The rise of Digital Memetic Vigilantism Reframing meme culture, social justice & social accountability.

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The rise of Digital Memetic Vigilantism

Reframing meme culture, social justice & social accountability.

University of Amsterdam (UvA)

Master of Arts (MA): New Media and Digital Culture Supervisor: Natalia Sánchez Querubín

Second Reader: Daniel de Zeeuw 28.06.2019

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Memes progression from subcultural media objects, to their insertion into mainstream media, politics and activism, has provided the ideological scaffoldings for a newly proposed, activist element of memetics: Digital Memetic Vigilantism (DMV). Intimately entwined with politics, social justice and social accountability, this concept follows that; the public can ‘call out’ individuals, governments and/or systems for unjust actions and behaviours, turning them into memetic tools that shape and shift narratives. DMV becomes a particularly useful tool for minority groups who face socio-political adversity, as the memes works as a template for mobilization and the generation of a critical network. Memes reflect a digital culture in dialogue with the offline public sphere, facilitated by symbols. This research specifically found how DMV (a) through the amplification and/or contestation from different media spheres, shifts narratives of ‘public space’ (b) has the capability to dismantling threats by mitigating a climate of fear, generating narratives that seek to, ridicule, reflect and change normative powers, and (c) within its coded humorous vernacular, memes have the ability to foster solidarity and healing in the face of socio-political adversity. DMV talks back to normative power, and in its path, pokes fun at it.

key words: social justice, digital vigilantism, memetics, politics, social accountability, digital memetic vigilantism, power, narratives, minorities, socio-political adversity, public space, dismantle threats, coping mechanisms.

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acknowledgements

I would like to first and foremost thank my supervisor, Natalia, for her continued support, guidance and help during this project – her supervision helped shape the paper for the better, allowing my ideas to flourish whilst continuously providing new insight.

I would secondly also like to dedicate this paper to my parents, who always taught me to be kind to others, to always be proud of my Lebanese and Caribbean heritage, and to always fight for what I believe in.

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Chapter 1:

Introduction – reframing meme culture, social justice &

social accountability.

BBQ Becky, Permit Patty, Pool Patrol Paula, Coupon Carl & Cornerstone Caroline. The rhyming alliterative nicknames that sound like funny caricatures from a children’s book, are in fact memetic tools rallying against racism. On April 29th_{2018 Jennifer Schulte called the police, reporting a} family barbequing in a park in Laker Merrit, Oakland (Hanson, 2018). The call was one of the several high-profile examples of racial profiling in the U.S. Everyday activities when performed by brown or black people, become vilified, and turned into acts of transgression. As bystanders and victims rose their phones in the air, the instance got recorded, shared on social media, and transformed into memetic tools, dubbing the woman BBQ Becky, transforming and remixing images of the woman and imbuing them “with powerful symbology” (Mina, 2019, p.118). Similar was the faith of Permit Patty and others who followed a similar narrative, namely that of white people calling the cops on black people for doing mundane activities.

This narrative is one of many that started to vividly play out on a public stage after Donald Trump’s rise to presidency in 2016. Those dogmatically married to the belief system of Trump started to anchor a sense of objective reality – one that gave power to the quintessential distillation of white culture. The political petulance of Trump framed itself into a meme - one amplified by the public, mainstream media, and social media (Mina, 2019, p.108). Memes, “generally made of an image with a short and witty text, an animated gif or a manipulated photo” seeped their way into “Trump’s America” (Rowan, 2018). These memes took on a distinctively American character, “expressing a plethora of contrasting and incompatible views (Mina, 2019, p.99). In fear of “white identity” being under attack, the alt-right (as a trolling and media culture) voiced their memetic outcry against liberalism, feminism and multiculturalism (Mina, 2019, p.100). The left voiced a counter-outcry, one that challenged narratives that normalize the distribution of power and the historical erasure of the Other. This thesis concerns itself with the latter memetic-outcry, tapping into memes that evoke a fight for social justice in opposition to so-called Trump’s America, investigating how memetic strategies can challenge power and lay the groundwork for broader conversations.

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Trump came with an incendiary rhetoric directed against minorities framed with his own ‘catchy’ slogans and memes. ‘Make America Great Again’, refers to an American tradition that subjugates African Americans “to a second-class citizenry” (Gause, 2018, p.255). Similarly, Trump’s ‘Build that Wall’ slogan became a monument to white nationalism, deeming immigrant’s invisible, yet different, stating; “they’re bringing crime, they’re rapist” (Reilly, 2016). Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim immigration further reiterated a white nationalist ideology, claiming Muslims consists of a “rich pool of potential recruiting targets for Islamic terror groups” (Romero, 2018, p.39). Trumps initial victory, followed by the continued vocalization and visibility of right-wing ideologies allowed for its increased cultural absorption. In order to challenge this visibility, people take to the streets, raising their phones, recording what is happening around them, spreading it online through hashtags and memes, encouraging citizen engagement. From Nationwide #FamiliesBelongTogether rallies, gathering thousands of people on June 14th marching in opposition to Trump’s immigration policies, to the #BlackLivesMatter movement advocating for justice for the killings of unarmed black men and women as a result of police brutality (Bonilla, 2015, p.4). From the young undocumented #Dreamers movement (Milkman, 2017, p.1), to the #NoMuslimBanEver movement protesting Trump’s travel ban that restricts nationals from Muslim Countries entry to the United States (Kurtz, 2018). These online movements visualized a new form of memetic contention. From hashtags and memes, to online mobilization and street protest – the new tools of social media have reinvented what it means to strive for social justice, and how to do it. The parallel diffusion of social media as a political space as well as the hyper visibility of social unrest around the world, raised questions about the role of social media in sparking dissent, protest and other forms of “contentious politics” (Valenzuela, 2013, p.920). The surge of right-wing voices, dehumanization of minorities and police brutality on people of colour, exposed a fragmented socio-political society where individuals have to seek solidarity. Shared solidarity becomes anchored in the affordances of the internet. Memes and hashtag culture aid mobilization, network creation and civic engagement. Internet memes in particular hold a unique power, representing a contemporary way of doing politics aligned with millennial culture and sensibilities. Memes have gone from being an internet phenomenon to becoming “an element that is omnipresent in our digital and media imaginary” (Rowan, 2018). The memefication of politics becomes an ideal vessel for social visibility and reflectivity, as memes work like mirrors, “reflecting, amplifying and distorting culture” (Mina, 2019, p.184). As memes react and reshape culture by creating symbols, slogans and narratives, understanding how patterns and waves of meme culture reflect culture more broadly, exposes their potential in shaping change.

