Meme Magic, How Conservatives Are Able To Keep Winning
Meme Magic is real, its how Conservatives Are Able To Keep Winning. It is their not so secret weapon. Memes are meant to be fun and funny. The right is constantly making inside jokes (the latest is the NPC meme) and funny images to spread ideas. It makes hard to swallow political ideas fun and exciting.For the average person they can participate by iterating and changing memes. This makes jokes constantly evolve and allows ideas to spread even further.This works because their counter parts on the regressive left constantly restrict and police language. Social justice activists and feminists are known to call things bad or problematic restricting their virality. This means that so long as conservatives are having fun and inviting people in and the regressive left is angry with people and restricting language, conservative ideas will travel further and be more appetizing to regular folks.
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The latest meme to be sweeping the internet is the NPC meme.
NPC stands for Non-Player Character.
Basically, if you've ever played a video game, you've experienced an interaction with a non-player character.
They're basically any character controlled by the computer and not a human.
The meme states that there are some people who are not actually in control of themselves, they are computer-controlled automatons.
And that's why when you ask them specific questions about politics, they give you canned responses, no response, or just get angry, because they have a limited set of responses they can give as a non-player character.
Many people on the left are upset, saying it's dehumanizing.
But at the same time, the left has been calling the right Russian bots for a long time, so it's not too different.
It's actually a bit late, if you were to ask me.
The latest news is that it appears Twitter may be banning many different NPC accounts.
Basically, people make Twitter accounts with this little meme image, and Twitter is banning lots of them.
But this got me thinking about the difference between how the left and the right interact on social media, and the power of something they call meme magic.
Meme magic is kind of a joke.
It's the idea of this power that memes actually have, how they can influence things and change things, and they call it meme magic as a joke.
Many people on the left have insinuated that people on the right literally believe memes are magic, and this is a good example of the divide.
People on the right are constantly making jokes.
Memes are meant to be funny.
You laugh.
When you participate with Trump supporters, or conservatives, or people who typically post memes, everything's meant to be a joke.
It's all tongue-in-cheek.
It's just funny.
But the left is extremely serious.
You can see how they interact on social media.
Constantly trying to police language, ban hate speech, telling people they can or can't do things.
So if you're on the left, you're constantly walking on eggshells, never knowing what is or is not acceptable.
Whereas on the right, everything's just a joke to begin with.
So today, let's take a look at the NPC meme and the idea of meme magic and why this is a tool that's very powerful that the right uses to constantly win.
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First, I want to give you a quick overview of the NPC Wojak meme.
If you've watched my second channel, you've seen a little bit of this, but let's get into it.
Basically, this is the image they often share.
It shows these men with kind of blank faces, and they're all, you know, putting their hands on this guy.
KnowYourMeme.com talks about the origin of the meme, and you can see this person right here is called a Wojak, and this person is an NPC Wojak.
The idea is that this person is a blank-faced automaton, and this is an actual human.
What's interesting is that they say the meme was actually dying until this article appeared on Kotaku on October 5th, how the NPC meme tries to dehumanize SJWs, and they show this better charcoal-like drawing of the NPC meme.
What I found really funny about this is that Kotaku called it a crackpot social theory and part elementary school insult.
They say the NPC meme originated from a deeply comical medley of bogus physics and stupid religion found on the messaging board 4chan.
Originally posted in 2016, it resurfaced last month.
What's funny about that article is that the NPC meme is just a silly version of a concept called the Philosophical Zombie, or P-Zombie.
This concept is not new.
It's been around for a really, really long time.
It's just got a different name today.
But what's really fascinating about the NPC meme is how it fits in with meme magic.
And to me, that just basically means the serendipitous nature of how these memes operate.
For one, the Pepe meme wasn't created on purpose, like the frog meme was literally just a character that people used and shared online.
Then people started using the word kek.
CAC comes from World of Warcraft.
There's two factions, the Alliance and the Horde, and they can't speak each other's language.
If you are on one side and you type in LOL, your character will say CAC instead.
The game is doing this as a way to say that you can't actually understand what they're saying, but the person is saying LOL.
