"Truth is a Virus: Meme Warfare and the Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)" by Andrew Boyd

I almost feel like the intended audience of this piece was definitely not college students since memes is like a second language to us. Hate them or love them, most young people see and enjoy their fair share of memes on a daily basis. While we are more concerned with funny, pop culture related memes, Boyd likes to focus on ones that have political messages and strive to either challenge established truths or change the status quo. George Bush definitely has his place in the world of memes, including "Bush did 9/11" and his press conference where that one guy threw his shoes at the former President, but the meme that Boyd attempts to spawn has tried to create some real change.

Especially today with the established power of social media, memes are a way to grab people's attention to get them invested in what you have created. Boyd wrote this article in 2000, where meme subculture was more of an underground, less mainstream thing. Even then, memes played by the same rules.

1) Humor is the main hook for memes.
Laughter immediately increases the attractiveness of any subject. If you can make people laugh, they will want to hear what else you have to say. This was especially useful for Boyd and his campaign against pork barrel spending since after all the laughs and the characters he plays, he has the attention of his audience and he can sit them down and explain to them to meaning of the campaign. Without such laughter, jokes, and irony, no one would really care.

2) Lack of formal organization.
Boyd says that creators and participants in meme culture are rarely bound by any formal or business ties. Rather, what ties them together is a loosely similar set of morals and beliefs about something. One of the important parts about a succ (lol) cessful meme is that is has to be accessible to anyone who want to take part in it. Good memes can be replicated without much barriers to entry, which is exactly what we saw with the Billionaires campaign. People where creating copies of the campaign in different parts of the country, which Boyd supported.

So, while there was no Pepe or Harambe mentioned in this article, I still get it. Memes are a powerful thing. They communicate a foreign language with sometimes an at home message. While they are funny, they are a huge site of cultural resistance since anyone can participate in meme culture without any repercussion for their humor, background, or political stance.