Inside the Meme Wars Jeopardizing U S Democracy The Takeaway WNYC Studios Podcasts - Npr HEAD TOPICS

Inside the Meme Wars Jeopardizing U S Democracy The Takeaway WNYC Studios

10/21/2022 3:27:00 PM

There& rsquo s a far-right movement attacking democracy So what does it have in common with Grumpy Cat

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'In a lot of ways, [meme wars] are an insurgent attack on the mainstream in some way. And in that sense, the idea is to bring fringe outsider ideas into the realm of the powerful,' says Emily Dreyfuss. There's a far-right movement attacking democracy. So what does it have in common with Grumpy Cat? You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.is that once you take it, you can't go back, taking the red pill as a definitive turning point for his thinking and for his action. Once he sees the truth, he must act on it. Emily explained that this is also the case for those who count themselves as part of the red-pilled right. Apparently, these red pills are everywhere, in the form of memes.The idea is that a meme encapsulates a really complex idea, and then in a dense way, communicates it to others, and so it's a really powerful tool to define a moment and define zeitgeist. Read more:
WNYC » Tom Hanks Is a Grumpy Neighbor in ‘A Man Called Otto’ Trailer George M. Johnson is Author of the 2nd Most Banned Book in the U.S. The Takeaway WNYC Studios Just 9% of Americans think democracy is working extremely well More than half of voters say US democracy not working well: Poll