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The coming together of memes, politics and participation has motivated an amalgam of academic studies, that have focused on (1) its trolling semantics, such as Whitney Philips’ (2015) This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, (2) its political persuasion such as Benita Heiskanen’s (2017) Meme-ing Electoral Participation, and (3) its ability to frame grass-root social movements such as Mina’s (2019) recent release of Memes to Movements. The latter study focuses on the activist element of memes, “such as the “pussy hats” in the 2017 Women’s March [which] showed a collective power and purpose” against Trumps “grab ‘em by the pussy” turning what was supposed to be a misogynist insult into a narrative that reclaimed it as their own (Mina, 2019, p.5-98). This thesis aims to insert itself within the latter meme culture, adding a fourth, and new wave of activist meme culture, bringing forward a new concept: Digital Memetic Vigilantism (DMV), that brings together meme culture, social justice and social accountability.

DMV builds on digital vigilantism, described as “a process where citizens are collectively offended by other citizen activity, and respond through coordinated retaliation on mobile devices and social platforms” (Trottier, 2017, p.55). DMV applies digital vigilantism to both meme culture and social justice theory, arguing that memes work as a form of civic engagement and social accountability. DMV argues that, the ‘calling out’ of individuals, governments and/or systems, through the politicization of memetics, shifts narratives of oppression and marginalization by challenging narratives of normative power. The application of DMV asks us, the citizens of the online, to use memetic tools to challenge and question the current political climate. Indeed, I ask, how is social media and specifically its memetic affordances being employed by engaged users in contesting the environment of racism, xenophobia and bigotry? That is, are memetic affordances being employed to service the means towards social justice? And how may one study this activity and its impact? This phenomenon also offers an occasion for theoretical reconsideration about memes as part of political culture, away from far-right politics and towards social justice, and the ways in which memes challenge power not only through social movements, but through social accountability. This thesis will argue that memes aid to reclaim back space that historically has been deemed ‘white’, dismantle threats through mitigating a climate of fear, and facilitate coping mechanisms in a socio-political climate visibly in contestation with minority rights.

The coming chapter (Chapter 2) will provide a literature review, or rather a condensed overview of meme culture, its insertion into the mainstream, its role in American politics, leading to the eventual memefication of politics within activism. Chapter 3 will discuss the Social Connection

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operates, the ways in which to think about injustice and those who commit it, providing a frame upon which the new concept of Digital Memetic Vigilantism (DMV) will rest. Chapter 3 will analyze the theory of Digital Vigilantism (DV), in order to fully understand the scope of the newly proposed DMV, and the ways in which it operates within both Digital Vigilantism and social justice framings. Chapter 4 will present the methodology, asking; how does one organize an investigation of this phenomenon? Chapter 5, 6 and 7 present case studies which will apply the new framework of DMV, offering real-life instances to understand how and to what extent memetics have an ability to reclaim back space, dismantle threats, and facilitate coping mechanisms. “As history has shown, achieving equality in the face of great resistance will take many generations” (Mina, 2019, p.84). Whilst this thesis argues that the rise of DMV, is one of the ways in which this resistance is forming online, in dialogue with the offline, limitations to the research will be discussed in Chapter 8, providing concluding remarks in Chapter 9.

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Chapter 2:

Meme culture & the rise to Digital Memetic Vigilantism

The term ‘meme’ dates back to 1976, introduced by Richard Dawkins as a way to apply evolutionary theory to cultural changes, describing a meme as units of cultural transmission that get copied or imitated, similar to genes (Shifman, 2014, p.341). The term was used for years within academia but as the internet started to take a hold of the word, its meaning started to shift (Mina, 2019, p.20). Limor Shifman (2014), in his book Memes in Digital Culture defines internet memes as "the “propagation of content such as jokes, rumours, videos from one person to others via the Internet” (p.362). The term has dynamically been discussed by academics, offering different definitions and aspects of memetics, with many using memes to understand aspects of society, politics and culture, just as Shifman (Philips 2015; Ross 2016; Nissenbaum & Shifman 2017; Mina 2019). This paper will use Shifman’s definition of memes as it takes on the distinctive characteristics of digital internet memes. Schifman defines memes as; “(a) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics…which (b) were create with awareness of each other, and (c) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via internet by many users” (2014, p.41). Participatory Media Scholar Ryan Milner (2016) discusses how, memetic media, premised on participation by re-appropriation within their common characteristics, mutual awareness and transformative circulation, have an ability to complicate ideas into the singularity of media texts (p.68). Simply said, their ability to copy, mimic, remix and repackage the same memetic vernacular for different social shared phenomenon’s or single events allows the virtual dissemination of a shared message. Although a quick glance on social media might present a seemingly chaotic intersecting network of memes, the exchange of memes is predominantly “a product of societal and communal coordination, whereby meme creators depend upon the content and stance of the meme fitting within the worldview of their digital community in order for the meme to survive, spread, and be remixed” (Ross, 2016, p.2).

Within our participatory information society, memes dress up our cultural tapestry, vocalizing our public conversations on a larger and louder scale through hashtags, remixed photos and mashed-up videos that dominate our media, mainly social media spheres (Milner, 2016, p.41). Social media now does not solely hold a static top-down influence, but is increasingly seeing the amplification of differing voices within the media sphere, pushed by memetic media’s creative contribution (Milner, 2016, p.42). Even if “age-old limitation and marginalization persist in the midst of this vibrancy”, a push further away from a static top-down system is becoming more and

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texts and broader conversations” exposing people to each other and exposing each others ideas to each other, expanding the range of acceptable cultural discourse. (Milner, 2016, p.42; Mina, 2019, p.122). Memes can make you laugh, or harmlessly comment on daily life, they can be destructive, or they can encompass extremely serious matters, and they can be all these things at the same time (Mina, 2019, p.6). The ways in which use memes, the ways in which we apply them to offline culture, and what they have meant for social discourse continuously shifts. Memes have a history, cyclically changing what part of its frame stands center stage; from subcultural trolling, to mainstream politics, to activism and as I will argue, towards social accountability and social justice – becoming a marker of identity and community as they float through our media spaces.

2.1 Memes as obscure and subcultural objects

Memes consist of their own lingua franca, a bridge language so to say, which unites participatory online collectives (Philips, 2015, p.74). Whitney Philips (2015) in her book, This is Why We Cant Have Nice Things, discusses the latter point, capturing trolls’ use of the term memes. Philips (2015) states how the online term for trolling all center around a behavioral practice predicated on certain aspects of disruption, deception, and inciting responses and paranoia (p.57-62). Subcultures within society are usually formed through a need to “create and express autonomy and difference” from the accepted societal norms and behaviours (Hebdige, 1979, p.77). It’s driven from a need to express contradictions which society has kept hidden or rather deemed transgressive or anomalous (Hebdige, 1979, p.78).

