A pretty large amount of political memes aren't really "memes", they're just things that were trending on Twitter for a while, which does not make them memes. Let's take the section from Memes.US Politics Biden Era on the "Don't Say Gay" bill. A lot of the notes on these memes are just lengthy explanations of current events, which while I suppose it's better than no context, is sort of creeping beyond the scope of the memes page. The three bullet points with their notes extended take up my entire computer screen which says a lot about the problems with the page.
Bullet 1: "Don't Say Gay" - This is probably here as its own meme on account of it being a Fan Nickname (for the loosest possible definition of "fan"); the real name is wordier as legislative bills tend to be titled. The entire section on it is just explaining what the bill is and why people don't like it.
Bullet 2: "Bob Chapek" - Disney's CEO is apparently a meme in and of himself. Yeah he was trending on Twitter for a while due to people disagreeing with his stance on the bill but his name is written here like he's a meme in and of himself.
Bullet 3: "Reedy Creek Improvement District" - The zoning district Disney World in Florida is in that was dissolved as a result of arguments surrounding the Don't Say Gay bill. Again, the RCID wasn't a meme, it was just something people were talking about. It also contains potholes to Hypocrite and Did Not Think This Through, which are NRLEP tropes, which I think even though this page was voted to stay, we should probably cleanse it of potholes to NRLEP tropes, right?
In general if the entire meme is just somebody's name it's not a meme. They're just a person who was trending on Twitter.
Edited by MissConduct on Aug 5th 2022 at 8:05:29 AM
If you ask me, all three bullets should go. Nicknames aren't always memes.
Side note: would a sandbox be helpful to have or is it unneeded?
Edited by badtothebaritone on Aug 6th 2022 at 4:39:55 AM
Let's start out with the Democratic Primaries folder.
Democratic Primaries
- Joe Biden:
- "Lying, dog-faced pony soldier" Explanation
- Dementia Joe Explanation
- Sleepy Joe Explanation
- Creepy Joe Explanation
- America's creepy uncle Explanation
- Joe Biden loves ice cream explanation
- Malarkey Explanation
- Biden Buries Dogs Explanation
- Mike Bloomberg:
- Bloomberg's Nevada debate performance. Explanation
- Bloomberg bought the South Carolina audience Explanation
- Bloomberg spent $500 million just to win American Samoa. Explanation
- Bernie Sanders:
- Twitch streamer Bernie.Explanation
- "I do know it, I wrote the damn bill!" Explanation
- I am once again asking for your financial support explanation
- I am no longer askingExplanation
- Bernie's psychic powers. Explanation
- A Man Goes Home...Explanation
- Other candidates:
- Elizabeth Warren has a plan for that. Explanation
- Cory Booker's side eye. Explanation
- Girlfriend, you are so on. Explanation
- Birtherism Jr. Explanation
- Tulsi Gabbard: "Present" explanation
- Mayor PeteExplanation
- Secretary Mayor Pete Explanation
- The Iowa Caucus.Explanation
- The company that made the app itself has been subject to jokes, as it was called Shadow Inc., plus the fact that it had sold separate services to the campaigns of Buttigieg, Biden, and a PAC founded by Tom Steyer led to conspiracy theories such as that the Buttigieg campaign alone had paid for the creation of the app, a theory since debunked.
- Relatedly, Wolf Blitzer was talking to one of the pollsters on-site, who had been on hold for about an hour waiting to report the results. During the interview, he got off hold, and Wolf asked if CNN could listen in - and the poor pollster wound up getting hung up on because he didn't respond swiftly enough when he was taken off hold.
i think Sleepy Joe and Creepy Joe were legitimate memes. i don't recall any of the others in the Biden list seeing widespread use and i was pretty active in the discourse at that time (to the detriment of my mental health).
Edited by ChloeJessica on Aug 7th 2022 at 1:39:22 AM
I can also vouch for seeing the Biden Ice Cream and Bernie "asking for your support" out in the wild, I've even seen the Bernie one outside of political contexts. Everything else I can't say I've seen, although if someone can find a well-viewed Tumblr post confirming the "Biden Buries Dogs" one that would be fine, as the example makes it seem like it was mostly a Tumblr meme.
Also, is it against the rules to pothole to NRLEP tropes on this page? And if it isn't, shouldn't it be?
If it isn’t, I think it should be. Agreeing with you 100%.
Biden loving ice cream and Malarkey are keepers, IMO. I've seen even relatively apolitical memes about the latter due to it being seen as Inherently Funny Words.
