response
1. the point that social media transformed communication with the abundance of pseudonimity/anonimity is an interesting aspect to point out, as most discussions of why social media transformed communication that i've seen has usually been centered around the fact that it's fast, international, cultural, etc.
2. the political nature of memes is something i've talked quite a bit about at this school for whatever reason. i think the reason memes work so effectively at political messaging is they have an inherent virtue signalling quality—the type of meme someone chooses to share usually says a lot about what kind of internet circles they've been most exposed to, and within memes there's kind of an underlying invisible hierachy of "normie" memes to "niche" memes that tend to correlate pretty well with mainstream/neoliberal and more radical politics respectively.
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