In recent years, meme culture, or the culture surrounding the internet’s breed of comedy, has become analogous to various online subcultures—including gaming, incels, and, most damagingly, the alt-right. This association, while not universal, makes sense: a high degree of cultural cross-pollination is an inherent characteristic of the internet. In true parasitic fashion, the alt-right has embedded itself within general meme culture and established a recruitment pipeline. To date, we have seen neither an antidote nor an alternative to this issue. However, that may be changing as there is a progressive counterculture growing within the meme community. In other words, progressives are using the avenue of memes to reclaim internet culture from the alt-right.
Understanding the significance of progressive meme counterculture and the alt-right pipeline requires at least a brief history lesson in meme culture, which consists of influenceable audiences, fringe communities, and Pepe the Frog.
The life of Pepe the Frog began in 2005 when Matt Furie produced the character for his comic, Boy’s Club. The frog, and his contagious catchphrases, quickly grew in popularity as he became fodder for meme creators. Pepe evolved into a staple of meme culture, boasting countless variations and an omnipresent position within mainstream media. Peak popularity was achieved sometime between 2014 and 2016, with Pepe’s wholesome, relatable image being shared by the likes of Nicki Minaj and other celebrities. Pepe’s social and cultural immortality made for an alluring target, and targeted he became.
While the general meme ecosystem was busy enjoying innocent Pepe memes, there was a toxicity brewing below the surface. That toxicity had a now-familiar source: alt-right safe havens such as 4chan and Reddit. While the casual meme viewer may have only known Pepe as the Frog who would frown in solidarity with you when feeling sad, the alt-right knew a very different Pepe. This Pepe often wore a hitler mustache and invoked sexist, racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic ideologies. Bigoted humor has always been a commonly dismissed trope of internet trolls, but this mixture of influence was a cultural poison—a poison we have yet to fully rid ourselves of.
By 2016, the bleeding of the alt-right’s Pepe into the mainstream produced tangible effects. Pepe was invoked at white supremacist rallies right beside confederate flags and swastikas. The frog had been appropriated by the alt-right, and consequently, Pepe was classified as a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League in September 2016. The need for this classification is indicative of a phenomenon that went unchecked for nearly a decade —the existence of a meme culture to the alt-right pipeline. This non-intuitive mechanism was the subject of a 2018 internet analysis study, titled On the Origins of Memes by Means of Fringe Web Communities. The study condenses its findings into several terrifyingly plain takeaways: first, alt-right fringe communities hold more influence over the entire meme ecosystem than any other community; second, seemingly neutral memes are used in conjunction with other memes to incite hate or influence public opinion; third, in order to ensure content dissemination, fringe communities will keep their memes popular for enough time so that their potential impacts are realized.
If there is one more conclusion to draw from the study’s discoveries it is this: so long as fringe communities possess the highest volume of internet influence, their pipelines will remain intact. The key, then, is to disrupt the virality of alt-right fringe humor. Rising to this challenge, a coalition of progressive content creators, spreading from twitter to reddit, is working to redefine the aesthetics of the meme industry. In an economy where the primary currency was once divisive as often as it was neutral, there is an accelerating drive to position inclusivity as the primary currency. This is to say, what makes a meme funny—its divisiveness, its neutrality, or its inclusivity?
The progressive counterculture’s ambition is to alter the content that the meme economy values. To gauge perceptions on the matter, I probed two of my friends on it – one unfamiliar with meme culture, and one familiar. On the ambition of the progressives, Michael Dixon, Trinity ’23, says that it is to “normalize their worldview.” And on the growing concentration of progressives within the meme ecosystem Jack Kelly, class of ’23, says their presence “seems intuitive,” because younger people “will express their voice in ways familiar to them, such as memes.” So, it seems that there is an intentionality behind the progressive counterculture, as opposed to being pure happenstance. And it is this intentionality that is indicative of the counterculture’s truly revolutionary aim – which is to value inclusivity in an arena that historically values exclusivity.
This approach of recalibrating meme culture attacks the alt-right on two fronts. On one front, by transferring value away from divisiveness and onto inclusivity, progressives are necessarily reducing the maximum amount of influence the alt-right can continue to exert. On the other, progressives are creating a unique style of memes that widens the consumer base, meaning the alt-right’s grip is becoming increasingly diluted. These effects of progressive counter-culturalism synergize into what is best described as a reclamation of internet influence.
To achieve its aims, the counterculture relies on aesthetics. Aesthetics in this particular context means the intersection of ethos, art, diversity, philosophy, and crucially, pastel colors. While this counterculture community is a more recent development than the alt-right fringe communities that have existed since the early 2000s, its emphasis on a welcoming aesthetic over a defining ideology has already shown promising results. Instagram meme account @on_a_downward_spiral boasts nearly 300k followers and unashamedly declares in its bio: “if ur transphobic, racist, overall terrible u WILL be blocked.” Another Instagram account, @seize_the_memes is even more outspoken in their political dispositions with a string of descriptions in their bio, including “pro-Marxism, pro-feminism, pro-BLM, anti-capitalism, anti-gender binary,” among many more. This page has over 200k followers, far from an easy feat even for a seemingly niche collection of humor.
What does all of this say about the counterculture? The successes of wildly different progressive meme pages signals that it is not politics that draws consumers into this type of content. Rather, it is a deeper underlying principle all these pages seem to share: respect for human dignity—basic kindness, empathy, and inclusivity of various groups. However, I would be remiss to gloss over the visuals and irony these content creators invoke as well. No progressive meme counterculture is complete without its arsenal of pastel color palettes, celebrations of diversity, deconstruction of antiquated social norms, reflections on the human condition, and occasional bouts of existentialism.
In witnessing the advent of a new cultural push-back, one might wonder if they should support it. Before answering, I would clarify that progressive meme culture is only a push-back community insofar as it is working to dismantle the use of bigotry within comedy. And certainly, some individual creators in the sect possess non-mainstream beliefs, but the essence of this coalition is one of universality, collaboration, and appreciation—hardly anything to be fearful of. Another critical notation to make on the support of progressivism is that of the groups’ politics. Politics within the progressive community are neither homogeneous nor all-consuming. Unlike the alt-right, where the entire syndicate is predicated upon a set of bigoted beliefs, the progressive community is not based upon any specific principle other than that of human dignity.
That being said, I would answer yes, progressive meme counterculture is something we should support. Not only is it working to dismantle a deadly radicalization pipeline, but it is also a great reminder that we are all intrinsically valuable, beautiful humans. It is also very funny.
Christian Browder ’23 (christianbrowder@college.harvard.edu) thinks one crucial step to flattening hierarchies is that everyone discovers their inner catboy and girlboss.