People are able to communicate ideas with millions of people worldwide in seconds. The world has progressed quite a bit in the information age. This has contributed to the US having a COVID death toll of over one million, higher than most other countries worldwide. Memes, while powerful, can be used by malicious actors such as far-right groups and anti-vaxx groups to peddle false information. These anti-vaxx groups used social media like Facebook and Reddit to spread memes full of misinformation and pseudo-science It can also be argued that memes were effective tools in spreading misinformation around the elections of 20 in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic mediated a sizeable but modest anti-vaccine movement in countries like the United States, Canada, and Germany. Being a powerful tool for spreading information, there is also the use of memes for spreading misinformation. This shows that memes can have the power to influence elections (albeit slightly) and topple oppressive regimes. Memes have also influenced major world events like the 2016 election in the United States and the Arab Spring revolutions in the early 2010’s, which garnered immense media attention through the use of internet memes and viral media. The meme was so badly abused by these far-right actors that it was listed as a hate symbol by the ADL. Based on a character by Matt Furie, this meme was abused by the alt right, being depicted as controversial figures such as Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump. One great example of a meme that has been subject to abuse by malicious actors is Pepe the frog. These kinds of memes are easily identifiable by their bias towards a specific issue and their often-political message. In fact, one influencer, who goes by Sandman MGTOW, often posts such misogynistic memes and videos on his Twitter and YouTube channel. Indeed, such male supremacist organizations are not strangers to using memes and viral media to propagate their ideas and recruit young men and boys to their cause. Even toxic subcultures like MGTOW serve as a pipeline towards the incel movement. However, memes have been subject to abuse by malicious groups and actors.įrom the Blue Whale Challenge, an internet challenge that resulted in multiple suicides worldwide, to terrorist organizations like ISIS, which use internet memes to recruit young people, memes can be used for malicious purposes. They have quite a bit of cultural significance and can be based on almost anything, provided they achieve viral status. Memes have been a means of transmitting messages for centuries, proliferating immensely in recent decades due to their mass proliferation through the internet and their ability to broadcast messages to a massive audience. But what happens when they are used for malicious purposes? Internet memes are an excellent way to send powerful messages to millions of people.
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