, through repetition, redundancy, social proof (look how many likes!), and algorithmic reinforcement, convince people that they’ve “done their own research” and discovered some hidden truth. (The fact that many American evangelicals already come predisposed to question secular media and trust textual analysis that reminds them of Bible study makes them especially vulnerable to red-pilling.)
--These people all position themselves against the liberal consensus, against multiracial liberal democracy and against government involvement in social life. Donovan and her co-authors use the term “the red-pilled right” as a catch-all for this anti-establishment collection of factions, which also includes “the alt-right, white nationalists, fascists, incels, men in the manosphere, trolls, red-pilled gamers, New World Order conspiracists, and militias.”
--The truth is a poor defense against meme warriors’ main strategy, which is to overwhelm their audience with false and twisted claims. As Steve Bannon told journalist Michael Lewis in 2018, “We got elected on Drain the Swamp, Lock Her Up, Build a Wall. That was pure anger. Anger and fear are what gets people to the polls….The Democrats don’t matter. The opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to ‘flood the zone with shit.’”
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