Philips (2015) traces ‘modern’ subcultural trolling, and one of its catalysts, to the site 4chan, a forum based on the Japanese 2chan where users would share Japanese anime (p.63). The basis of the site was inspired by a “NSFW Something Awful subforum called “Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse” (Philips, 2015, p.63). Working as a simple anonymous image board forum, its vernacular progressively shifted to a space with its own “lexicon and behavior norms” where the appropriation of the term troll became a point of self identification (Philips, 2015, p.64). Angela Nagle (2017) in her book, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and Alt-Right, discusses how the site “became a massively influential and creative forum known for pranks, memes and images that ‘cannot be unseen’ [where] the culture of anonymity fostered an environment where users went to air their darkest thoughts” (p.31). Philips (2015) states that from around 2003-2011, subcultural trolling within a forum called the /b/board, “were

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Trolls’ ability to “reference, recognize and remix existing memes helps fortify a basic sense of trolling identity” (Philips, 2015, p.75). Where self-identification becomes the frame through which trolls position themselves, ‘lulz’ is what holds up this frame (Philips, 2015, p.82). ‘Lulz’ defined as a “particular kind of unsympathetic, ambiguous laughter” works as the motivating factor that drives their memetic media formation (Philips, 2015, p.82). Within this framing, trolls base this ‘lulz’ from the premise that “nothing should be taken seriously, therefore regarding public displays of sentimentality, political conviction and/or ideological rigidity as a call to trolling arms” (Philips, 2015, p.84). Allowing this frame to stand up with self-assurance is the celebration of anonymity, allowing trolls to engage in transgressive behavior that would arguably not be replicated within public settings (Philips, 2015, p.84).

Trolls frequently target vulnerable population through racist, sexist and hateful language targeting African Americans, women and the LGBTQ community (Philips, 2015, p.83). With that said, Philips (2015) notes that historically dominant groups also become subject to lulz, particularly with “White Christians and Republicans, along with groups of white people committed to a cause” becoming targets of ‘lulz’ (p.83). Given its large cultural ubiquity, memetic media (whether deemed in trolling semantics or not) allows polyvocal public participation where a multitude of “voices can connect and converse—as well as argue and antagonize—by employing memetic logics, grammar, and vernacular.” (Milner, 2016, p.285).

2.2 Mainstreaming memes

Whilst memes existed and were conceptualized before the digital era, the unique features of the internet, and particularly social media, “turned their diffusion into a ubiquitous and highly visible routine” (Schifman, 2014, 362). As Philips (2015) reiterated, many popular memes that ideologically maintained a lack of seriousness, “originally initiated within, or were amplified by subcultural trolls” (p.375). As memes became increasingly diffused in social media and the mainstream, so did many aspects of trolling culture, allowing the two diffuse to the point where “the existence of memes no longer guaranteed the existence of trolls” (Philips, 2015, p.376). The shift from subculture to mainstream media was contested from subcultural trolls, as it was viewed as a commodification of its culture (Philips, 2015, p.376). Meme generating sites such as, Know Your Meme (KYM) “helped democratize a space that had previously been restricted to [subcultural trolls] – inadvertently codifying what once has been an evolving repertoire of shared

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vernacular, allowed for its increased visibility in the mainstream as well as adding to the ease at which memetics can be created (Wiggins, 2015, p.1892; Philips, 2015, p.381). This visibility reached a peak in 2012 when American universities created meme pages on Facebook, encouraging students to create memes about their institution (Philips, 2015, p.385). Its transferal to social media platforms flowed smoothly within the sharing and creating affordances of social media, where its spread on a micro-basis had and has an impact on the macro level (Schifman, 2014, p.365). Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube “are based on the propagation of content of users by users for users” (Schifman, 2014, p.365). These affordances of social media - “the share, the re-blog, the tag, the retweet – these recursive and reciprocating processes” allow for greater diffusion and visibility within the online and offline (Nooney, 2014, p.249). These affordances represent “express paths for meme diffusion where content spread by individuals can scale up to mass levels within hours” (Schifman, 2014, p.365). Within this digital ecosystem, memes become a cultural and social artifact that offer information about the culture that creates and uses it (Wiggins, 2015, p.1891). Memes therefore can be said to hold up the underlying structure of participatory digital culture on social media (Schifman, 2014, p.342). Within mainstream media, “the communities that produce digital content are also often the ones that consume and interpret it” (Schifman, 2014, p.342). Participating and creating within the norms and codes of memetics, is vital for its virality and community building as it creates a “sense of community in a fragmented world” (Schifman, 2014, p.342). A scroll through platforms such as Instagram or Facebook represents a frontal onslaught of memes, all within a rigid memetic vernacular, whilst covering a wide range of topics. Within memetics, the question we ask is, how can memetics be useful for the understanding digital culture, and in turn the offline culture as well? More specifically, as social media becomes more of a political space – how do memes play a role within that?

The power of memes, and its hyper insertion into mainstream politics became particularly evident in the 2016 US presidential election. Social Media platforms have provided a useful avenue for political participation and engagement. Whilst memes had circulated within social media platforms during the 2008 and 2012 U.S. elections, the 2016 election saw “a new level of creation and distribution” not only from the public but from the candidates and their parties as well (Ross, 2016, p.285). An image posted to Instagram by, Donald Trump Jr., showing his father, Donald Trump, photoshopped alongside his advisor, campaign surrogates, Trumps middle son, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Breitbart news editor and 4chan enthusiast Milo Yiannopoulos, vice president Mike Pence and Trump himself as Pepe the Frog, tagged ‘The Deplorables’ – a

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remixed image of a still from the action film The Expendables (Philips, 2018, p.3). Pepe the frog was another meme that circulated social media spaces during the election and was even glorified in a post by Donald Trump himself (Beran, 2017). Pepe, like so many other memes, was born on the “random” boards of 4chan, symbolizing an embracing of loserdom and owning it (Beran, 2017) It is, simply said, “a value system, one revelling in deplorableness and being pridefully dispossessed” (Beran, 2017). Memes like these exploded on the internet during the 2016 election, with the right glorifying alt-right ideologies and 4chan’s value system, and the left laughing at Trumps “brash confidence and then outrageous incompetence” (Beran, 2017). Although arguing that memes like these were the full driving force in the electoral win for Trump might be an overstatement, “there is little question they changed its tone, especially in the fast-moving and influential currents of social media [as] the meme battalions created a mass of pro-Trump iconography as powerful as the Obama ‘Hope’ poster” and one that was far more adaptable (Schreckinger et al, 2017). These memes managed to provoke “a variety of real-world reactions, from Clinton’s August speech denouncing the alt-right to the Anti-Defamation League’s designation of Pepe as a hate symbol” (Schreckinger et al, 2017). The decentralized efforts of those flooding social media with pro-Trump, anti- Hilary Clinton propaganda was quickly called The Great Meme War (Schreckinger et al, 2017). Whether meant to critically engage with the memes or not, the exposure to the extremist ideologies portrayed in the memes gave “a level of visibility and legitimacy [to the trollers] that they could scarcely believe, as nationalist and supremacist ideology metastasized from culturally peripheral to culturally principal in just a few short months” (Philips, 2018, p.5).

