How many of these young memetic warriors will be coming of voting age in the next few years? There is plenty of opportunity for chaos in their future. And the real problem lies, as always, with those who can’t be bothered to vote at all.
I think it is possible that people voted for Trump because they saw attempts to link him to the alt-right and white supremacists as a stretch at best - linked to the idea that the media took Trump literally and not seriously. They saw the media focusing on these linkages and felt Trump wasn’t being given a fair shake.
In hindsight, this was probably a calculated gamble by his Bannon-led electoral team; make the mainstream media appear obsessed with peripheral details and controversies they could easily paint as irrelevant. At the same time you don’t lose those alt-right supporters. One, because they’re going to vote for you anyway, and two, because you throw them a bone every now and then.
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This is, indirectly, blaming black voters for Clinton’s loss. However, the real culprit is GOP voter suppression efforts in states like North Carolina and Florida.
I don’t agree with their suggestion to move toward electronic voting, but there hasn’t been enough discussion regarding the role of voter suppression in potentially swinging key states toward Trump.
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@doctorow did you create the main image? That lenses flare effect is pretty good, it actually looks brighter then the rest of the page because it tricks my mind into seeing it brighter than it is. I’d love any tips on reproducing it, like how it was done. thx.
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It was straight from the Roger Ailes playbook. He crafted the concept back in the Nixon administration. They just finally reached the critical mass need to wag the dog.
I didn’t realize how much influence this group had UNTIL I read this article.
Phillips describes how media coverage—even coverage condemning alt-right antagonisms—helped conjure this monster, and how that conjuring, in turn, helped amplify Trump’s overall platform (which itself was a series of memes).
The whole purpose of the political use of memes is to amplify a message by getting other individuals and organizations to pass them along. A lot of 4chan trollies are very intelligent and creative people. In this case, they applied that creativity to the production of all sorts of new and interesting material for the wing media outlets.
Part of the joke was that so many people took their news stories seriously when they didn’t even try to hide the fact that they were driving trollies (essentially signing their work with their logo, Pepe).
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