Losing Context: the Memeification of the Presidential Race
Where do you get your news? If you’re like me, you see the news on Instagram, you go look for commentary on Twitter, and then you go to TikTok to get the breakdown. If you rely on social media to receive the majority of news, you might also run into political campaigns’ new favorite tactics: memes. The 2024 Presidential Race, in particular, attempts to attract younger voters through their use of popular memes. However, memes in essence reject the serious nature of politics. They are supposed to be ironic, silly, unserious, and niche. Using memes as a political tactic forces political campaigns to walk a fine line between appealing to young voters and forgoing context, information, and respectable advertising.
As the News and Worldwide Section Head, I pride myself on staying up to date on current events. I’m registered to vote, I read news articles, and I’ll readily debate anyone’s uncle at Thanksgiving. Even for a hardened twenty-year old like myself, the presidential race tends exhausts me. Sometimes I feel like all I can think about is the newest meme-slogan that the campaigns have come up with:
Kamala Harris is brat. They’re eating the dogs. Kamunism and Kackling. Mugshot. There is no cure. He’s so weird. Those poor couches. Tampon Tim. Childless cat ladies. A Chappell Roan-inspired, camo themed Harris-Walz hat.
On one hand, the memes are funny. I got a good laugh out of the ‘brat’ paraphilia. They keep me engaged in a way that doesn’t feel so downtrodden. On the other hand, I can’t help the creeping feeling that I’m being manipulated—shielded from problems that aren’t being answered for. It feels like when a parent lets a child stay up late one night because the parent accidentally ruined a beloved stuffed animal in the wash. I can’t even tell which stuffed animal is ruined because they all seem to be hidden from view.
The constant jokes and slogans seem to be fighting a “who’s coolest?” competition. Fights over crowd sizes and AI-endorsements have created loads of content for political platforms and individual Americans to use and laugh at. Take, for example, pop-artist Taylor Swift’s role in the election. Swift threw her support behind President Biden in the 2020 election, but she had been surprisingly silent for this cycle, even after an AI-generated photo, shared by Former President Trump, brought her opinions into question.
After the debate, Taylor went to Instagram and posted a photo with her and her cat citing an endorsement for Kamala Harris. She signed her post “With love and hope, Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady,” a reference to Republican J.D. Vance’s critiques of women who do not have children. Trump then went to tweet, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” Their posts circulated, commentaries were made, and the situation has since died down. The entire debacle would seem to be an average exchange of endorsements and pushback, but only if we don’t look at the issues underneath. One of the most popular artists of the age has been suffering from harmful AI-generated deep-fakes for the past few years, and her opinions are then falsely realized by a campaign she has publicly opposed. She attempts to set the record straight and then knowingly calls out a double-standard stereotype being harnessed by the opposing party. Her statement is then shared over the internet, commented on by people she does not politically endorse, like politician Liz Chaney, and people who have explicitly used her for their own personal gain, like her former manager Scooter Braun. Finally, the opposing politician publicly denounces her, which causes a chain reaction of his supporters attacking her person, and her supporters attacking his. These complex political processes are simplified, mollified, and packaged in a few memes. By looking at our presidential race through memes and “gotcha” moments, the viewer is not forced to think critically about what situations are shaping the political sphere. I don’t need to think about the decades of sexism and harassment Taylor Swift has faced for her personal decisions when she is reduced to a Tweet and a TikTok.
As a young person, as someone who wants more people to care about politics, I’m not opposed to a few jokes. I’m not even opposed to campaigns using memes. What I am opposed to is the idea that we are drifting away from the expectation of context. Despite watching the debate myself, the only things I seem to remember are the parts that were cut and remixed for circulation. I remembered the memes and forgot the substance. The responsibility for contextualizing politics does not fall on the individual alone. Content creators, news organizations, and political campaigns should feel obligated to share the full story. Regardless, an individual should try to look for the story beyond the caption, rather than accept that memes are only ever just jokes.
