It is a video that would have confounded anyone five years ago.
A hyperrealistic, digitally generated political figure shimmies across the screen and begins breakdancing. Unicorns prance in the background as the politician bursts into song, the caption a jumble of the latest internet slang. Serious events and topics of heated debate once reserved for town halls are now punchlines for this absurdist, short-form content which has overwhelmed the online world. Swipe. Another one. And another.
In recent years, political memes have taken the internet by storm. Particularly popular with a teenage demographic, these seemingly harmless, satirical videos have begun reshaping how politics is presented, discussed and absorbed by a younger generation.
77.7% of surveyed Paly students describe seeing and engaging with political memes on a daily basis, whether by choice or by way of social media algorithims. Sophomore Wyatt Edson considers himself a regular consumer.
“I’ve seen a lot of very political content that’s been turned into memes or jokes,” Edson said. “I especially see a lot about Benjamin Netanyahu, Charlie Kirk, [Jeffrey] Epstein and [Donald] Trump.”
This prominence of particularly polarizing figures is often an integral ingredient to political meme content.
“It’s usually political leaders from the past several years who have received attention for doing negative things,” Edson said. “A few years ago, when AI was really starting to take off, I’d see a lot of videos of Trump, [Joe] Biden and Kim Jong Un playing Minecraft together. Some people would say that’s disrespectful, but I thought it was funny.”
Videos like this can seem like harmless attempts to generate laughs and likes, but content creators can often cross a fragile line when exploring controversial topics or figures.
Sophomore Jonathan Salvador has dabbled in the field of politically charged meme content firsthand and is no stranger to the controversy that can accompany it. Posting under the Instagram handle @hogridda1441, he and his friends have amassed a significant online presence by posting pranks and other short-form content often featuring political references.
“I saw a lot of memes about Charlie Kirk, so we decided to go to some random houses and I started singing ‘We Are Charlie Kirk’,” Salvador said, referencing a satirical internet anthem about the late right-wing political personality. “But at the same time, he got assassinated. So it’s kind of messed up.”
Despite the serious nature of the political matters at hand, Salvador’s utmost priority remains producing lighthearted content.
“We’re serious about the political and economic state of the world right now, but at the same we want to be funny because we want likes and for people to subscribe,” Salvador said. “I do stuff that will get people [upset], because that’s kind of what’s funny.”
Salvador’s success despite the inflammatory nature of his content is part of a much larger digital phenomenon: polarizing subject matters becoming popular online punchlines. AP Seminar teacher Corbin Dodd has observed how humor can serve both positive and negative roles when involved with serious and controversial topics.
“If there’s something that is deeply upsetting for people or if it’s hard to conceptualize the severity of [an issue], humor can be a way of starting to talk about in a way that feels less difficult,” Dodd said. “But when you’re talking about humor being used as a way of targeting someone or making fun of a group, that’s different. That’s just bullying.”
Because political memes walk such a thin line between humor and insult, some students have found themselves frowning at the same videos their peers laugh at. Freshman Erika Kuei finds this type of content to be particularly disrespectful when it makes light of dark topics.
“The Charlie Kirk videos are really insensitive,” Kuei said. “It’s bad to make fun of dead people, and I feel very offended when I watch those videos.”
Following Kirk’s assassination, social media was flooded with an influx of memes featuring his face digitally plastered onto alternate bodies through artificial intelligence. The process, dubbed by the internet community as Kirkification, has received extremely mixed reactions, given the subject matter it makes fun of.
“Kirkification is a little funny at times, but not because it’s Charlie Kirk,” Edson said. “It’s only funny because it catches you off guard. I think that’s the main reason it’s popular. It gets mixed in with other recognizable memes and reaction images, so you do a double take at it.”
Edson firmly draws a line when the content begins to feel disturbing and exploitative.
“When the actual image of Charlie Kirk getting shot with the blood coming out of his neck was turned into a meme, it was actually really scary,” Edson said. “I was really disgusted by that. I don’t remember telling anyone that or getting into an argument, but I feel like I would have if he was brought up.”
Alex, an anonymous Paly student, believes the ethics of joking about Kirk’s death should not be a topic of debate nor influenced by political affiliations.