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Candidate for U.S. Representative in New York, Tina Forte calls out opponent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her refusal to debate, her radical leftist policies... Read more >> Tom Hanks Is a Grumpy Neighbor in ‘A Man Called Otto’ TrailerTom Hanks is a very grumpy neighbor in the new trailer for 'A Man Called Otto.' Watch now: George M. Johnson is Author of the 2nd Most Banned Book in the U.S. The Takeaway WNYC StudiosGeorge M. Johnson is the author of “All Boys Aren’t Blue”, the 2nd most banned book in the country. They recently became a member of this year’s TIMES 100 Most Influential People list. Just 9% of Americans think democracy is working extremely wellRepublicans were more likely than Democrats to say U.S. democracy is not working well. “Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.” Unfortunately, the city is what the city is because the people are what the people are… 'democracy' requires a top down distribution of government power. How else can any majority impose their will on a minority? A republic, the individual remains sovereign. There is a bottom to top ceding of (specified) powers for the common good. w/t/10th Amendment honored. More than half of voters say US democracy not working well: PollA majority of voters reported having low confidence in the state of the U.S. government, with more than half saying they think democracy in the country is not working very well. In the Matrix, there's that canonical scene where Keanu is offered the blue or the red pill, and the red pill will tell you the truth, and the blue pill will allow you to continue living in your lie.Columbia Pictures released a new trailer for A Man Called Otto, an upcoming film adaptation of the best-selling novel by Swedish author Fredrik Backman.You're with The Takeaway .Since the same poll was conducted in 2020, the number of Democrats expressing confidence in democracy has increased, while the number of Republicans saying so has decreased. Morpheus: You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. The trailer introduces Otto, a man who seems to hate people. Emily Dreyfuss: In the far-right political sphere, a red pill can be about any specific issue, so there's not a single red pill. A from PEN America Foundation released in September found more than 2,500 instances of individual books being banned, affecting more than 1,600 titles, and hovering near the very top of the most often banned book list is All Boys Aren't Blue . There is an anti-black red pill, there's an anti-woman red pill, there's an anti-semitic red pill. Every little public demonstration of joy makes Otto frown, and he leads a lonely life making an enemy of everyone he crosses paths with. These communities will give you some kind of maybe false statistic, or maybe it'll just be a meme that puts all of these bigoted ideas that you've had in your brain, but suddenly put it together in one place that makes it click and make sense to you. elections. Then it's as though you absorb that idea, and once you are red-pilled about that issue, you can't unsee it, and that's a key part of the metaphor from the Matrix is that once you take it, you can't go back Melissa Harris-Perry: For Neo, the spoon-bending liberator at the heart of the Matrix , taking the red pill as a definitive turning point for his thinking and for his action. COLLIDER VIDEO OF THE DAY Otto’s icy heart begins to melt after Marisol (Mariana Treviño) moves into his block with her family. Now, it's a book for young adults, and it begins with a tough moment. Once he sees the truth, he must act on it. Emily explained that this is also the case for those who count themselves as part of the red-pilled right. However, Marisol is determined to become friends with Otto, and the trailer shows how he will teach the woman how to drive and even act as a nanny to his neighbor's two children. Emily Dreyfuss: Once someone online has taken that red pill, the idea is they can't unsee it, and then they become so"angry," or they become so angry because they believe that they now know a true fact that other people have been hiding from them or keeping from them. Melissa: That's the actor Dyllón Burnside, reading an excerpt from All Boys Aren't Blue in a film based on the book. They feel that they've been lied to now that they see this"true" thing, and that motivates them to try to get other people to take the red pill. RELATED: 'Yellowstone's Kelly Reilly Joins Robert Zemeckis' 'Here' With Tom Hanks and Robin Wright A Man Called Otto is directed by Marc Forster from an adapted script by David Mage. 6-10 using the AmeriSpeak Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Melissa Harris-Perry: Apparently, these red pills are everywhere, in the form of memes. Khaled: Congratulations, you played yourself. A Man Called Otto is produced by Hanks with Rita Wilson, Gary Goetzman, and Fredrik Wikström Nicastro. Many were aimed specifically at LGBTQ-plus young people, actions that were happening at the same time that many of the books focusing on those experiences were disappearing from school library shelves. Emily Dreyfuss: The idea is that a meme encapsulates a really complex idea, and then in a dense way, communicates it to others, and so it's a really powerful tool to define a moment and define zeitgeist. Melissa Harris-Perry: In my middle-aged mommy corner of the internet, a meme typically features a snoring dog falling off a couch or a howling poodle playing a toy piano. A Man Called Otto’s cast also includes Rachel Keller, Cameron Britton, and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo. [background noise] Emily Dreyfuss: That's one of the most important components of a meme is that if you're part of a mimetic community, then the memes that are created by that community you understand. George M. If you're an extremely online person on Twitter, you understand the jokes of that day, and when you log on to Twitter, you know what everyone's talking about. Check out the movie’s trailer and synopsis below. Whereas if you're not extremely online, you log on and it is total nonsense. You can't figure out what the discourse is about, who's died, did someone even die, or did they win a MacArthur? It's hard to tell. When a lively young family moves in next door, he meets his match in quick-witted and very pregnant Marisol, leading to an unlikely friendship that will turn his world upside-down. I'm like,"I didn't die at the end and I'm still here. Melissa Harris-Perry: While I've become an insider expert on the hilarity of dogs of Instagram, other corners of the web, they've been engaged in far more consequential meme work. During the past decade, memes across the digital universe have been shaping our world.. Dr. I sat down with them to talk about what it means to be the author of a band book in this moment. Joan Donovan: We look at the definitions of memes over time and try to understand how we've arrived in this very moment where means has become such an important part of our culture, but also an important part of our politics. Melissa Harris-Perry: This is Dr. Joan Donovan. The other side of it is I'm on a banned book list with Tony Morrison. Joan's a research director of the Shorenstein Center on media politics and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and she's co-author of Meme Wars. Dr. Joan Donovan: Meme Wars are about struggle or battle over the definition of a situation or the definition of what it means to be on one side of an issue. It was right when the book is starting to get to the height of the banning teens are literally saying,"But this is the book that we need. Throughout the book, we begin with Occupy Wall Street, which was an online social movement that moved from the wires to the weeds and we end with Stop The Steal and the January 6 insurrection, and we show for the last 10 years how memes have developed as a very important political tool. Melissa Harris-Perry: Nine years ago in October 2003, Christopher Poole launched what has become one of the most influential weapons in the Meme Wars , 4Chan. Dr. I think at the end of the day, we have just created even more Gen Z advocates who are willing to speak up for themselves and ensure that they have the things and the tools that they deem as necessary for their existence here. Joan Donovan: 4Chan is an anonymous message board and it has a really important history charted by Harvard scholar Gabriella Coleman in her book Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy. That movement of anonymous that was so powerful and the early odds and through the Occupy movement in particular grew out of this anonymous message board culture where different kinds of hackers and geeks and weirdos figured out that you can get coordinated on this anonymous message board and you can launch what are called ops or operations. You can influence mainstream culture by deploying different tactics across other important spaces on the web. It's a memoir. When we saw the rise of Anonymous, many people online thought,"Maybe this is how we get free. This is how we get liberation" is going to be through these bottom-up, essentially information warfare campaigns, but we also have to temper that with the fact that 4Chan is an incredibly disgusting place. It's the repository of everything you don't want to see on the internet. George: I grew up knowing that I was different. 4Chan is this very strange online space that has its own outsized impact on the mainstream culture. For many years, people on 4Chan would say,"We own the internet" because of their power to coordinate so quickly and affect what was happening in the mainstream conversations. Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, did you catch what Joan just said? 4Chan was demonstrating the power of the online world to shape offline realities. Again, I grew up knowing I was different. Even those who might think of themselves as sophisticated online users, like, for example, journalists, well, we might be unable to fully discern the meme wars happening right in front of us. Here again is Emily Dreyfuss. Emily Dreyfuss: I'm extremely online in a much more mainstream way, and that's why I call myself a normie because to me, as a member of the mainstream media, as a mom, I don't immediately understand a lot of the transgressive and subversive political memes from either the right or the left or from a lot of these subcultures when I encounter them on my own because it's not a part of my own community. Having to navigate a space where you didn't have visibility and representation, but I always had the love of my family. Either they will be completely inscrutable to me or I'll understand just enough to either be turned off and offended or curious. Now the interesting thing about being a normie or the important thing about being a normie when we're talking about the meme wars is that normies are often the target for these memetic communities who are trying to define the discourse. We might see a meme, we might not understand it, but we might be a little bit curious, and then we'll Google it, and what we find when we Google the keywords or phrases or the hashtag that we are curious about is often determined by these motivated meme communities who have created content online specifically for someone like me, and especially also journalists who are often the target directly to find and find their evidence and find their opinions and find their agenda in the search results that would then frame our worldview. I talk about my joys and my pains the triumphs and the tragedies that all occurred throughout my birth from up until the age of 21 is pretty much where I end the book. [music] Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, let's pause right there, but don't go anywhere because when we get back, Joan Donovan is taking us back to 2017 to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, where the Meme Wars took a deadly turn. It's The .