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In a 2020 phone interview, Saleem Alhabash, who studies memes and social media at Michigan State University’s media psychology department, told me memes are as valid a response as any other to overwhelming events beyond our control. “These memes, the way that people are communicating, could be a reflection of the general feeling that people are having,” he said. “This uncertainty about what is going to happen, and how severe this trend is. So while they might appear humorous or [dismissive] of the seriousness, they can reflect [public] sentiment.” With the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1990, the fears of a new major conflict subsided until recently, where both old participants of previous wars and newcomers to the scene are flexing military muscles in ways the previous World Wars found impossible. The emergence and growth of the “alt right” (“alternative right”) movement in the early 2010s was characterized by an extensive use of social media and online memes. A particularly important moment in the formation of the alt-right was during the 2016 US presidential campaign, where the memes that they produced and disseminated online flooded the internet with pro-Trump content to such an extent that it was dubbed a ‘meme war’, and is considered to have been instrumental in shifting the public narrative to one that was sympathetic of Trump. Another thing that appears quite a lot in Ukrainian memes nowadays is a washing machine. It refers to the surprising scale of looting: multiple reports state that Russian troops steal not only money or jewellery but also, clothes, rugs, instruments, tableware, kettles, washing machines, and other home appliances. I’m already seeing the scolding tweets about WWIII jokes. We may be irony-poisoned on here, but you can’t stop gallows humor when it’s something this huge and bleak and we’re all individually powerless. It’s a sign we’re still human.— AICN Podcast Day! (@LazlosGhost) February 24, 2022
For Ukrainians, humor is a proven way to survive a crisis. Even during the war, local stand-up comedians gather large audiences in bomb shelters, making jokes to distract people from the grim new reality. This is a remake of a joke about the former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss, whose short term in power " was compared to "the shelf life of a lettuce." What’s more, as the memes and their narratives travel and spread, they help shape the larger cultural narrative about the Ukrainian invasion itself — just as all memes, from toxic to wholesome, help create cultural narratives.
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He’s also made headlines for many other reasons, including accusations that he is trying to take advantage of his position as leader by extorting businesses and abusing power. He has denied all allegations against him. The memes themselves were utterly predictable. There were the World War III memes. The 2022 memes. The geopolitical memes. The draft memes. The Wordle memes. The accidental memes. The memes referencing other memes. The memes about memeing. You know the score. We’ve been here before.
Russia’s announcement that it would withdraw its forces from the city on Nov. 9 prompted a surge in watermelon-themed memes. For Dawkins, memes were discrete units of cultural inheritance (gossip, images, fashion fads, catchphrases) that, by virtue of their rapid dissemination and adoption, drive cultural evolution, just as genes propel forth our biology. But unlike previous instances when “WWIII” memes took over the internet, this round of social media discourse has been tinged with grim reality. This is no abstract threat. War is already occurring, and that leads the act of meme-making in a time of crisis to feel much, much different. There are thousands of channels that repost the same news from each other. We stand out — we create jokes for each piece of news. Until February 24, virtually all news except those that cannot be joked about were published with memes. When the war broke out, there were fewer reasons to joke, so there were fewer memes with the news. But there is still something to joke about,” he explains.
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I cover tech for the Kyiv Independent during one of the most difficult times for my country. We need stories like these because the fight on the digital front is just as important as the fight on the ground. I really want to write again about investment in Ukraine’s hi-tech, cool startups and the booming Ukrainian IT market. Ukrainians have a dark, very biting sense of humor now because they are so, so angry,” Borys said. “Memes are a way to express that, but in a funny way,” he told the Kyiv Independent. What Ukrainians joke about
Fake news and dark memes are not limited to the West, nor to any one political leaning, of course. Many other democracies, some of them secular, are struggling with their own multicultural identities. VisitUkraine is a public union that, since 2018, has been engaged in the promotion and popularization of Ukrainian tourism on the domestic and foreign markets, but the war made its adjustments. Now we are working on the information front.
23. Who are you being real for HUH?
The “Saint Javelin” mural in Kyiv before the nimbus in the image was painted over. Photo: donttakefake.com Cooperation– cooperation and advertising integrations with the Visit Ukraine and Visit World projects. Now there are three people in Novynach, but the team has already recruited a new meme creator who will soon increase the editorial staff. Kharkin emphasizes that to become such a specialist, it is important to be able to joke about the traditional conventions of the news genre. A meme creator is not just a person who can make a meme or draw something. Memetic Irony and the Promotion of Violence within Chan Cultures– Blyth Crawford, Florence Keen, Guillermo Suarez de-Tangil if you are not ukrainian currently searching for nearest shelter, how can you joke about ww3 as “coping mechanism”? what are you coping with? i woke up to the sounds of explosions in my city today, is it funny to you?— ⁷ (@futurmrsmin) February 24, 2022
We also share memes as shorthand for things we feel we don’t have the right words to express. Like, say, anxiety over escalating imperial aggression. Just reposting a meme about current events says “I read the news, I’m a good person, but I don’t know what to say or do, LOL.” The problem with this offering is it’s three I statements in a row. In this particular case, it doesn’t seem to facilitate connection and learning let alone make any tangible impact. Instead, it’s flooding our feeds with half-baked thoughts and needy “Look at me!” performances that make demands on our attention and create so much noise (perhaps an accurate externalization of what’s going on in some minds). The Russian flag with smiling heart emojis alongside In a trend that has been associated with nationalist messaging, TikTok videos feature the Russian flag and heart emojis The basic idea here, as Alhabash pointed out, is that the war meme itself isn’t just about war. It’s about the larger cultural mood and the ways in which we receive, express, and amplify that mood. In the past, the memes might have functioned as a kind of canary in the coal mine for a larger social media response to future emergent political situations. VisitUkraine.Today is the unique information portal for tourists traveling to Ukraine and Ukrainians planning a trip abroad.Ukrainians don't share this sentiment and see Russians’ unsuccessful attempts at protesting against the war in the beginning of the full-scale invasion as inadequate. This opinion deepened when anti-mobilization demonstrations after six months of the all-out war garnened more participation than anti-war protests. Ukrainians often use the phrase “good Russian” to sascastically refer to Russians.
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