USA TODAY reviewed thousands of Internet memes, here's what they found

[littlemissmartypants]

USA TODAY reviewed thousands of Internet memes ranging from the Jan. 6 hearings to conspiracy theories concerning 5G and Jewish space lasers.

Here’s how such memes have played a key role in almost every disinformation campaign of the digital age.

Link to tweet

Internet memes started humbly and innocently. Using characters and cartoons to express emotion like anger, sadness and joy, users found that a simple image could convey a thousand words.

By the late-2000s, instant meme generator websites offered people with zero photo editing skills an easy way to create memes.

Hashtags materialized and attached themselves to individual stories that coalesced into movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo and #FreeBritney.

Things grew darker during the runup to the 2016 presidential election when Russian agents used memes to sow discord among American voters and tip the scales in favor of Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Trump’s campaign, too, used memes to rally supporters and attack opponents in a way no other candidate had done. For some, Trump is the human embodiment of meme warfare, a president who was literally memed into the Oval Office.

Link to tweet

Snip...

For more click the first Tweet and follow the thread, or you can peruse the (no paywall) article here...
https://archive.ph/zTA9L

Be advised that USA Today is already being ridiculed as being disingenuously hypocritical by printing this content.

❤️ pants

[brewens]

1. I've got a couple I'm proud of. Jed Clampett saying, "Recon that's one a them

Evanpedical Christian!". That's my best.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. No disinformation here ...

Another actor ruined by drugs and alcohol.

Ok, but seriously,

[littlemissmartypants]

3. Hahaha! Thanks. ❤️

[betsuni]

4. K&R

[Sympthsical]

5. That was a really long pro-censorship article

With a patina of, "Behold our lawn, for it is being trodden."

I really am fascinated by the heavy pro-corporate, "Let's put tech monopolies in charge of speech" weirdness that striates some quarters of our side these days. And it all seems to reduce down to the idea that we can somehow ride and tame that kind of monster to our own benefit.

As we've seen with the Right in recent years, democracy can be a hard thing to maintain. It requires constant work and effort to keep. Once anyone decides their short-term interests align with jettisoning it, we get into trouble.

So it is with free speech and expression. Once people think, "It would benefit me to empower corporations to control the citizenry," we're moving into a terrible area.

And yet, here we are.

[underpants]

6. I'd never thought if that angle on tech and speech

Very interesting. Thanks. This will be on my brain now.

[ecstatic]

8. Good point. Congress is so dysfunctional though due to

rethuglican obstruction. They've barely addressed any of the major issues associated with the Internet and technology. It's so frustrating. We're approaching 3 decades of lost time.

The best thing we can hope for at this point is that blue States will put policies in place, though I'd prefer if it were a joint effort so it's not too confusing. California has been a leader as far as creating their own sets of laws and regulations that major corporations are forced to comply with.

[brer cat]

7. K&R