People realized Kek meant LOL, and so Kek became a meme, meaning laugh out loud.
But then people discovered that there was actually a frog-headed god in Egypt named Kek.
This is the serendipity of meme magic.
No, it's not literal magic, it's just really interesting how Pepe, Kek, came together with this Egyptian frog-headed god.
It's actually kind of weird how coincidental it was.
According to Wikipedia, the oldest representations, Kekwi, is given the head of a serpent and Kekwit, the head of either a frog or a cat.
Weirdly, Motherboard ran this story in 2016 that said Trump's occult online supporters believe meme magic got him elected.
They're literally implying that people think memes actually have magic powers.
Sure, maybe some people do, but to most people, meme magic is just a joke.
In fact, according to Know Your Meme, meme magic is a slang term used to describe the hypothetical power of sorcery and voodoo, supposedly derived from certain internet memes, that can transcend the realm of cyberspace and result in real-life consequences.
They call it a fictitious concept.
It is an inside joke.
People just think it's funny.
I actually find the concept of meme magic really, really fascinating.
Because as I mentioned, people on the right are making everything out to be a joke.
It's just funny.
You laugh.
That's plain and simple.
There are a lot of people who probably don't really care about politics.
They just want to be in on the joke.
So when the memes emerge, they want to get in on it, and they spread the memes too.
But because the left doesn't really do this, and because the left is more willing to police language that is offensive, they're kind of at odds.
And then in my experience, I've seen a lot of people who are concerned about aligning with the left because you will be attacked.
You constantly feel bad.
And that's an easy recruiting tool for the right.
But what's really fascinating about the NPC meme is the serendipity, or meme magic, that emerged at the same time.
First, around the same time that the NPC meme was getting its rise, people on the right started using the term mobs to describe far-left violence.
On CNN, they said, don't use the term mob, and there was actually a debate as to whether or not the Supreme Court protesters were mobs.
What's really interesting, however, is that mob is another term for non-player character.
According to the World of Warcraft wiki, a mob, short for mobile, is a generic term for any non-player entity whose primary purpose is to be killed for experience, quest objective, or loot.
So now you have two memes intersecting accidentally.
I can't imagine there are people actually coordinating these memes, but it's really strange how this works out.
Jobs Not Mobs was meant to be a slogan saying, conservatives will bring about jobs, and the left will bring about mobs.
But when you refer to a left-wing mob, it can go both ways.
It can refer to left-wing violence, or the idea of a non-player character.
To me, that is ridiculously coincidental.
But it gets crazier when you realize, sequentially, what comes after M?
The letter M. What comes after O?
Is P. And what comes after B is C.
MOB, one letter forward, is NPC.
That is literal meme magic.
It is just the weird coincidence that emerges out of these memes.
Now, you can probably find weird coincidences all over the place.
People often do this.
There's that movie about the number 23 with Jim Carrey, where he's always seeing the number everywhere.
If you're looking for it, you will find it.
But when people point this out, it's funny.
It's funny that these weird coincidences exist and things can intersect.
However, unfortunately for those on the right who love the NPC meme, according to a post on the Donald and some other Twitter posts, Twitter just deleted thousands of NPC warriors.
This Twitter user EmotionalSupportSquirrel said, all of the NPC accounts are getting canned.
Even accounts that just changed avatars to the NPC meme are getting suspended.
There were tweets asking for them to be reported, so I'm guessing that's what happened.
Accounts that had the avatar, the name, and the handle must have been mass-reported too.
So aside from the weird coincidences between NPC mob, left-wing violence, left-wing mob, how it all kind of intersects, how Keck just kind of intersected with these other ideas, you have this strange internet activism being taken out by these meme warriors.
Look, in my opinion, I could be wrong, but when I see this, and I see the comments people are making, I think most of them view it as a tongue-in-cheek joke.
It's just meant to be funny.
But there is something interesting beyond the idea of meme magic and memes that we're seeing with Twitter.
Many people, actual human beings, created accounts with names that were NPCs and changed their image to look like that NPC character.