Twitch streamer Bernie is also valid, and I've seen it extended to other political figures such as AOC.
Edited by AlleyOop on Aug 7th 2022 at 7:33:21 AM
Never thought I would have heard "AOC" and "Among Us" in the same sentence until that day.
I think it would be a bright idea to add some rules for inclusion on top of the relevant memes pages (including the general Political Memes page) to let people know the kind of stuff we screen for and suggestions to not post stuff that will just get removed by this thread.
1: Not everything that trends on Twitter is a meme. The way trending on Twitter works is that it gathers all the discussion using a certain hashtag and considers it trending if enough people use the hashtag in a timespan. Unless the political discussion has memes that spawn from it, it shouldn't go on these pages. If a trending hashtag on Twitter consists of mostly "Senator Bob Tropeman just said kicking dogs was okay And That's Terrible", it's not really a meme and thus doesn't belong here.
2: Although a context note is required here as it is on all other memes pages, it is beyond the scope of these pages to be a play-by-play of current events, so try keep context notes brief.
3: You CANNOT pothole to any No Real Life Examples, Please! tropes, no matter how much you think they apply to the people/situation. These pages are essentially Real Life sections, so it is a violation of ROCEJ to pothole to NRLEP tropes here, even if you think some political figure was being a Hypocrite or you think we live in a Crapsack World.
4: Not every major event has real "memes" spawn from it. Don't feel obligated to add an event that doesn't spawn any memes just because you think it was important to list.
5: ROCEJ still applies here. Although by definition plenty memes here are going to be somewhat inflammatory, do remember that most people aren't here to get preached to and aren't here to get into fights.
(If there's anything you think could be added to this list let me know)
The more contentious a topic is, the more likely its "memes" are to be shoehorned.
COVID-19 and January 6 in particular are likely to attract mudslinging disguised as memes.
I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.Don't forget about contentious political topics such as disinformation, abortion, and censorship.
Memes that involve Politician X simply saying "Politician Y is a Sir Swears-a-Lot Talking Poo" or similar should not be added, even if it's trending on Twitter or similar. However, I am unsure if memes can be added in the case of a Photoshop of Politician Y being a Sir Swears-a-Lot Talking Poo and it's trending on Twitter or similar.
Kirby is awesome."Claims to be pro-life, dies anyway" is definitely a meme, so if it's like that one, then it counts.
also, why was this removed?
- Joe Biden:
- "Status Quo" Joe explanation
- Joe Biden going senileexplanation
- "Go vote for someone else" explanation
- Pete Buttigieg:
- "Wall Street" Pete explanation
- "Wine Cave" Pete explanation
- #MayorCheat explanation
all of these things were pretty big memes during the primary
Bumbleby is best ship. busy spending time on r/RWBY and r/anime. Unapologetic SocialistMaybe their context notes weren't thorough enough?
A lot of the memes aimed at less popular main party candidates and especially third party candidates are basically "Candidate X is never going to win and should stop wasting our time" - these are basically the same every election, going back well into the Twentieth Century at least, is it ever worth keeping the meme around if it's just a variant on "Stop wasting our time with your campaign"?
We could use "Go ahead. Throw your vote away." to summarize that viewpoint if needed.
I'm kinda surprised that isn't on The Simpsons' meme page already.
Edited by badtothebaritone on Aug 8th 2022 at 3:11:35 AM
Yeah, it probably should be. I hear that quote thrown around a lot.
Pulling every "Just someone's name" from the Trump Memes page.
- Sally Yates.explanation
- Merrick Garlandexplanation
- Betsy DeVosexplanation
- Nordstromexplanation Company but same idea.
- SETH RICH Explanation
- John DelaneyExplanation
- His resemblance to Will Ferrell's Buddy the Elf (if he were balding) has also been commented on. This second bullet would be acceptable if someone could find evidence of it.
- Matthew Spencer Petersen.Explanation
- DJ Explanation
- Stormy Daniels Explanation
- "John Barron/John Miller/David Dennison" Explanation
- Rudy Giuliani Explanation
- Melanie Explanation
- George Conway Explanation
- Pierre Delecto Explanation
And these were ones that I thought were also troublesome and also removed:
- "You have sacrificed nothing, and no one." Explanation Never seen this as a meme. Also Tear Jerker is NRLEP.
- …You don't attack a Gold Star family.Explanation Potholing to Moral Event Horizon is just asking for trouble.
- Flat Rodney Davis. Weblink Only Example.
- Greenland Explanation Greenland itself is not a meme, unless there's some specific meme catchphrase associated with Trump offering to buy it.
