The Futile War on Memes and Hashtags
Big Tech’s war to control the narrative has led to attacks on “hate speech,” which morphed into attacks on the more pliable “misinformation.” It isn’t that bans on constitutionally protected hate speech have been largely effective, thanks to Big Tech exercising nearly monopoly power over online communications in America. It’s that there are infinite sources of embarrassing counter-narratives that aren’t hateful at all. Hence the new front in Big Tech’s censorship offensive: “Misinformation.”
If you don’t want to run afoul of the new guidelines, don’t produce a dissenting narrative on COVID-19 treatment or the recent U.S. presidential election, much less anything having to do with sensitive race and gender issues, or immigration. And don’t discuss conspiracies of any kind, because apparently there is no such thing as a “conspiracy,” and only “conspiracy theorists” ever bring up conspiracies, and to even suggest the existence of any conspiracy, anywhere, is “misinformation.”
The power of memes and hashtags, however, is their clever use of novel images or a few words used in a new and original context can go viral before the censors even know what’s happened. A hilarious and powerful example of this is the hashtag #BlueAnon, which rhymes with “QAnon” and flips the concept on its head.
As reported in American Greatness, BlueAnon is now a term used to mock the Left as the most prolific conspiracy theorists. As tweeted by Max Nordau (@MaxNordau):
“WHAT DOES ‘BlueAnon’ MEAN?
Who paid Brett Kavanaugh’s debts?
Why did Justice Kennedy resign?
The Capitol riot was planned by Republicans, and Capitol police collaborated.
Detention centers are concentration camps.
Trump is a Russian asset.”
A definition posted in the Urban Dictionary, removed within days, defined “Blue Anon” as follows:
“A loosely organized network of Democratic voters, politicians and media personalities who spread left-wing conspiracy theories such as the Russia Hoax, Jussie Smollett hoax, Ukraine hoax, Covington Kids hoax, and Brett Kavanaugh hoax. Blue Anon adherents fervently believe that right-wing extremists are going to storm Capitol Hill any day now and ‘remove’ lawmakers from office, hence the need for the deployment of thousands of National Guard stationed at the U.S. Capitol.”
Another recent source of embarrassment to a very rigid orthodoxy is the hashtag (that trended on Twitter for a while) “#SuperStraight” (also surviving so far in the Urban Dictionary). Described in a Black Pigeon video last week, the #SuperStraight hashtag is being promoted by that oppressed minority, the heterosexual that is not attracted to transsexual members of the opposite sex. Armed with diagrammatic memes festooned with images and arrows, proliferators of the #SuperStraight hashtag are asserting their right to only be attracted to members of the opposite sex who were born that way.
The hilarity of this meme ought to be disarming. These “super straights” are “coming out of the closet” after “years of oppression,” victims of “super straight phobia,” and “the orientation of super straight” and “super straight pride” is the “final frontier of human rights.”
Once Urban Dictionary removed “Blue Anon,” over a dozen replacement definitions went up. Such is the nature of memes and hashtags. When they strike a chord, they attract harmonious refrains too numerous to silence.
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