One of the many things that instant information causes is an influx of topical photo Memes. It’s a type of photo sharing and editing where people latch onto one funny digital photo or topic, often an old photo probably uploaded with digital scanning, come up with a short, funny caption for that photo, and share it. Then others offer their own take or modification and reshare it. One of the most recent photo memes came from Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s comments about his plans for PBS, in which he said he’d cut funding to the television station even though he likes the TV character Big Bird.
Politics of the comment and the election aside, the firestorm of online attention that Romney’s comment generated shows just how powerful “viral” ideas and memes online can be. People made fake Twitter accounts in the name of Big Bird to decry Romney’s plan to pull support for the educational Corporation for Public Broadcasting, comedians and late show hosts quickly latched onto the topic and made several jokes about it at Romney’s expense, and of course, countless photos of the yellow bird and other characters from the Sesame Street program that many of us grew up with began popping up all over the internet, Facebook, and Twitter. They are accompanied by phrases like “Romney’s Plan to Cut the Deficit: Fire This Guy,” “Will Educate for Food,” and “Can You Tell Me How to Get… How to Get to the Unemployment Line.”
The most prolific photos were those with simple, catchy lines that encapsulated the issue and play on pop culture references with a bit of humor. This is often the case with political memes because most people who are especially active online are drawn to share things that are both relevant and funny. One of the funniest is a photo of ex first lady and ex presidential candidate Hillary Clinton holding her Blackberry, sitting next to Big Bird, with the caption “Confirmed. I have the bird. Will move him to safe house in the morning.”
Of course, the incident spawned a second wave of drawings that aren’t really photo memes so much as comical plays on the meme. Examples include the reinterpretation of the Obama “Hope” art from the first election designed by famous political artist Shepard Fairey and a number of stylistically common political cartoons like those that show up in Newsweek and The New York Times.
With each iteration and reinterpretation of the meme, and most importantly each time a new person shares it with his or her online social network, the issue itself gets more attention. The same way that an effective viral marketing campaign uses an interesting digital photo or video to turn fans into marketers, a powerful meme can change people’s minds and reshape a debate. A writer for the online news journals The Week even thinks that the meme itself, and not Romney’s comment, could be the thing that hurts him most from the debate, which many pundits think he “won” over President Barack Obama.
In an age where we communicate online, often with less than the “sound bight” that use to have people so disgusted with television reporting, the meme is a powerful force for online discussion and entertainment. You only have to look as far as the Big Bird meme and its role in this election to see that a digital photo with a clever caption can be enough to start a wildfire.
Tags: big bird, hipster, internet, memes, mitt romney, obama, photo scanning, photos, politics
