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| Division without substance is the sure sign of subversion. |
The meme of the year is clearly "Let's Go Brandon." I must be entering my boomerhood because I just don't get it. But, on the plus side, I usually don't get what I don't want to get, and "Let's Go Brandon" is one more piece of transitory e-cultural detritus that I am happy to filter out and let pass me by.
Still, viewed in a non-face-value sort of way, it may not be interesting, but it is certainly intriguing. But before we go any further, just what is the meme?
Here's Know Your Meme cutting to the chase:
Let's Go Brandon refers to a viral video of NASCAR racer Brandon Brown speaking to NBC about winning the NASCAR Xfinity Series while the crowd chants "fuck Joe Biden," which the newscaster claims is a chant of "let's go Brandon" instead, seemingly as a form of damage control. The video went viral in October 2021 as numerous reports of people chanting "fuck Joe Biden" at public events began surfacing. The phrase became a subject of jokes on Twitter in early October as people used it comedically in place of the phrase "fuck Joe Biden."
Yes, it's literally that retarded, just another way of saying "fuck Joe Biden." Honestly, that warrants about 15 minutes of internet fame, but it has clearly become massive. So, what's really going on here?
This is where the concept of Hyperreality comes in. Dictionary definition:
An image or simulation, or an aggregate of images and simulations, that either distorts the reality it purports to depict or does not in fact depict anything with a real existence at all, but which nonetheless comes to constitute reality.
Yes, reality now exists uneasily alongside hyperreality. This is the effect of the internet, data mining, meme culture, etc., etc. For every flesh-and-blood human there is now an on-line avatar or "electrical serf" collated from all his or her internet interractions. This can then be further data-mined and micromarketed for profit and control.
Likewise, for every celebrity, politician, or institution there is an e-version composed of memes and meme management.
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| A meme pushing back against the Brandon meme. The reality is that the Brandon meme is dominating hyperreality |
All this clearly borders on the "grey zone" that geopol strategists talk about, an area of hybrid conflict, much or it tech-related, that exists in the undefined spaces between war and peace between states.
This means that all memes are questionable, especially ones that have no apparent legs but seem to run anyway, like the rather one-dimensional and boring "Let's Go Brandon" meme.
This means that all memes are questionable, especially ones that have no apparent legs but seem to run anyway, like the rather one-dimensional and boring "Let's Go Brandon" meme.
To be precise what we are seeing in the Brandon meme is something that is being boosted artificially, simply because it serves to polarise the populace and undermine the authority of the President.
Yes, Joe Biden is an uninspiring President and, sure, most of his policies are, to my mind, shortsighted and wrong-headed. But, like Bush, Obama, and Trump before him, he is a 'standard issue' American politician who believes and pushes the mantras of what America now is.
This is not about whether anyone approves of the system or its current figurehead, which is what we can refer to as organic dissidence, organic opposition, and organic polarisation, which is all fine and well. No, this is more about accounting for the unnatural forces that appear to drive certain memes, simply because they serve an ulterior purpose.
The sad reality is that Americans are much less divided than you or they imagine. Almost all of them believe in the same wishy-washy individualism with a safety net (either state or family) and bland universalism. This is why the new "Red" governor in Virginia is unlikely to be much different from the outgoing "Blue" one. Most of all, almost no-one wants the radical changes and heavy social costs needed to ensure America's long-term survival.
Average Americans will not admit it but they agree on 99% of shit.
Disagreeing has become a form of self-expression.
As Colin Liddell stated in a recent podcast, this is what is behind most of the otherwise inexplicable phenomena we have seen over the last five years:
One of the main forms of subversion has been the industrial levels of topical meme creation that we see nowadays. Whenever there is some incident, event, or happening that breaks into the news — and which also has the potential to polarise or undermine the state and society — almost immediately there is a tsunami of memes, usually of very poor quality, that flood the internet.
Most of the iterations of the "Let's Go Brandon" seem to fit this category. In its essence it is just a rehashing of the basic idea that "politicians suck." There is no actual idea content beyond that, and division without substance is a sure sign of subversion.
Then, as soon as the "meme farms" have done their job pricking up some issue or aspect that can artificially divide people, the "bot armies" spring into action, and immediately start pushing the memes and boosting anyone who pushes the memes. The goal is to spark off an organic reaction.
Your experience of this will probably be something like this:
- "Gee, I miss Trump. Biden is such a boring loser."
- Shitty "Let's Go Brandon" meme appears in your social media feed.
- "Yeh, fuck Joe Biden. Meh, I'll retweet it."
- Bots like and retweet.
- "WTF, I got several likes and retweets for the first time in months!"
- Enormous rush of endorphins.
Now you are hooked. You have signed onto the "Let's Go Brandon" army, or whatever other shitty bot or meme army that will be mobilised in the months ahead.
But this is not new. Much of your previous on-line activity on behalf of Trump, Brexit, Gamergate, Ron Paul, or Birtherism was probably similarly manipulated — and much more potently as the internet was much more open then.
Yes, there is a reason the internet is increasingly being shut down and it is not the reason you think it is.
Let's Go Brandon!
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