- Epstein didn't kill himself. Explanation This is definitely a meme, but it doesn't belong here on US Politics, I don't think it really has a place anywhere on this site.
- WWIII Explanation People have been Chicken Little-ing about WWIII for, like, 75 years now, what makes this event so special or any different?
- First snow of the year! Explanation Not a meme, just a post people mocked for a day.
The Senile Joe Biden one was taken off partly because it's not really a meme, so much as a broad insult, and also because the description for seems to have been written by someone who took attack ads at face value. At least one of the commonly cited examples of slurred speech turned out to have been a doctored and slowed-down video, while some of the senility issues can be attributed to a stutter.
We should probably also remove things that people stopped talking about after a few weeks, since they didn’t really last long enough to become memes.
That's tempting... but if we got rid of everything on these pages that were only a meme for, like, a few days, then we'd have nearly no pages, as memes based on current events tend to have an incredibly short shelf life, as is the nature of the game. That was actually my reasoning for wanting to pull these pages even more than the ROCEJ problems - you can't trope memes from current events the same way you can for a work of fiction. Memes from a work of fiction can stick around for months, even years, because there's only so much source material to pull from, while current events there's a constant stream of new "material" and thus old memes get thrown away much faster than with actual media.
That said I don't think anyone will care if we prune a lot of the less prolific memes from, like, 2+ years ago. I'd say if no one will notice they're gone then there's no need to keep them.
I'm noticing the cuts I made from the Trump era page that I posted on post 17 were the first edits of any kind made to the Trump memes page since May, I'm guessing that page in particular doesn't get a lot of traffic anymore and thus we can probably cut a lot of the lesser memes from that page and no one will care.
Edit: Gonna take another axe to the Trump memes page.
Democratic Primaries:
- "HRC". Explanation Just a Fan Nickname, which I think we said don't count as memes.
- #IllaryClinton Explanation See "Senile Biden".
- Bernie Bros/BrocialistsExplanation Fandom Nickname.
Democratic National Convention:
- BALLOONS 8D Explanation Seems like a one-day meme.
- Tim Kaine, America's Step-Dad.Explanation Adorkable and Nice Guy are NRLEP.
- "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons." Explanation General insult. Note: This means removing the entire Democratic National Convention section. C'est la vie. I'll leave it commented out in case any stray memes come out of the woodwork.
General Elections:
- GOD-EMPEROR OF MANKIND Explanation ROCEJ?
- Love Trumps Hate Explanation Just a campaign slogan. In general, campaign slogans that are endorsed by their candidates aren't memes.
- Says who? Explanation One-day meme.
- #RyeRollExplanation Deadpan Snarker is NRLEP. Also this seems needlessly lionizing of her.
- CNN's increasing disdain for Donald Trump's surrogates has been a popular topic on social media sites. Highlights include Anderson Cooper comparing Trump surrogates to 9/11 truthers, Don Lemon laughing in Trump supporter Gina Louden's face when she couldn't name three black people involved in Trump's campaign, and pretty much everything Jake Tapper does. Even the on-screen chyrons are getting in on the act. Not really a meme, just a news network disliking a candidate.
- Katrina Pierson:
- #KatrinaPiersonHistoryExplanation Just generally making fun of someone doesn't count as a meme.
- ArmrestsExplanation One-Day meme at best.
- Jill, Not Hill Explanation Not really a meme.
- Donald Trump frequently turns criticisms other make of him towards Hillary (accusing her of having a bad temperament, calling her a bigot and crazy, and implying Hillary is unfaithful to Bill) leading many critics to comment about Trump engaging in serious psychological projection. Explanation Wall of text, not a meme, just things critics say about him.
- There exists an infamous Reddit fan page for Donald Trump called the r/TheDonald. For just 1 year, it became quite memetic in its own right to the point that it got mentioned in the news. Subreddits are not memes.
- CTR Explanation More Reddit garbage. Also not really a meme just something that happened.
- r/redacted Explanation Fan Nickname, also more Reddit garbage.
- Fuck u/spez Explanation This page got sidetracked on political Reddit for a good long time. No more.
- Based (insert anybody) Explanation This is just general '10's slang.
- The Wall got 10 feet higher Explanation Never heard this one, the explanation's kind of confusing, seems like an in-joke from somewhere.
- The Biggest Loser is the Hoaxing Media Explanation Distrust towards the media isn't really a meme, also the explanation is poorly written.
2016 Presidential Debates:
- Ken Bone Explanation I missed a "just a person".
