In my VIP yesterday, I wrote how a meme can do far more damage to a politician than 1,000 opposition speeches. This is absolutely true. A narrative that someone spent millions of ad dollars, hundreds of hours, and enough staff to fill a warehouse to create can all be upended and destroyed by one man who slapped some impact font on a picture of Jeremy Clarkson.
It's almost a cosmic joke that the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry because of a funny picture uploaded to social media, but that is the reality we live in. To be honest, I kind of love that. You and I don't have access to the resources corporations and political parties do, but Mematic.com is free and at the right place and time, we could create something that goes viral and affects a heart and mind immediately.
The power of memes cannot be denied. In it is the persuasiveness of humor and the convincing power of brevity, which is the soul of wit.
Donald Trump's VP pick JD Vance seems to get this.
Yesterday, it came down the pipe that Haitian illegal immigrants were eating the ducks at the park and reports circulated that they were eating people's pets, namely cats. Awful stuff, but this triggered the creation of a tidal wave of hilarious memes featuring Trump rescuing ducks and kittens, which circulated around the internet like crazy and solidified in the minds of many that yes, we have a terrible illegal immigration problem. They aren't just hurting society and people, they're harming animals.
Not everyone respects human life, but oddly enough, the thought of harming cute animals can trigger some combative thoughts in a lot of people.
Vance admitted that some of these reports about cat eating could turn out to be entirely false and that the real outrage isn't around the animals, but the fact that a child was murdered at the hands of an illegal Haitian. It's a reminder of what people are really fighting for, a stop to this madness.
His solution? Vote Trump, but keep the cat memes coming.
In short, don't let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) September 10, 2024
Keep the cat memes flowing.
But why are memes so powerful? How can they be this effective?
According to Frontiersin.org, memes affect the brain in ways that get through a lot of the brain's red tape:
The human brain can only handle so much conscious information at a time. It uses heuristics to help people navigate through the world without devoting too many cognitive resources to do so. Psychologist Christopher Dwyer, paraphrasing the work of West, Toplak, and Stanovich, notes that, “heuristics allow one to make an inference without extensive deliberation and/or reflective judgment, given that they are essentially schemas for such solutions.". These heuristic properties of human thinking can be exploited leading to cognitive biases. These biases can be effectively gamed by internet memes and the people or groups which create and share them. There are several keystone biases at play in viral memes: confirmation bias, homogeneity bias, and popularity bias. Each uses their own specialized tools to propagate misinformation and propaganda. In addition they also help craft the [de]legitimization of ideas, people, and social movements.
In other words, picture your mind is like a backpack that can only hold so much stuff in it at once. Your brain loves information, but not over-complication, so it will take the most important part of it and leave the rest out, allowing you to fit more stuff into your backpack. Memes play on this part of our brains, communicating a big idea in a tiny package and making it slide in easier with humor.
Close the border. Protect our pets. Vote Trump. pic.twitter.com/tjOB5Xh7MX
— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) September 9, 2024
It's not big on detail or nuance, but it gets the message across to the brain more effectively than anything else.
All this to say that long explanations and speeches are great, but if you really want to convince people of an idea, short, sweet, and concise is the way to go. That's the way you're going to convince people who don't delve into politics. Humor and brevity. Memes are your best friend in the battle of ideas.
