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