Memes Eat Brains

They eat democracy, too

Our national political discourse is not at its finest. Highly partisan voices flood the airwaves and the general public seems increasingly polarized. As all of the factfinding websites make clear by the absurdities they dispel, many are willing to believe almost anything about the opposition. According to some Facebook posts this year, the White House referred to Christmas trees as “holiday trees” this year. (False.) That is fairly benign, but it was conspiracy-think and readiness to believe the worst about opponents that led to the “Pizzagate” incident, among others. In an environment like this, what can an individual do?

One thing every individual can do is not circulate political memes. We cannot control mass media on our own, nor can we modify the voices of our neighbors. But we can do our best to limit the reach of political memes. Why? Because memes eat brains.  

Political memes are easy to like and easy to circulate because they operate without much regard for critical thought. They often rely on false analogies or non-representative examples. They take what may be a complicated or complex issue or individual and boil either down to a few words. Those words are not chosen to make well-argued points but to score points. They operate on the intellectual level of a fist bump. They exist to make the opposition seem ridiculous and the reasons behind any political stance seem obvious. Of course, that is just not how almost anything works. Memes distort reality.

Memes encourage our disrespect of opposing views and people across the aisle. Memes operate with hyperbole and exaggeration. Memes take politics—the serious business of figuring out how to live in harmony with all kinds of people—and reduce everything to a punchline. Politics is, and must remain, bigger than punchlines. We are not living in a stand-up comedy club; we are living in a nation of over 300 million people whose lives all matter.

Political memes feed our need for attention and affirmation and excuse us from the work of explaining our positions. It is quite telling that we have political representatives who find they get more responses from posting political memes on their official Twitter pages than from any attempt to explain policy or advocate for any given position. This is an abdication of responsibility on their part and an embarrassment on our part, for preferring such engagements to actual political discourse.  

If what we need in the political sphere is more rational actors with well-reasoned positions, memes give us the opposite. Memes antagonize us toward our opponents, present an oversimplified and false version of reality, and encourage us to respond with anger or ridicule toward anything we dislike or misunderstand. That is not the way toward progress, and certainly not worth a few measly LOLs.

Political memes eat brains because they squash serious thought. A meme presents its case as straightforward and obvious. But for the one being attacked in a given meme, there is little more than antagonism present; there certainly isn’t the kind of reasoned argument that would make one reconsider a position. Neither is there reasoned argument for the attacker—only affirmation of existing views and belittlement of opposition. To engage the meme, you have to turn off quite a bit of your brain.

In a society our size, individuals may wonder what they can do to change the political conversation. It is true that there is much we cannot control. But we can control our own use of social media and messaging. Whatever Mark Zuckerberg may be responsible for, we ourselves are responsible for what we post and “like.” We can elevate the political discourse in our immediate environment by avoiding political memes. Cat memes and sports memes may still be funny, but we should think twice about posting political memes. They eat brains—and we need all the brains we can get for thoughtful political positions and reasonable discourse.

Elizabeth Stice is Associate Professor of History at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Her essays have appeared at Front Porch Republic, History News Network, and Mere Orthodoxy.