I was radicalized because the memes were good. Back in the days of the Chapotraphouse subreddit. That site led me the yellow Parenti, GenZedong sub, etc, and then eventually here. All because I was a dummy on Reddit just laughing at funny anti-capitalist memes.
People have the internal feelings of dislike for the system. Memes give an outlet and can point people in a direction. Your brain associates the good feeling you have from a funny meme to the message within the meme. If those memes are leftist memes they will associate the left with not being so bad, good even. The same thing happens if the memes are rightoid oriented. They get pulled in the direction of the underlying message of the meme.
Furthermore, humans are curious animals by nature. When we see something we want to understand it’s origins. If we see a meme that funny but don’t quite understand it, many are driven to learn more about it. Take for instance, memes about yellow Parenti, or Michael Parenti in general. If it’s a good, funny meme, but the viewer hasn’t actually seen anything by Parenti, they might end up looking him up and watching some videos.
They are also a way to make sharing ideas and theory entertaining. Let’s be honest, reading theory is boring. It’s a slog, but if you can get a general idea, or the basics acrossed to them, then that’s usually enough. If the people want to know more then they can look into it further.
Your brain associates the good feeling you have from a funny meme to the message within the meme. If those memes are leftist memes they will associate the left with not being so bad, good even. The same thing happens if the memes are rightoid oriented. They get pulled in the direction of the underlying message of the meme.
I don’t think this paints an accurate picture of how humans work, in fact I think it paints humans as quite irrational, almost “Pavlovian” in nature. Here’s a good article that tries to debunk the “emotional inception” theory Ads Don’t Work That Way.
Why is this distinction important?
Well for one, in order for our propaganda to actually be effective, it’s important to know how and why propaganda works in general. Is agitprop just a matter of handing out good vibes or do we need to convince people in a way that resonates with their lived experience?
Roderic Day has a good article that argues against “brainwashing” being a thing (which is quite related to how “emotional inception” is supposed to work).
Apart from giving us directions on what method to employ there’s also a kind of problematic view of humans that’s associated with this Pavlovian narrative. I will try to paint a picture: assume that humans are inherently irrational and can be emotionally incepted/brainwashed, then there’s no point in educating people at all because the empire will always have more resources than us and just pump out funny memes associating that “good feeling” with empire. Even worse, if people can just gobble up stuff based on vibes, why should the working class rule at all?
I’m not dissing what you said in general or insinuating that you actually believe people are fundamentally irrational, I just wanted to push back on this particular narrative because even though it seems harmless at first glance, it can do real damage (e.g. Orwell is famous for this, arguing that the working class are stupid sheeple).
assume that humans are inherently irrational and can be emotionally incepted/brainwashed, then there’s no point in educating people at all because the empire will always have more resources than us and just pump out funny memes associating that “good feeling” with empire. Even worse, if people can just gobble up stuff based on vibes, why should the working class rule at all?
The answer to this problem is that humans don’t generally believe things because they are bombarded with extreme amounts of high quality propaganda, rather they accept (and seek out) the information that gives them license to feel good about themselves and the situation they are in and ignore facts that don’t fit this narrative. I’d say almost all racist/colonial narratives work by this mechanism. It’s not that people turn racist because the media paints e.g. Africans/Asians as barbarians or whatever, rather people need to justify why the Global South is still impoverished and thinking of them as inferior (a racist trope) solves the contradiction. The truth of imperial plunder leads to dangerous conclusions: “I can’t keep my cheap stuff!”, “We’ll be poor like them!”
I was radicalized because the memes were good. Back in the days of the Chapotraphouse subreddit. That site led me the yellow Parenti, GenZedong sub, etc, and then eventually here. All because I was a dummy on Reddit just laughing at funny anti-capitalist memes.
People have the internal feelings of dislike for the system. Memes give an outlet and can point people in a direction. Your brain associates the good feeling you have from a funny meme to the message within the meme. If those memes are leftist memes they will associate the left with not being so bad, good even. The same thing happens if the memes are rightoid oriented. They get pulled in the direction of the underlying message of the meme.
Furthermore, humans are curious animals by nature. When we see something we want to understand it’s origins. If we see a meme that funny but don’t quite understand it, many are driven to learn more about it. Take for instance, memes about yellow Parenti, or Michael Parenti in general. If it’s a good, funny meme, but the viewer hasn’t actually seen anything by Parenti, they might end up looking him up and watching some videos.
They are also a way to make sharing ideas and theory entertaining. Let’s be honest, reading theory is boring. It’s a slog, but if you can get a general idea, or the basics acrossed to them, then that’s usually enough. If the people want to know more then they can look into it further.
I don’t think this paints an accurate picture of how humans work, in fact I think it paints humans as quite irrational, almost “Pavlovian” in nature. Here’s a good article that tries to debunk the “emotional inception” theory Ads Don’t Work That Way.
Why is this distinction important? Well for one, in order for our propaganda to actually be effective, it’s important to know how and why propaganda works in general. Is agitprop just a matter of handing out good vibes or do we need to convince people in a way that resonates with their lived experience? Roderic Day has a good article that argues against “brainwashing” being a thing (which is quite related to how “emotional inception” is supposed to work).
Apart from giving us directions on what method to employ there’s also a kind of problematic view of humans that’s associated with this Pavlovian narrative. I will try to paint a picture: assume that humans are inherently irrational and can be emotionally incepted/brainwashed, then there’s no point in educating people at all because the empire will always have more resources than us and just pump out funny memes associating that “good feeling” with empire. Even worse, if people can just gobble up stuff based on vibes, why should the working class rule at all?
I’m not dissing what you said in general or insinuating that you actually believe people are fundamentally irrational, I just wanted to push back on this particular narrative because even though it seems harmless at first glance, it can do real damage (e.g. Orwell is famous for this, arguing that the working class are stupid sheeple).
The answer to this problem is that humans don’t generally believe things because they are bombarded with extreme amounts of high quality propaganda, rather they accept (and seek out) the information that gives them license to feel good about themselves and the situation they are in and ignore facts that don’t fit this narrative. I’d say almost all racist/colonial narratives work by this mechanism. It’s not that people turn racist because the media paints e.g. Africans/Asians as barbarians or whatever, rather people need to justify why the Global South is still impoverished and thinking of them as inferior (a racist trope) solves the contradiction. The truth of imperial plunder leads to dangerous conclusions: “I can’t keep my cheap stuff!”, “We’ll be poor like them!”
This is a good point. I still think the curiosity bit about 201dberg’s theory works well.
Ditto to all this. Memes on gzd that I didn’t understand at first were vital to my radicalization.