The Smug Frog and the Humble Anon: Dramatizing Life Through Internet Culture

• In Event: Poster Session: Political Science Education; Information Technology and Politics & Politics Literature, and Film
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Politics, Literature and Film

Abstract

Internet in-jokes have recently become big news. The use of memes by the populist far-right has particularly aroused alarm. Memes, however, are not solely the province of internet reactionaries, nor are they precisely new. But we do misunderstand them if we view them solely as a vehicle for jokes or as vectors of hatred. Starting with a historical examination of the concept in the work of Richard Dawkins and Rene Girard, this paper examines the use of memes as a new narrative language. Pepe the Frog, Wojack, Rage Comics, creepy pasta and green-text, and others are an emerging method of communication and we misunderstand contemporary media and, perhaps ourselves, insofar as we misunderstand memes. This paper concludes with an examination of the popular, if not necessarily populist, implications of this emerging form of communication.

Authors

• Jonathan Gondelman, University of Notre Dame

• Meyer Levy, University of Notre Dame