When you’re being manipulated by online memes
Olivier Blanchard offers analysis of a manipulative meme:
Chances are that you have seen this meme floating around, especially around elections. It isn’t what you think it is. It is not a friendly digital handshake. It isn’t meant to help neighbors mend fences. It is a deliberate instrument of psychological manipulation.
I have seen that meme, and cordially hated it.
I worked in Marketing for nearly two decades. I know this kind of device when I see it. Let me explain.
1. The image
Note the childlike simplicity of the image, the super basic smiling face. The finger pointing up at it. The open posture. The baby-like head. What part of the brain is this image stimulating? It looks like the kind of flip card used in psychological tests, right? Or something from a children’s book. Why do you think that is? What emotions is this image designed to instantly trigger?
That’s one reason I hated it I think, without pausing to analyze it. First I found the message completely stupid and wrong, and then I hated the cutesie innocent because cutesie doesn’t cancel out stupid and wrong so fuck off. Not sophisticated, but it does the job.
But analysis is good so let’s read more of the analysis.
2. The message
Now note the subtlety of the message, layered over the image: I’m the adult. You’re the child. Also note the cleverly toned-down passive-aggressive scolding, the peer pressure at the root of it. (You want to be an adult too, right? Don’t you want to be a grown-up?)
And that “that’s called” thing too. It’s a kind of woke-style bullying that I’ve grown allergic to. No, that’s not called being an adult, and who made you the boss of what’s adult anyway so fuck off. It always comes back to the fuck off.
4. Accountability avoidance
It makes you (the “child”) feel guilty and “bad” for holding someone (the “adult”) accountable for their harmful actions.It also changes the subject from an objective harmful action (voting for a divisive, hate-filled, or antidemocratic agenda, for instance) to the subjective realm of “being friends” and the emotional safety that comes from preserving social bonds.
And it jumps right over the substantive issue. It treats fundamental differences in values as trivial when they’re nothing of the kind.
The purpose of this meme and others like it is to normalize malicious political views and suppress pushback, using guilt, confusion, and social pressure as subconscious levers of control. It is not designed to bring people together regardless of their political views. That is not its purpose.
Learn to spot when you’re being manipulated by online memes.
PS: Whatever “side” you may be on, and whatever your politics may be, if you’re sharing this meme, either you’ve been had, or your penchant for gaslighting is showing.
Despite how unsophisticated it looks, this is one of the best ones I’ve seen.
No worries; I never shared that nasty thing. But I enjoyed the analysis anyway.
I hadn’t seen the original of this meme, only a parody version with bottom text something like, “This round-headed guy, maybe, but not me, I don’t stay friends with xenophobic racists”. Now the parody makes sense.
Facebook “friending” is a strange phenomenon. People use the “unfriending” process to claim moral superiority, either over those who unfriend you (“spineless cowards!”) or over those who you unfriend (“horrible bigots!”). Few seem to take the route of declaring the Unfriended as still friends but just people whose Facebook traffic is not to one’s liking.
This meme is of the “spineless cowards!” variety. It misses the possibility that maybe you are just tired of that person’s posts and comments on Facebook. It conflates friendship and Facebook connection.
Very interesting analysis in the OP.
That bottom line should read “an amoral piece of shit”.
Point #2 reminds me of something that makes my antenna twitch: whenever someone starts talking about what a “real man” does (or a “real adult” or whatever), I resent the manipulation. Even when it’s being used for a good cause, like “a real man doesn’t abuse women”
HAVING THE HEAD OF A BABY IS CALLED BEING AN ADULT.
Of course it is.
Because the rest of the baby is in the oven. Duh.
I hate manipulative memes, and I usually just scroll past rather than get upset with the person who posted them. Sometimes, though, if I know the person well and know that they have a sense of humour, I’ll post a contradictory one.
Wow, that’s quite an analysis, but, as Freud never said (and thank goodness, because I wouldn’t want to cite that crank), sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
The whole analysis of meme speaker as adult and reader as child doesn’t make sense since the person with the “baby-like head” is clearly the speaker. I hate to see what sinister motivations they’d find in xkcd’s style.
Yes, “that’s called being an adult” is pretty snotty. That’s going to repel most people, so not quite the brilliant manipulation that’s being claimed.
I’d guess someone with minimal art talent whipped this up and sent it to a friend or group of friends that they thought were getting too worked up by politics as a way to tweak them, not convince them. I think it’s unlikely someone carefully crafted it using high-level psychological manipulation techniques.
I’d really hate to see everyone refusing to be friends with everyone that they have serious political disagreements. That would be a sad state of affairs. It’s the “smart” thing to say nobody really ever changes anyone else’s mind, but I do not think that is true given long periods of time. If you hang out with people that you determine are decent, and you’re exposed to a different point of view, over time you may come to find some of it makes sense and accept it.
Most people aren’t sinister. A lot of conservatives have good motivations for their beliefs. A lot of them will consider other viewpoints. If you decide they’re Nazis and shun them, that’s never going to happen. Look at the red and blue political maps and tell me that sea of red doesn’t make you nervous. You’re not going to shrink it by giving up on the people that live there.
And maybe you’d even learn something from them. The Democrats used to be the party that stood up for the poor shitkickers. Now a lot of those people feel the Democrats are coastal snobs who don’t care about them except to lecture them about how backwards they are and to force them to have men in women’s bathrooms. Meanwhile progressive are flabbergasted that people vote against what they see as their own self-interest. We need more coming together here, not less.
Skeletor…”a lot of those people feel the Democrats are coastal snobs who don’t care about them except to lecture them about how backwards they are” because they’ve been told that by a pack of liars. It’s not an actual fact. The Dems don’t do nearly enough for the poor shitkickers, because they’re too busy trying to be “moderate” and “electable” and blah blah blah, but Republicans just outright give them the shaft.
I mean…”coastal snobs”? Come on. How could that be anything but hack-political bullshit?
No, I don’t think so. It’s actually fairly sophisticated. A naive drawer almost always places the eyes too high, for one thing, and the artist knew what s/he was doing with those hands. Hands are hard.
This is pretend-naive drawing. The real thing looks different.