Social Media And Political Memes Will Decide The Fate Of America!

An Internet meme is an activity, concept, catchphrase or piece of media which spreads, often as mimicry, from person to person via the internet.

If you are like most Americans today in the age of instant information and technology you have viewed thousands of memes in the last several years. Some are very funny, some are not. Some seem to carry information that may be of interest to you.

A meme is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture". An Internet meme may take the form of an image, hyperlink, video, picture, website or hashtag. It may be just a word or phrase, including an intentional misspelling. These small movements tend to spread from person to person via social media, blogs, direct email or news sources. They may relate to various existing internet cultures or subcultures, often created or spread on various websites, or by Usenet boards and other such early-internet communications facilities. Fads and sensations tend to grow rapidly on the Internet, because the instant communication facilitates word-of-mouth transmission.

Like millions of Americans, I use Facebook everyday not only to catch up on my friends, but also to use it as a self promoting tool for my photography business and to help promote a novel that I have just finished called "Rocky Mountain Reckoning" which is available on amazon.com. I hold no college degree and the only college experience I have is going to all my kids graduations from their perspective colleges. Having said that I am an educated man in the sense that I have always read and have been a functioning adult in todays fast paced American society. I feel that I have a well rounded view of the world at large.

I have been amazed at the abundance of political memes that have crossed my social media in the last couple of years. What is scary in my mind is almost all of them carry a message of hate. Be it a meme for supporting the Democrats or the Republicans.

I am a conservative by nature and have always voted for Republicans. But I have unfriended on Facebook some of my more adverse friends on that side of the fence due to their increasing hate of the liberals and use of political memes to support their message of hate. In the same token, I have also unfriended some of the more adverse friends that happen to be liberal for the same thing. In turn I have received emails from the both sides of the fence of the unfriended and have been accused of being a racist, a pinko commie, keeping the poor man down, you have to much money to understand, warmonger, and these are just examples of the nice comments. I had to block some of these people. My political views have never changed, but it has not until the onslaught on the instant information age that have I ever had people, be it conservative or liberal actually hate me. Ten years ago I had the same mind set and nobody hated me or at least had the gonads to send me an email stating so.

What is scary is that most Americans have become lazy and do not do the homework to see if the information contained in the meme that has enraged them to a boiling point is in fact true. They just accept the fact that they read it on the internet and actually a true statement.

This attitude in my opinion has polarized this great nation and has created a division of attitudes in this great country we have not experienced since the Civil War that ended in 1864.

Be truthful the two memes I have included in this capsule have you actually done the homework to see if they do in fact contain real information?

Or do you just accept this as fact because you read it on the internet?

I for one have no idea if they in fact contain actual information nor am I going to do the homework because either way it will not change my core belief, but I do not hate the folks that posted these.

I feel that memes and political memes have raised racism to an alarming all time high since the early 1960's. In my lifetime, I have seen great strides in racism and the growing acceptance of a multi-national society here in America except for the last 10 years of so and the wide usage of the internet. Since the advent of the internet and social media racism has taken a step back, way back. I have seen more racial memes than ever before cross my social media, sparking a rise in racial hatred. The Ferguson riots are a perfect example of this. The police who are our defense against the criminals (another upcoming article) have become the hated to a few isolated incidents that 10 years ago would have made a headline only in the town it happen and not to be judge be everyone that has a Facebook account. All of this I contribute to the ever increasing power of the meme in America.

In the meme include in this capsule it does not serve a correct and truthful representation of my circle of friends, I have blacks that have conservative viewpoints and whites that have liberal viewpoints.

Since memes have become the normal political hatred has risen in America. They fuel what we want to believe even if it is truthful or not. Memes poke fun at the people we have elected to govern us and after reading numerous ones every time we turn on the computer we as a society have become desensitized to the effects of having respect for the people we elected to those offices in the first place.

I was taught at an early age to respect our elders and the folks in the position of trust. What office or job in this country deserves that respect more than the President of the United States? You may not like the politics of the person that is currently serving in that position, but that is supposed to be what makes America great. We vote them out in a bloodless coup in the next election. We shouldn't make fun of the leader of the free world and commander and chief of the strongest military in the world.

What has happened to Americans? We are not suppose to to make a decision based on reading a political meme. Propaganda, the turning of peoples minds is being played out today on your computer on social media thousands if not millions of times a minute.

I have read that history is supposed to be a lesson on how not to do things or in some cases how to do things. But in the instant information age of today and the continuing advancement of technology and the internet we are making history every second so fast that the lessons that we should be learning get lost in cyberspace and it has become total chaos. We have no idea what we read on memes is truth or an outright lie and we will never know. By the time you even think about is it truthful? The message and meme have changed to another lie... or truth.

So to answer the original question "Will Social Media And Political Memes Decide The Fate Of America?" I think that yes, they will have a large part in the say so of the next presidential election.

The meme that I used to start this article was not produced on the web nor did I steal it from a political ad or newspaper. It was not featured on news or any media what's so ever. I did not use a meme generator to create this meme on the internet. I simply googled the word "Vote" and clicked on images. I selected one that was legally available to the public and within 2 minutes with the help of a free image editor called Photoscape I had created a meme. Think about that!