What do you think about this idea of maiming things into reality or the

magic? Do you think that memes actually had a role in the outcome of the 2016

election? That's that's the big question right for so many people I mean I do say in the first publication that

definitively memes did not win the election for Trump.

I think some people who are maybe,

you know, who write for these mainstream media publications

had a significant blind spot and could not

understand the appeal to Trump and you know because they're on social media maybe

this was an appealing kind of alibi to explain away how that happened.

You know, that being said, there are, you know,

agitators and activists of all sorts

that do post materials, you know, propaganda and the like on social media, and those things do have

an effect, but generally I think those narratives have mostly been disingenuously employed

or, you know, used to fill up space in the discourse to avoid talking about the

you know what what I would describe as being the like material and political crisis

that that causes the rise of these extreme far-right politics.

You know, I think there is an important distinction though.

Certainly on the early levels, there's this incredible use of humor that draws people in, right?

But underlying those assumptions or knowing what will make someone laugh kind of, you kind of have to understand the implicit positions that they hold, and humor is kind of this route to articulation for a lot of people.

You see something funny, you're not sure why you laughed at it, and then it causes you to

reflect and you realize that it elucidates a position that you held and you didn't know that you felt that way before. So, you know, a lot of people who were maybe you know you know

compassionate conservatives or some kind of like Neo-Con or something like that

...