By David Futrelle
That /pol/ campaign to smear the anti-fascist left with fake memes suggesting AntiFas support domestic violence against women, children, and the elderly? The one that I and others exposed yesterday as nothing more than a political dirty trick?
Racist fantasy author and all-around terrible person Theodore “Vox Day” Beale thinks it was a smashing success — and something to be proud of.
In a post today, Beale hails the supposed “brilliance” of the fake-meme Tweeters — despite their meme campaign being so transparently dishonest it was recognized as a fraud almost instantly. In Beale’s mind, this is “rhetorical meme magic” at work.
“Remember,” he writes,
the most effective rhetoric communicates truth without necessarily being literally truthful in the details. It persuades through emotion, not reason … .
This from someone who wrote an entire book complaining that “SJWs always lie.”
To those on his side who worry that all this constant lying might backfire, destroying the credibility of the alt-right and its fellow travelers, Beale has nothing but contempt, denouncing what he calls “dialectic-speaking spergs” for “cling[ing] to the belief that ‘credibility’ is the key to successful persuasion.”
Beale, who evidently isn’t much worried about his own credibility, has done his part to push the fake memes, urging his followers to spread the memes around and even posting several on Twitter himself, alongside such comments as “[t]here is no place for the violence and savagery of the #AltLeft in civilized society.”
Never mind that the particular “savagery” he is denouncing here — AntiFa’s supposed support of domestic violence — is something his 4chan pals have simply made up.
Naturally, Beale’s followers are enthusiastic about this particular form of “persuasion.”
“These meme wars are, from a sales perspective, BRILLIANT,” declares someone called dc.sunsets.
They’re the poster child of how Madison Avenue does product packaging in order to manipulate people into buying landfill-filling crap they don’t need.
Huh. What does that say about the ideology they’re trying to sell?
In a followup comment , dc.sunsets adds that
literal truth, veracity or “evidence” doesn’t matter. All it takes is a grain of truth, even a seed of plausibility, to leverage POWERFUL, emotion-level, irresistible re-framing.
Re-framing. That’s my word of the month, possibly year, and perhaps decade.
Reaching into people’s subconscious and turning them like pancakes. (heh, heh, heh.)
A commenter called Cail Corishev, meanwhile, has some advice for those wanting to make their own fake memes. “[I]f there’s a man’s fist in the image,” he writes, “try to make it a fat or wimpy, liberal-looking fist, not a real man’s.”
Ah yes, the good old “liberal-looking fist” ploy. Sixty percent of the time, it persuades every time!
THAT sounds hilarious! Plus: BIGOT FIGHT! I love it when jerks eat their own. Those guys pummeling that Kek-dork think they’re so much more noble and adult but they believe the exact same garbage!
CONCERNING PEPE THE FROG….
When I heard the story behind what Pepe really is, who his creator is and the fact that the Alt-Reich basically stole the another guy’s comic character and cruelly subverted him, I feel bad.
The REAL Pepe is a complete opposite of what bigot’s say he represents. Pepe the Frog is basically a gentle, peace-loving, hippy-dippy Cheech & Chong-ish stoner froggie. His creator, Matt Furie, is a Progressive who supported Bernie & Hillary in the last election.
The Alt-Right stealing Pepe was basically a cruel act of meme-based warfare. They plundered a goofy Lefty character and turned him into a Far-Right Hate symbol. Furie tried to “Save Pepe” but not many were on-board. Furie felt he had to kill the character to release himself from being unjustly associated with a bunch of haters.
Sadly for Pepe; He couldn’t be reclaimed because….
* Most don’t know who Pepe really is. They only know him as some goofy talking frog that showed up on online posts one day without context.
* Like most memes, it had little substance and people aren’t going to rally behind something they were sick of already.
* Few know that Pepe is a character in a comic book series….but that series more of an underground collection of psychedelic surrealist vignettes as opposed to an actual coherent narrative (the basic premise sounds like it could be a coherent narrative: Four weird Monster/Critter dudebro stoner guys sharing an apartment and getting into silly situations).
* Pepe isn’t a famous, beloved icon like Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Kermit the Frog or even Spongebob Squarepants.
….If Pepe COULD be re-claimed, it would be a “BIG F.U.” to the Alt-Reich! Pepe’s a stoner! He’s Woodstock ’69, not Nuremberg ’33-’38! With a few tweaks….HE COULD BE OUR MASCOT!
Perhaps Furie could resurrect Pepe as Ms. Peppi. She’ll be the same original Pepe but reborn due to the arcane magic of a Jimi Hendrix psychedelic jam played by a cemetery caretaker’s boom box.
Ms. Peppi looks like Pepe but wears tie-dye and female. She is very Liberal and can’t be subverted! She also own a cool Antifa jacket. She’s also more intelligent, has magical powers but is still a loopy super-stoner goofball like Pepe.
The Nazi Pepe will be referred to as Der Pepiganger the evil doppelganger who murdered the original Pepe.
Furie should tweak the comic format so that it follows some sort of story narrative or sitcom logic rather than a fever dream. It can still be surreal but more….coherent surreal. An actual thing with plot and stuff rather than a bunch of fever dreams. They need not be complex. Just tweak it and give it a broader appeal.
….I have Matt Furie’s Tumblr among my Tumblr likes. I could message him with my advice and give some suggestions that might help out with giving “Save Pepe” a fighting chance.
I’m one of the few who sees Progressive potential in Pepe The Frog. He’s a stoner Cheech & Chong Frog with a “Spanish”-sounding name. I’m weird.
Congrats. Jesalin!
You’ve heard of “Schrodinger’s Immigrant?” Simultaneously too lazy to work and stealing your job? I think they have equivalents for everyone they dislike — the general version is “weak and pathetic, and simultaneously the evil secret empire who have taken over society.”
(Schrodinger’s homosexuality — unnatural and yet so attractive that if it isn’t constantly persecuted, all humanity will abandon heterosexuality and cease to reproduce! Schrodinger’s woman — too ugly to fuck, yet ensnaring men with her wiles!)
Hello.
Congratulations to Jesalin.
> Saskatoon
Strangely, it makes me think about some kind of a portmanteau of a Sasquatch Racoon (which is something which does not exist, but yet…).
> On topic
It is strange this obsession with this idea they have to be (master) persuaders (too much Scottadamsology ?), or worse, that they are already that. You are not a persuader if you tell something the person already believe or would like to believe.
Nota : re-framing is also part of PUA vocabulary. Coincidence ? I think not.
Have a nice day.
Scildfreja
I love saskatoons. They’re common ornamentals in public parks where I live, but few people eat the berries, or know what the plant is called in Finnish.
(The name is tuomipihlaja, coined to indicate apparent likeness with the native bird cherry and kinship with the native rowan.)
@MMM:
Trollish inhabitants of one forum “raiding” another?
OlderThanTheyThink: older than Windows 95. The invasion of rec.pets.cats comes to mind in particular.