- After Donald Trump reminded Muslim Americans to “report when they see something going on", the hashtag #MuslimsReportStuff took off on Twitter, beginning with "I'm a Muslim, and I would like to report a crazy man threatening a woman on a stage in Missouri" (which got nearly 200,000 likes) and often consisted of Muslims reporting irrelevant things and potential Islamophobia instead of the threats of Muslim terrorism. Short lived Twitter trending hashtag.
Third Presidential Debate:
- While Clinton was [X], Trump was [Y].explanation Not really a meme, just things Hillary said.
- Egg McMuffin explanation Fan Nickname.
- When they go low, we go high!explanation Rally cries aren't really memes. "Go Wildcats" isn't a meme, this shouldn't be either.
- Don't boo, vote! explanation
- Economic anxiety explanation Goes waaaaaaay too long about why Trump is bad, and isn't really a meme.
- "TFE." explanation Fan Nickname.
- "THIS IS NOT NORMAL." explanation Not really a meme, and sort of goes off the rails in the explanation.
- Triggering the Libs Explanation ROCEJ?
- How wild it is watching the election from Europe: Unhip Old Lady vs. Cool Grampa vs. Racist Piece of Corn vs. a serial killer? explanation Biased in favor of Bernie.
- Comparing the presidential candidates to characters from fictional franchises — usually with Bernie Sanders as the good guy, Hillary Clinton as a polarizing Wild Card, and the Republicans as villains (with Donald Trump usually paired to the most evil character of the bunch). E.g. a popular one called "Choose" compared Trump to The Joker and Hillary to Two-Face, with Sanders as Batman. Also biased in favor of Bernie.
- Anti-Trumpers often mock him by posting unflattering photos of him, with this one◊ being the most popular. EVERYONE uses unflattering pictures of their opponents.
- "That hurricane was trying to protect us".explanation General insult, also as one can expect from a meme based around a single hurricane it didn't last long.
2017
- Snowflake-in-Chief/President SnowflakeExplanation Just an insult.
- Extra-funny since Church hasn't sung opera-style in years and has a completely different, She's All Grown Up image now that's the opposite of what old Charlotte Church fans in the USA remember. The Charlotte Church bullet as a whole can stay but this is needlessly thirsty for her, and She Is All Grown Up is NRLEP.
- #Resist Explanation Not really a meme, just a hashtag.'
- Conservative Generation Z Explanation Not a meme, just snarking.
- "Dress Like A Woman"explanation Not a meme, just something people were complaining about.
- Suicide Squad explanation Similar to the names, a movie is not a meme, and this was just a person people were dogpiling on for a few days.
- #KillTheBill explanation Just a hashtag.
- Jon SoloExplanation Basically "just a name".
- "Cultural Enrichment" Explanation Just snark.
- Trump shoving the President of Montenegro out of the way to be at the front of the 2017 G7 summit pack. No explanation
- Tropical Storms Don and Hilary Explanation '''Another super-duper short lived meme.
- Ted Cruz and TwitterExplanation Was this a meme? The explanation's also just snark.
- #TakeAKnee Explanation Just an anti-Trump protest.
- Thoughts and prayers Explanation Just a phrase that people have issues with.
- Now is not the time to talk about gun control!Explanation See above.
- Impeach HillaryExplanation Just a snarky comment.
Edited by MissConduct on Aug 16th 2022 at 12:05:31 PM
"Wall Street" Pete, "Wine Cave" Pete and "Status Quo" Joe are memes i know stayed around for quite a long time, the latter especially
Bumbleby is best ship. busy spending time on r/RWBY and r/anime. Unapologetic SocialistKen Bone might constitute a meme in the broad sense of his having been regarded as a Memetic Badass for a time.
Yeah, I think people can be memes (look at Chuck Norris and John Cena, for example) but it depends on the context of why that person is mentioned and how transformative the jokes ultimately are.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure PurenessEven within the scope of the 2016 Election alone, you had Ted Cruz portrayed as the Zodiac Killer. That one had quite a bit of staying power.
Edited by badtothebaritone on Aug 16th 2022 at 2:24:31 PM
I pulled Ken Bone mostly on account of Nice Guy being NRLEP.
Memes.Politics and its subpages were nominated for the chopping block for rampant violation of the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement, but they were spared deletion on the condition that they receive a deep cleaning. This has not happened yet and should be addressed as soon as possible.
The purpose of this thread is scrub out the aforementioned ROCEJ violations from these pages and restore their neutrality.
It's probably best to start with the Biden and Trump subpages since they're the biggest offenders.