Betas, Bimbos, and Beckys: Internet Memes and Contemporary US Cultural Politics

My senior Political Science honors thesis examines what Internet memes reveal about modern US American cultural politics. I argue that, as many other academics have mentioned, Internet memes are today's version of political cartoons, but I depart from existing literature by emphasizing the important distinction between the two--memes' online existence on Web 2.0's social networking platforms depend on replication and remixes. This difference is arguably more important than their similarities. In Chapter 1, I provide definitions of the terms that I will be using (memes, cultural politics, Web 2.0, etc.) and examples, and conclude by exploring political and communication theory, mainly through a Laclauian (and by extension, an overarching Marxist) lens. In Chapter 2, I summarize the history of the relationship between humor and politics that spans back to Ancient Greece, explaining types of humor (subversive vs. disparaging, maladaptive vs. adaptive), how humor is used to signify one's collective identity, and what this means for current US American inter- and intragroup relations. Chapter 3 serves as the "hands-on" application to the theories examined in the previous chapter, analyzing recent memes about group relations. For example, I compare anti-feminist and pro-feminist memes, anti-gay and subversive queer humor, and anti-Black racist memes and memes that subvert and question the legitimacy of sociopolitical hierarchical inequalities. In my final, fourth chapter, I emphasize the importance of teaching critical media literacy in educational settings, and how memes are an effective method of doing so, evaluating various memetic academic lesson plans. Critical media literacy is a vital skill for combatting anti-intellectualism and preparing individuals with the proper tools to accurately understand and analyze the literal and figurative messages behind the media they consume.