People call these little pictures “memes” and I can understand that.
But please remember that memes are oft-repeated ideas.
So the world might be filled with funny pictures of “cheeto snowflakes,” and people may speak of how “the right don’t know how to meme,” but I assure you that the memes you think aren’t out there have been out there for a lot longer than you may know — and they are much deadlier.
The “welfare mom who has babies to get more unemployment”? A meme.
The “sex predator who pretends they’re trans to attack children”? A meme.
The “Hispanic chick at the unemployment office with a nice phone and SUV using her check to make drug deals — in Spanish — on that nice phone”? A meme.
The “liberals are fascists because they want to strip away our rights” thing? A meme.
“Hollywood shoves diversity down our throats”? A meme.
There are not a lot of cutesy pictures to these because they are told and re-told ideas, repeated and repeated and repeated until we can hardly disbelieve them.
Think of the crazy things that we believe despite contrary evidence, that have nothing to do with politics. This shines a light on how astoundingly easy it is to hack our brains, and there is no shortage of people out there who are constantly designing methods to take advantage of these cognitive holes.
Beware of stories that “everybody knows”.
Those are stories that can lose an election.
These are stories that can lose a country.