2.3 The joke: a political tool for activism

As The Great Meme War made use of jokes as a political tool, so did those contesting Trump and his ideologies. Memes started to create a counter-narrative, engaging in politics, but in way that constructed a resistance to patterns of power and subordination - one that asked for public debates, public awareness and one that affirmed a critical network of individuals putting racism, xenophobia and bigotry on the public agenda.

Through repetition, memes become a form of affirmation, often framed in humor, “helping us laugh through extremely difficult times” (Mina, 2019, p.27). Its ability to sustain itself within social media spheres can be accredited to their representation of culture, through humor, satire and/or irony. Humor has been known to be a critical element in communication (Taecharungroj,

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2015, p.288). The ability of memes to carry various cultural ideas and content through humor, gives it the ability to generate a response that sustains with multiple individuals and/or groups. It’s a loop of self-reference with tactical knowledge on socio-political and socio-cultural ideologies. Whilst many popular memes are of the non-serious type, using humor to frame a relatable instance or social phenomenon, allows it to uncover multiple omnipresent socio-political truths as well. Memes dissolve themselves within socio-political realms, passing through virtual walls, becoming an open-source weapon of politics (Metahaven, 2013, p.53). Metahaven (2013), in Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? tags the joke as the highest form of power – “jokes when politically effective, performs what everybody knew but couldn’t say” (p.56). Memes have arguably escaped (for the most part) the confines of early internet forums such as 4chan and have become a useful tool in targeting political struggles. Metahaven argues that when the disruption of the symbolic order happens at both the physical and the communicative level, that the demand for change is at its most powerful (Metahaven, 2013, p.60). The meme encompasses both the physical, as the joke in the meme, and communicative, as the narrative that sparks from it.

“As they raised their hands and fists, they also raised their phone – to document, share, and network with protests across the country” (Mina, 2019, p.1).

Research done by Southern Poverty Law center shows that the number of hate groups operating across America rose to a record high in 2018 as “Trump continued to fan the flames of white resentment over immigration and the country’s changing demographics” (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019). Those fighting for justice became increasingly concerned with what they saw as an increasing encroachment on their democratic rights (Mina, 2019, p.2). The internet became an ideal vessel for movements to garner visibility and gain mobilization, “channeling their energies to the streets and to the web” (Mina, 2019, p.3). The streets were filled with symbols of empowerment such as, the aforementioned pink pussy hats, reclaiming the word pussy in a response to Trumps infamous recording where, talking about women, he voiced “grab ‘em by the pussy, you can do anything” (Mina, 2019, p.5). Symbolism became even more apparent in the signs carried around in protest using images and sayings that were, and are evidently part of a larger internet vernacular, particularly that of a memetic vernacular. The diffusion of memes in society is larger than just the internet, “from streets to the offices of our political leaders, from the Right to the Left, scribbled onto signs, stenciled on our streets, worn on our heads and posted back online” (Mina, 2019, p.7). It reaps the question, how and what role do memes play in todays social justice movements? Memes continuously diffuse from person to person but tend to shape and reflect general social mindsets and its this exact reason that within social movements, memes

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become a tool in forming collectives (Shifman, 2014, p.5). Sharing and creating becomes different means to the same ends, namely that of making meaningful connections (Mina, 2019, p.21). Mina (2019) quotes New York Time columnist Zeynep Tufekci, noting memes as one of the internets “greatest contributions to social movements” (p.21):

“the rise of symbolic action – clicking on like or tweeting about a political subject – though long derided as slacktivism, may well turn out to be one of the more potent impacts from digital tools in the long run, as wide spread use of such semi-public symbolic micro-actions can slowly reshape how people make sense of their values and their politics” (p.21).

This new way of doing politics online is frequently tagged as slacktivism, described in its “disconnect between awareness and action through the use of social media” (Glenn, 2015, p.8) More specifically it has also been deemed as a will to “perform a relatively costless, token display [through likes, retweets, shares, etc.) of support for a social cause, with an accompanying lack of willingness to devote significant effort to enact meaningful change” (Kristofferson, 2013, p.1149). Although slacktivism, argues a valid point of discussion (the risk of trend following activism, facilitated by a like-and-share culture), research has examined that the token of support provides social observability, which plays an important part in changing behaviours and perceptions (Kristofferson, 2013, p.1149). Further research also shows that “online engagement is key to turning a protest into a social movement and in prolonging its lifespan” (Groetzinger, 2015). On a more general sense, the usage of memes within social movements breaks a certain pluralistic ignorance; the idea that the beliefs of a group aren’t shared by their peers (Mina, 2019, p.21). Memes amplify messages and “create a pipeline for participation that extends beyond the meme itself, seeping into media environments, where new narratives get created (Mina, 2019, p.25). Their accessibility, relatable-ness and transformability are all tools that increase the “ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations” (Mina, 2019, p.25). The same (memetic) dynamic that allows cat memes go viral, also helps “push new perspectives and narratives” (Mina, 2019, p.25). The more people start to understand that their creative voice within the dynamics of the silly can also be used in the serious, the more memes start to reflect peoples own values and perspectives. Memes are varied, complex and contain the social currency of our existing political public spaces, intertwining the silly and the serious. It’s within the accessibility that technology and new media

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provides that the creation of memes becomes possible – knowing how to make a cat meme, means you know how to make a political meme – “and therein lies the revolution” (Mina, 2019, p.25). It is this social activist feature of memes, that I wish to contribute to, adding new digital research into meme culture, social justice and social accountability by introducing the new concept, Digital Memetic Vigilantism. DMV is proposed as a new weapon of democracy through which individuals, governments, and/or systems are held accountable (of oppression and marginalization) by “unsettling the structure of the encounter between the oppressed and oppressor” (Metahaven, 2013, p.74). In order to fully grasp DMV as a global player and political instrument in society, it is vital to understand its connection to social justice framings, as will be discussed in the next chapter, Defining DMV through social justice framings.

