Drew Magary

Memes Are Propaganda Now

How stupid internet cat jokes morphed into one of Trump’s most effective weapons

This all started because a cat wanted a cheeseburger. I was online to bear witness to the birth of memes. I saw Keyboard Cat play off 5,700 different people. I slogged through dozens of recuts of the late Bruno Ganz throwing a tantrum as Hitler in Downfall, on topics ranging from the Dallas Cowboys to Star Wars. I read all the tired Chuck Norris one-liners. And, naturally, I was forwarded every single de facto one-panel comic from I Can Haz Cheezburger?, a site that raised $30 million in venture capital, spawned two books, and got its own reality show on Bravo. I saw every LOLcat there was to see, and I don’t even like cats.

Cheezburger was one of those sites whose content was so ubiquitous that I became outright irritated by it. I said to my friends, “You know, I can just go to their website to see all this. You don’t have to be the personal courier acting as a liaison between me and everything they’ve ever produced.” They didn’t bother to listen. Instead, in our email chain, there was an endless parade of this: