the Internet can make you feel like you have all of this control over the political oh wait I'm sorry how does this wait did I just lose all images source from the internet Pokemon go to the polls Hillary Clinton was famously one of the least charismatic politicians I'm just chillin in Cedar Rapids but on the Internet her image took on a life of its own it's almost as if Hillary's fans breathe charisma into her on social media here we often seemed at her most charismatic in gif form when her most charming moments could be put on an endless loop and passed around his totems of her character meanwhile Hillary subtractors were working in the opposite direction isolating moments that made her look deranged ugly and sick this is political candidate as avatar we're no longer just analyzing how candidates express themselves we want to express ourselves through them on the Internet our support of candidates is being encoded through these moments where they seem to represent us not as actual political representatives voting for our interests but as people acting how we'd like to imagine ourselves acting memes put a new twist on the old idea of charismatic authority in politics charismatic leaders used to imbue themselves with mythos claiming to possess special qualities and cults of personality around themselves but on the Internet a lot of that work has been transferred to citizens who take their leaders tics and blow them up into super human form and as they do it they're creating really strong tribal and emotional ties around those personalities if you make a meme about a candidate and then they become president it can feel like you created a piece of the presidential persona like a part of you is president memes give us the power to build leaders personalities or destroy them we used to talk about gaffes the idea seems quaint now there's no longer any fixed idea of a candidate to be disrupted by a gaffe such a nationalized fun our conception of politicians is now made up of sets of competing polarized means any moment can be manipulated into a positive or negative depending on your allegiance and because memes can morph to accommodate almost any position it's easier than ever to take candidates images and twist them to our own ends facts don't matter to means the meme of this confused blonde lady started out as pictures of a Brazilian soap actress contemplating her character's inner turmoil in jail but when people started superimposing math occlusions on her face she turned into a symbol of confusion or deep conspiratorial calculations the babadook was a horrifying movie villain before he was pushed in front of a rainbow flag and restyled as a fabulous gay icon because memes don't need to grapple with reality they spread a lot faster than typical forms of political speech and in presidential politics we've never seen anyone benefit from this more to our fake news in Donald Trump Trump had no clear ideology the vaguest sketches of ideas a bottomless thirst for attention and a flair for drama the perfect base for endless memeing his campaign rallies became like incubators for ideas with viral potential think about the defining meme of trumpism it never made any possible sense that the united states would build a 2,000 mile wall and that mexico would pay for it but anytime reality tried to get in the way Trump would double down on the meme for his biggest fans Trump himself is the ultimate memes they become so invested in promoting his persona that his promises have become almost irrelevant like outdated versions of a meme that have been replaced by the next amusing thing that's the seductive danger of democracy as mean it can make us feel like we have more personal control over a politician but it's the politician who is seizing the real power becoming immune to criticism and less accountable to us next time on internet y beauty acts make you feel okay [Music]