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Chapter 3:

Defining DMV through social justice framing

The backbone of DMV lays in its interaction with social justice. In order to understand how DMV operates, it is essential to understand the ways in which oppression operates in society.

The term social justice is broad, encompassing many diametrically opposed visions of society, religion, culture, politics and the economy – yet still, all those visions, march under the overarching banner of ‘social justice’. The twentieth century had notable contributions to the framing of social justice, mainly focused on fair distribution of tangible and intangible societal goods (Mill1970; Rawls, 1971). Further theories building on Scholars such as Mill and Rawls tried to offer solutions to some of the problems with the theories, particularly those excluded by the initial assumption of sameness (Nussbaum 2006; Sen, 2010). This paper will focus on feminist scholar Iris Young. Iris Young’s (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference, accounts for a view on justice that looks at injustice and oppression – arguing that the scope of justice is much wider than distributive issues (p.24-38). Young (1990) argues that justice should encompass “the institutional conditions necessary for the development and exercise of individual capacities and collective communication and cooperation” (p.39).

Young (1990) describes oppression as the process that inhibits individuals’ ability to communicate and exist with others, as well as express feelings and perspectives on social life (p.38). This occurs due to the ways in which society systemically prevents certain individuals “from learning and using satisfying and expansive skills in socially recognized settings” (Young, 1990, p.38). Domination, for Young (1990) exists within institutional conditions which “inhibit or prevent people from participating” in having autonomy over their actions or the “conditions of their actions” (p.38). Domination in public spaces become constructed around who has power, and who can exert that power without consequences (Young, 1990, p.38). Young (1990) argues that although oppressed group are not homogenous in their experiences, minority groups in an “abstract sense…face a common condition” (p.40) Young (1990) describes this common condition as a certain inhibition in the ability to fully develop and exercise their capacities and “express their needs, thoughts and feelings” (p.40). Young’s five faces of oppression; exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence - all exist within different realms of structural and institutional frames that restrict resources, opportunities, ability to exercise capacities, as well as framing injustice in terms of invisibility and stereotyping that marks minority groups as the Other (Young, 1990, p.58-59). Although exploitation is a vital element of

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Hispanics and Latinos1_{become oppressed through, “superexploitation resulting from a} segmented labor market that tends to reserve skilled, high-paying, unionized jobs for whites” (Young, 1990, p.51), Young states that this is not the only way in which oppression operates. Marginalization, the second face of oppression, for Young (1990) goes beyond distribution, and entails “the deprivation of cultural, practical and institutionalized conditions”, limiting the interaction and recognition and capacities of a group (p.53). Within this, many groups face a sense of powerlessness, described by Young (1990) as a lack of authority and/or power (p.56). This powerlessness is constructed when power is exercised over a group through orders and rules, without the ability to exercise that power back (Young, 1990, p.56). These individuals rarely participate in making decisions that affect the conditions of their lives and actions (Young, 1990, p.56). Framing both marginalization and powerlessness is cultural imperialism; the universalization of one dominant group (including their experiences and cultures) as the norm in society (Young, 1990, p.59). Defined as the norm, this group attains cultural status, becomes the dominant cultural product of society and attains dominant cultural expression and identity (Young, 1990, p.59). In interaction with other groups, the dominant group “reinforces its position by bringing the other groups under the measure of its dominant norms” (Young, 1990, p.59). The dominant groups cultural expressions, values, goals and achievements receive wide dissemination, and therefore the differences which other groups in society exhibit get seen as “lack and negation”, making these groups the Other (Young, 1990, p.59). The stereotypes of the Other “confine them to a nature which is often attached in some way to their bodies” (Young, 1990, p.59). As the Other, many groups face violence. Young (1990) notes that many oppressed groups suffer from systemic violence, living with “the knowledge that they must fear random, unprovoked attacked on their persons and property which have no motive but to damage, humiliate, or destroy the person” (p.61). Whilst many of these come in the form of physical attacks, many forms of systemic violence are also formed through “harassment, intimidation or ridicule simply for the purpose of degrading, humiliating, or stigmatizing group members” (Young, 1990, p.61). This violence is systematic purely for the fact that a majority of the violence is directed at members of minority groups, simply because they are member of that group (Young, 1_Although_{Hispanics and Latinos are “often grouped together as a single racial identity based solely on similar} histories and the common language of Spanish” (Ramos, 2015, p.66). Generally, those who have a Spanish ancestry can “be considered Hispanic, while Latino is considered a much broader term that includes anyone from the regions of Central America, South America, and the Caribbean” (Ramos, 2015, p.66).

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1990, p.62). Young (1990) states that an important aspect of (random) systemic violence is its irrationality, frequently motivated by fear or hatred of groups (p.62). The motive from the dominant group then becomes a reach towards “power, to victimize those marked as vulnerable by the very social fact that they are subject to violence” (Young, 1990, p.62-63).

These five faces of oppression produce certain questions; how exactly can minority groups reclaim back space that have systemically been constructed around white culture and power? How can minority groups who live with the fear or threat of violence, dismantle the structures that keep those systems of violence running? How can minority groups cope with the powerlessness felt in being the Other? These questions are the main queries this thesis aims to answer through the application of DMV, in interaction with what Young (2011) calls the social connection model – stipulating ways to think about injustice.

3.1 The social connection model

Whilst Young’s five faces of oppression work as a criterion for “determining whether individuals and groups are oppressed”, understanding how to think about structural injustice is another vital frame for analyzing whether memes (through DMV) are carving a path towards social justice (Young, 1990, p.64). Young’s (2011) last book (before she passed away), Responsibility for Justice, proposes a model in which to think about structural injustice both on the individual and organizational level, namely the social connection model (p.95). The model seeks to balance the causal responsibility that comes with injustice, where something needs to be done to rectify humanly caused injustice as well as taking into account that injustice is structurally produced and reproduces by thousands or yet millions of people and systems (Young, 2011, p.95). Young mentions five ways in which the social connection model (SCM) thinks about injustice and those who commit injustice. The model; (a) does not isolate perpetrators, (b) does bring background conditions under evaluation, (c) is forward looking, and (d) seeks collective actions (Young, 2011, p.105).

When not isolating perpetrators, Young (2011) states that the SCM calls for a departure from the act of isolating individuals, in where the sanction or compensation is for “them and them alone” (p.105). In the social connection model, which seeks to include structural injustice, “finding that some people are guilty of perpetrating specific wrongful actions dos not absolve others whose

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p.106). Young (2011) notes that within structural injustice, those producing and reproducing the injustice are usually subconsciously acting within accepted norms and rules of society that systemically disadvantage minorities (p.106). When judging structural injustice, Young (2011) notes, that it is exactly the normal and accepted conditions (that allow that injustice to occur) that are being judged (p.107). Additionally, although the social connection model refers to both the past and future, its difference is in its temporal emphasis and priority (Young, 2011, p.108). The social connection model is forward-looking and seeks to assign “responsibility for structural social injustice”, where the action or event which “we seek to hold responsible” doesn’t reach a terminus but rather works to transform current processes which produce structural injustice (Young, 2011, p.109). Young’s (2011) idea of shared responsibility applies to normal and ongoing processes that occur in daily life by countless people instead of just the individual(s) who share similar attitudes that “create a climate that slows or encourages harm” (p.111). The final feature of the social connection model focuses on collective action (Young, 2011, p.111). Its forward-looking approach denotes that injustice can only be altered if “many actors from diverse positions within the social structures work together to intervene in them to try to produce other outcomes” (Young, 2011, p.111). Whilst seeking government action is a way in which to achieve certain structural changes, change usually involves collective action in civil society, independent of “or as a supplement to state policies and programs” and that usually “requires the active support of communities in order to be effective” (Young, 2011, p.112). The model allows us to ask how systems of oppression can be dismantled, more specifically asking, how can DMV, in its memefication of politics, can aid in exposing and challenging marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence? And more specifically, does DMV think about injustice within the frames of the social connection model?

3.2 The introduction of Digital Memetic Vigilantism

From obscure subcultural objects, to their insertion into the mainstream, memes now posit an important position in digital media culture. The seemingly simple images are encoded with cultural messages that have the power to drive movements, and as I will now propose, hold individuals, governments and/or systems accountable. The concept described above, refers to what I will call; Digital Memetic Vigilantism (DMV). How does DMV hold accountability and how can this be researched? In order to answer this, its important to first understand the theory upon which DMV is based, namely; Digital Vigilantism.

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Daniel Trottier (2017), in his text Digital Vigilantism as Weaponisations of Visibility, defines digital vigilantism (DV) as “a process where citizens are collectively offended by other citizen activity, and coordinate retaliation of mobile devices and social platforms” (p.55). This user-led civic engagement leverages digital media aimed at particular forms of engagement and empowerment for socio-political ends (Trottier, 2017, p.56). Both conventional justice (e.g crime), and unconvential justice (e.g online harassment) are put into place within these forms of vigilantism (Trottier, 2017, p.56). In practical terms DV is formally informed by the policing of online spaces in order to respond to “criminal events as well as the prevention and deterrence of potential transgression” (Trottier, 2017, p.57). Trottier (2017) states that DV pursues certain informational goals, namely the (a) “identification of a targeted individual or category of individual”, (b) articulation and understandings “about shared norms and values”, which consequently leads to (c) the expression of a mediated “collective identity that may be informed by national, religious or ethnic forms of solidarity” (p.57). Benjamin Loveluck (2016) in his text Digital Vigilance, Between Denunciation and Sanction, goes one step further, stating that DV does not only encompass the policing of the public and/or authorities but also of “doing justice to oneself by engaging in active forms of targeted surveillance, repression or deterrence, which primarily involve additional unsolicited attention or negative publicity” (p.1). Digital Media brings about new key features which drive the new mechanism of vigilantism. First, the online’s visibility drives the ease at which “information, data, and especially photos and audiovisual content can now be recorded, copied, shared and widely distributed” (Loveluck, 2016, p.8). The endless sea of people on social media bears the question then, will it reach its intended audiences? To what extent will this cause self-exposure? To what extent is the collapse of context a possibility? Does targeting one person, mean exposing their privacy? Will the trend-culture of mainstream media derail the act of vigilantism? (These limitations will further be discussed in Chapter 8). Second, Loveluck (2016) mentions how the specificity of online behavior is in their “propensity to self-regulate” (p.9). Within the online spheres of social media, these question are also situated within the regulation systems of social media platforms such as reporting systems and “automated detections of anomalies deployed under terms of use” (Loveluck, 2016, p.9). The dimension of DV beyond its privacy and legal concerns is situated within its capacity to “implement a form of direct sanction, in particular by discrediting and individual or institution” (Loveluck, 2016, p.4). For Loveluck (2016), the digital space becomes a place of critical denunciation, formation of public opinion, the scene for collective trial and an instrument of coercion when confronted with proof (image or audio) of accusatory acts and/or speech (p.10).

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DMV works by way of rending an individual, government, and/or system hyper visible through constant meme sharing, mimicking and remixing. The use of humor, irony and/or satire is used to delve into the serious – using memetic tools such as hashtags and image memes to generate broader narratives and using the affordances of social media in disseminating the narrative within the meme.

The meme is created as a response to systemic injustice (which can be fueled by current events and/or socio-historical systemic oppression). When originated from the viral (e.g. a recording or picture of an instance that then gets spread online), the act of DMV is framed as spontaneous act of self-defense. This deviates greatly from traditional and digital vigilantism where for example a spontaneous act of self-defense would not be considered vigilantism (Trottier, 2017, p.58). As the viral turns into memetic, and gains visibility online (and/or if the meme did not generate from the viral) the meme starts to be framed in the protection of the wider culture and/or community of the Other. Although DMV holds the capability to single out an oppressor, the singling out works as a way to create a symbol that references something much larger that what it directly and originally denotes.

As the memes reach momentum on the online, their ability to shift narratives, add to existing ones, or provide completely new ones is a core part of the citizen led engagement. These narratives aid in drawing connections between “seemingly unrelated incidents and chart through lines for productive conversations about underlying issues” (Mina, 2019, p.86). Immortalized online, the memes work as symbols that allow visual and verbal language around the issue to generate more quickly and simply. Memetics ability to essentially ‘call out’ and on a large scale and expose an individual, government institution or system, allows memes to become a template of resistance against power. As the memes float through the online public square, its interaction with mainstream media, national media and governments creates new sites of memetic communication, where narratives get amplified and/or critiqued. The more the meme gains attention through different media spheres, the more the memes expands the conversation space, intertwining the internet culture with action in the offline culture. Whilst these memes are usually in response to localized opressions, the narratives the memes hold (and therefore the symbols they become), have the ability hold broader conversations that reach cross-continentally (such as marginalization of the Other).

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Young’s research on social justice (1990, 2011), theories of digital vigilantism and understanding of the activist element of meme culture provides a new area of digital research. What translates online when seeking to challenge power? The short answer; short witty images and text that have the ability to inject culture into politics, creating concise symbols and narratives that challenge public discourse. In order to understand DMV more precisely, below a summarized 6 level breakdown of how DMV operates is explained, bringing together frames from digital vigilantism, social justice and meme culture.

1. When originated from the viral, the act of vigilantism (e.g., calling out), comes out of spontaneous self defense, facilitated by the affordances of social media (sharing) and technology (video filming). The higher the visibility of the meme (through mimicking and remixing) online, the more, similar acts of oppression attain social recognition (e.g BBQ Becky and Permit Patty) and start to act in self-defense of a wider community and/or culture

2. DMV operates through private voluntary agency with the exception of the use of social media. Whilst vigilant agents are distinguished from police, state actor and private entities – the interaction with them is still active. For example, (a) police dash-camera footage might be used as proof, (b) state actors might be employed when the online meets with the offline, in order to generate policy change and most importantly, (c) the private entity of social media, plays a core part in facilitating the sharing and visibility aspect of DMV.

3. DMV acts as self-defense (predominantly when originated from the viral), and is more largely framed by the defense of a community and/or culture. As the memes start to outlive their isolated event and/or action, developing symbols and slogans, the more the meme gains meaning within social discourse, the more the meme works to challenge and/or defend a larger narrative.

4. Force in DMV is defined through rendering individuals, governments and/or systems hyper visible (deviating from the threatened use of force in traditional vigilantism) and immortalizing the narrative online through memetic tools such as hashtags and image memes. The more the meme can be placed within socio-political and socio-historical

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context, the more the sights of passage (generational knowledge – the history to which the struggle came to be) wont be obscured.

5. Although DMV polices local public spaces, its ability to transcend geographic and cultural context, is in its narrative-building affect, facilitated by both a global history of colonialism and slavery as well as being facilitated by social media’s cross-continental sharing affordances.

6. DMV serves to assert personal and collective security by a bottom-up policing. This holds the assurance that power (facilitated through the humor, irony and/or satire mechanisms of memes) is shifted to the hands of those oppressed and marginalized, rather than allowing an established system of order to prevail.

DMV differs from traditional and digital vigilantism in that DMV is not necessarily the policing of online spaces only, but rather the use of the online, namely memetics in order to address, target and call out, systemic injustices within the wider society. Indeed, to create a framework with its own characteristics, I draw from both Iris Young’s social justice theory as well as Trottiers Digital Vigilantism. The table below is an adaption of Trottier’s (2017) table comparing Conventional Vigilantism to Digital Vigilantism with the additional concept of DMV added (p.59).

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Features Conventional Vigilantism (Johnson 1996) Digital Vigilantism (Trottier, 2015) Digital Memetic Vigilantism (Baroud, 2019)

Planning Premeditation Facilitated spontaneity Spontaneity (social recognition)

Private agency Distinguished from state

and corporate actors

Possible connections with state and corporate actors

Private voluntary agency in coordination with social media

Autonomous citizenship

Self-Protection Asserting new boundaries

Self-defense in contact with broader community and/or socio-political culture

Use of force Embodied Visibility as Weapon Immortalized hyper visibility, narrative exposure & symbolism

Reaction to crime/deviance

Threat of established order

Fusion of local and mediated norms

Threat from transgression, oppressive and unjust individuals,

governments and/or systems in a particular space and time (which hold larger cross-continental narratives)

Personal and collective scrutiny

Policing localized territory

Mediated policing Bottom-up policing

Table 1. Comparison between Conventional Vigilantism and Digital Vigilantism as described by

Daniel Trottier (2017), in his text Digital Vigilantism as Weaponisations of Visibility – with the addition of Digital Memetic Vigilantism.

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Chapter 4:

Methodology - carrying a study of DMV

The previous chapters discussed not only the current temporal context in which this study situates itself but also presented literature on meme culture and theoretical frames of social justice and digital vigilantism, in order to propose a new phenomenon; Digital Memetic Vigilantism. The overarching question asks, How and to what extent does Digital Memetic Vigilantism (DMV) challenge power by constructing counter-narratives that have the capacity to reclaim space, dismantle threats and generate coping mechanisms? Specifically, this research is looking at how minority groups that face socio-political adversity can utilize memetic tools in order to reclaim predominantly white spaces, dismantle threats in a climate of fear for oppressed groups, and generate coping mechanisms as a response to the constant flow of negative headlines concerning minority rights. Indeed, I am asking, how are memes talking back to power and how is this dialogue holding individuals, governments or systems accountable?

Memes have frequently been studies in their visual, their coded language, their subcultural environment and how they animate politics. This study aims to use the visual, and explore the layers beyond it. This research, through use of three different case studies aims to look at (a) how the uptake of memes out of their immediate context, and across different forms of media gets augmented, amplified, critiqued or supported and how this influences the narrative in the offline (b) how engagement with memes can influence and mitigate a climate of fear by populating it with irony and satire, and (c) exploring an emerging connection between constant negative headlines regarding minority rights and memes as a tool for coping. In order to operationalize these arguments, and fully illustrate the capacities (and limits) of DMV, the study demanded a mixed methods approach. Applying a mixed method approach accounts for the diverse dynamics of memes and their travel across media spaces. DMV does not hold a static loyalty to one media space, but rather can be amplified and/or critiqued through news and mainstream media, mitigate online spaces of political inclusion, such as Facebook groups, or more specifically can be situated away from particular spaces, and exist as frames upon which critical networks of coping can be facilitated.

Chapter 5, named Meme-fying the Oppressor – Reclaiming Space, conducts a frame analysis which analyzes the ways in which different ways of presenting information to an audience (the frame),

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particularly look at how the original meme of BBQ Becky facilitated a rapid spread of narratives regarding a reclaiming of space, and how different media environments, specifically left leaning and right leaning online news media sites, critiqued, challenged and/or supported the memetic (political) narrative. A snowballing method was used, where which URLs were found “through searching and surfing the links between the thematically related websites” (Rogers, 2013, p.75). These were then categorized into site types: left vs. right ideologically framed news media spaces (table 2).

Left news and/or mainstream media sites Right news and/or mainstream media sites

The New Yorker Fox

CNN The Daily Caller

VOX New York Post

BuzzFeed Vice

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

Attaining this snowballing sample further provided me with sites, such as; Huffington Post, The Guardian, San Fransico Chronicle, USA Today and Mercury News, which were used to gain further information into the offline response from the community and its effects.

Applying a frame analysis will highlights how mainstream media picks up on different links along the chain, and how this particularly frames how and/or if the online narrative transfers to the offline. This chapter, asks more specifically; how do different news and mainstream media outlets augment, amplify, critique and/support the narrative creating process of DMV? Specifically looking at how narratives of domination and oppression in public spaces are constructed.

