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- MEME MAGIC IS REAL
- Here come the attacks
- We're over the target
- The whole thing with memes is very serious; they are used to weaponise information and to manipulate opinion.
- These are the most popular memes, according to science
- https://www.indy100.com/article/most-popular-memes-science-study-reddit-twitter-8386051
- Academia turned its weighty gaze to memes in a recent, 20-page study looking at millions of them, posted between July 2016 and July 2017, on Twitter, Reddit, 4chan's Politically Incorrect communit /pol/, and Gab.
- What did it find? Basically, quarters of the internet are fit-to-burst with homophobes, racists and sexists who get a giggle out of pretty much anything hateful, including genocide. Cheery stuff.
- the most popular meme on /pol/ - a community plagued with bigotry - was Sad Frog, a variation of the Pepe meme that has transformed over the years from an amphibian carton to an alt-right symbol.
- In fact, more than 10 per cent of memes on /pol/ are Pepe-related.
- Likewise, Gab is overrun by trolls and alt-righters, avoiding platforms where they are in danger of 'censorship'.
- Reddit, however, does have a community drowning in racism - r/TheDonald, dedicated to the current US president.
- While /pol/ is more racist that Reddit, r/TheDonald is the most efficient at spreading hate.
- All this points to a scary reality - memes shape and change responses to major events.
- For example, racist memes spiked close to the Charlottesville incident in August 2017.
- Savvas Zannettou, a PhD student at the Cyprus University of Technology, and the paper’s lead author, told Quartz:
- The whole thing with memes is very serious; they are used to weaponise information and to manipulate opinion.
- It’s not something that should be taken lightly.
- On the Origins of Memes by Means of Fringe Web Communities
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.12512.pdf
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