If Twitter is banning many of them, then what it looks like is, you could argue this is conservative activism.
They're going on Twitter to spread an idea that they think is funny but kind of makes a point.
The point is that there are a lot of people who are just mindlessly repeating talking points from TV, insulting Donald Trump or certain political ideas without understanding why.
They're highlighting that with this meme.
In my opinion, this just looks like online political activism.
It's not the first time we've seen it.
People have done something similar to this for the past decade or longer.
But if Twitter is banning them, it basically shows that Twitter is shutting down this form of online activism.
You could argue this does go against the rules because they're creating bot accounts, essentially, but it's my understanding that most of these accounts are actually run by real people.
I'm sure there are a lot of accounts that are bots, maybe many of the ones that were banned.
A lot of them weren't banned.
Maybe those are the ones run by real people.
But some people are saying that even people who just changed their avatar image to the NPC meme have gotten banned as well.
Which says to me, if that's true, Twitter is targeting conservative political activism.
Because the left is complaining about this.
The left has said that the right is trying to dehumanize them.
They've called it an alt-right meme.
If that's true, and Twitter is banning these accounts, you could argue it's against the rules, but it's specifically targeting conservative activism.
I don't think it's entirely conservative, because there are a lot of people who think the NPC meme is funny and use it who aren't conservative.
There are a lot of people who are apolitical who just want to get in on the memes.
But regardless of all of that, The fact that memes are funny, the fact that they're jokes, and the fact that there is this strange serendipity that exists where these memes intersect just helps the right recruit more.
And this is why I think the internet has been such a powerful tool for Donald Trump and for conservatives.
Because as I mentioned, there are people who don't really care about politics, but it's hilarious.
It's funny that a mob refers to a non-player character in a video game that is hostile.
But it also refers to a violent group of people.
So when you say left-wing mob, you're literally talking about both.
That's a strange... That's just... That's incredible in my opinion.
It's an amazing coincidence where these memes actually have this strange intersection that works so perfectly for conservatives.
And so long as they're willing to make it a joke, so long as they're willing to laugh about it, they're going to be able to recruit more people.
I'd be willing to bet there are people who were apolitical who are now political because of these memes.
And there are many people on the left who are tired of feeling bad for being yelled at and insulted by the left and constantly walking on eggshells, so they've turned.
They've either left or they've gone to the right.
And then what happens when someone understands the inside joke of meme magic but sees a story like this from Motherboard?
They realize that no, there's not occult online supporters of Trump who literally believe memes have magic powers, for the most part.
Look, I understand some people probably believe it's true, but the average person understands it's just meant to be funny.
It's a joke.
And the average person who understands a joke will see a story like this and say, What?
This is fake news!
This is crazy!
So then you'll see a couple different types of people.
The far left will adamantly believe people are crazy and think memes actually have magic powers.
But traditional and passive liberals understand it's a joke, and they're just looking at stories like this going, uh...
What?
What am I supposed to believe?
And if the left and the traditional liberals and passive liberals are at odds with each other because the liberals understand it's a joke, the liberals are probably going to disassociate.
They're not going to engage anymore.
And conservatives are going to keep posting funny jokes and memes, and it works.
Memes allow these ideas to spread far and wide.
They allow ideas that are hard political ideas to be much more acceptable.
When you see a photo of Hillary Clinton, and it's funny, you want to share it because it's funny.
But then the idea, the negative image of Hillary goes far and wide.
So long as the right is willing to have fun and laugh about things, and the left isn't, the right has a massive advantage.
But let me know what you think in the comments below.
How do you feel about the NPC meme?
Personally, I think it's hilarious.
I think it's really funny.
The left calls the right Russian bots, and now the right is calling the left NPCs.
What's the difference?
I don't see why the left is so upset about it.
They've been doing the same thing much longer than the right has.
Ultimately, I think the image of the blank-faced man is just a really funny image.
But let me know what you think in the comments below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
You can follow me on Twitter at TimCast.
Stay tuned.
New videos every day at 4 p.m.
More videos coming up today on my second channel, youtube.com slash TimCastNews.