Chapter 6, called Meme-fying the President – Dismantling Threats, employs a digital methods approach, applying the digital tool of Netvizz to retrieve data, and organize them within specific sectors of information. This case study studies engagement within spaces of inclusion on Facebook (American political pages). This chapter will specifically analyze whether engagement (in form of comments) has the ability to influence the media landscapes and mitigating a climate

Table 2. Snowballing sample of left and right news and/or mainstream media

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corpus of memes upon which a typology of memes will be selected. Whilst the data retrieved provides a broad range of data, the one this study concerns itself is the engagement metrics; the use of comments, likes and reactions. This particular research will look at two facebook pages; @biasedmemes, and @politicalhumor. These two pages present a similar thematic scheme, where political memes are posted, with a heavy focus on Donald Trump and the current administration. The last 100 post for each page will be extracted, with a deeper analysis made on 1/3 of the most commented on posts (roughly 35). These will then be split up in typologies of memes, looking at three different features, the visual (what type of meme is this), the stance (what does this meme want to do), and the communication (what does it actually do). This chapter will particularly ask; how and to what extent do memes, within spaces of inclusion, dismantle (virtual) threats and fears of oppression by mitigating a climate of fear?

Chapter 7, titled, Meme-fying Trauma – coping mechanism, conducts a discourse analysis, bringing together different empirical research, in order to suggest a new narrative on meme culture. As this chapter is providing a new emerging research into meme culture, a discourse analysis seems most appropriate, in order to provide the comprehensive argument as to why this new emerging feature (or rather unique power) of memes should have place in academic discussions. Firstly, the research will focus on recent studies conducted on the increasing risk of stress and mental health problems within adults and millennial as a cause of the constant stream of negative headlines online concerned with oppression, racism and bigotry. This will be paired with both research around humor as a coping mechanism and the new acknowledgement of the relationship between trauma and memes (already explored within mental health memes). I will bring these two points together to discuss how political memes, particularly ‘white people’ memes (which poke fun at oppression and marginalization), can be used as a form of coping mechanism when analyzed as a form of DMV. This chapter asks; how does DMV frame society’s imbalanced systems and marginalized identities through humor and satire, and to what extent does this generate coping mechanisms? Whilst limitations to the research will be discussed in Chapter 8, this research aims to propose a new concept which has seemingly been emerging without being discussed in the academic world – the next tread in activist meme culture; vigilantism. I ask us, the citizens of the online, to look at meme culture, social justice, and social accountability in a new way, one that asks us how we can use the tools we have readily accessible to us, in order to challenge narratives, mobilize a critical network, generate public awareness and generate a resistance to power. I ask us to find ways in which we can talk back to power, whilst holding

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Chapter 5:

Meme-fying the oppressor – reclaiming space

BBQ Becky, Permit Patty, Pool Patrol Paula, Coupon Carl & Cornerstone Caroline. The rhyming alliterative nicknames that sound like funny caricatures from a children’s books, are in fact, memetic tools rallying against racism. Recordings documenting white citizens calling cops on African-American citizens started to pop-up, clip after clip on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter timelines, starting in the summer of 2018 (Félix, 2018). The incident that sparked visibility and in some sorts ‘proof’ to these acts of racial profiling occurred in a Philadelphia Starbucks, where an employee called the police to report two male African-American real-estate agents, who were waiting for their third associate and hence had not bought anything, refusing to leave (Félix, 2018). The two men were later handcuffed, but the event was quickly filmed by citizens in the Starbucks, crystalizing “the ways in which unnecessary 911 calls precipitate the kinds of police interaction(s) that can end catastrophically for black and brown people” (Félix, 2018). Multiple videos after this incident started to occur, recorded from the victims themselves, with video after video showing, how black peoples innocuous behavior triggered a (white) person to call the police. Each clip recorded by the person or a bystander using their mobile phones became a warning sign, and a piece of evidence of racism, supported by the advances of video recording on phones, and the sharing affordances of social media.

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Dr. Jennifer Schulte, commonly known as BBQ Becky, is a prime example of just one of these incidents (fig.1). BBQ Becky called the police on a family having a barbeque in the park (Griggs, 2018). Alison Ettel, known as Permit Patty, called the police on an 8-year-old black girl selling bottled water without a permit (Griggs, 2018). Stephanie Sebby-Strempel, known as Pool Patrol Paula, assaulted a black teen and consequently told him he did not belong in the community pool, eventually calling the cops (Griggs, 2018). Morry Matson, known as Coupon Carl, called the cops on a black woman at CVS for allegedly using a forged coupon (Griggs, 2018). All these incidents follow a pattern. Everyday activities, those deemed inconveniences for white people, when performed by black and brown people are vilified, harassed and turned into transgression. Whilst the video recordings themselves are more framed towards virality “a word-of-mouth-like cascade diffusion process wherein a message is actively forwarded form one person to another” rapidly increasing the number of people exposed to the message (Shifman, 2014, p.55) – its diffusion and evolution into memes, made the video an essential part of its memetic vernacular. The memes that circulated around the BBQ Becky video, sparked numerous remixed image memes, as “photo embeds” and image macro memes as “photo embeds with text” editing BBQ Becky into “black spaces” (fig.2, fig.3) but also black history moments (fig 4, fig .5, fig.6, fig.7) (Mina, 2019, p.41).

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Figure 5. Image meme of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech with BBQ Becky photo shopped in. Copyright by Know Your Meme.

Figure 7. Image meme of a black man

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George Yancy, a professor of philosophy at Emory University and author of Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America, states how “black people experience policing every day, even if it's just a look or a gaze…what social media is doing is magnifying the elephant in the room in such a way as to reveal to white people the reality that black people experience all the time” (Guynn, 2018). Its reveal is made more powerful through the ease and accessibility of “shared slogans” as they “travel easily across large and diverse populations are essential to stimulating thousands or millions of people” (p.128).

The twitter post in figure 8 exposes how BBQ Becky (seen on the right) and Permit Patty (seen on the left) deeply exist within layered frames of cultural imperialism – inserting systemic controls of power and violence onto the Other. The space – the park – visualizes the modern-day conception of “white spaces” where those who have power within that space can, as Young (1990) notes “inhibit people from participating” (p.38). The meme, its mocking name, and its insertion into black space, provides an avenue for those deemed, the Other, to exercise their power back. The creation of the names in tandem with the sharing and mocking of the abuser “skewer white privilege, dwell on its irrationality, and, in doing so, turn aggressors into mockable memes” (Felix 2018).

The rise of Digital Memetic Vigilantism Reframing meme culture, social justice & social accountability.