“Making fun of someone who might have been a bad person, but was still only speaking their mind and got killed for it, is not respectful or appropriate, especially if you say you don’t condone political violence but make fun of victims of political violence,” Alex said. “I know a lot of our generation likes to use humor to cope with difficult topics, but the way he died was so violent and shocking.”
Regardless of whether students find political memes funny or offensive, this divisive content has undeniably become mainstream. This booming popularity has caused many politicians to adopt a meme-centric approach as a marketing strategy to appeal to a younger audience. However, not all teenagers have found this approach to be successful.
“With the official Democrats or official Republicans account, you can’t really verify who’s running it,” Alex said. “They’re just posting all these memes about the other party, and it creates political polarization. Sometimes, it spins out of control.”
Because this content, which is often designed to be satirical or embellished for comedic value, is being endorsed by official accounts and platforms, it can be difficult to discern real information from fake.
“It’s very easy to be manipulated by things you see on the internet because there’s not a clear fact checking process,” Dodd said. “Oftentimes, you are looking at things very quickly and then moving on to the next post. It can be really easy to just accept something at face value and not really dig into the reliability.”
Dodd notes that this is especially dangerous when breaking news is immediately presented humorously instead of with the severity and sensitivity it deserves.
“Where I start to have an issue with [political memes] is when you have political figures trivializing very serious issues,” Dodd said. “With this war in Iran, the White House account put footage of drone strikes alongside the music from Wii Sports videos. That’s highly inappropriate.”
This back-and-forth “meme warfare” between political parties has had a monumental impact on the political landscape. Distorting the traditional status quo for diplomatic relations, the official social media accounts for various politicians have begun propagating meme content designed to target their opponents.
This shift is often reflected in the form of ridicule. Paly history teacher Adam Yonkers has witnessed how political discourse has evolved to criticize and mock superficial characteristics instead of substantive policies.
“The cameras are always watching, trying to catch politicians having a bad moment,” Yonkers said. “It’s devolving the criteria for who is going to be a good president, or a good congressman, [into] what they look like, or how they’re acting in a moment where they got caught off guard.”
While this style of content may feel like an impairment of the political process, it has become a normalized, and even necessary, part of campaigning in the digital age.
“The expectation now for many politicians is that they are on Twitter, and that they’re speaking directly to their constituency,” Yonkers said. “But because of that, the political landscape has increasingly become about ‘who has the best hot take?’ rather than thoughtful deliberation.”
Despite teenagers making up a major percentage of the target demographic politicians are seeking to appeal to with their social media outreach, many students find the use of political meme content as a campaigning strategy to be out of place.
“I tend to prefer not to be too political, in the sense of not having actual people running for power, or the Democratic or Republican Party accounts, on my feed,” Edson said. “I feel like it can easily turn my relaxing scrolling into unnecessary heated worrying.”
While Edson recommends that students control their exposure to political meme content, junior Juni Thurston believes that politicians are the ones who should steer clear of it altogether.
“A lot of the memes are just a last resort for these politicians,” Thurston said. “The whole memeification of politics from political candidates themselves is something that I’m definitely not in favor of. Generally, it doesn’t actually do a good job implementing their campaign or actually inspiring voters.”
Social media has become an extremely popular political platform nonetheless, with popular memes sometimes even becoming central to the campaign itself. An example is Kamala Harris’s social media team modeling the Democratic candidate’s online branding after the English hyperpop singer Charli xcx’s neon green album Brat, released during the summer preceding the 2024 presidential election, after a meme compared the two. While Harris is hardly the first or last to seize an internet moment to build marketing momentum, Thurston said there is a right and wrong way to appeal to younger voters using social media.
“Kamala Harris’s whole ‘Brat Summer’ was profoundly unsuccessful among young voters, [given] young voter turnout for her was not good,” Thurston said. “But if we look at [New York City mayor] Zohran Mamdani or [Texas state representative] James Talarico, these people actually hyper focus on the issues that matter to their constituents.”
Yonkers also said that social media engagement can successfully influence voters if executed well. Often, age does play a determining factor.
“[Barack] Obama really did a much better job than [John] McCain in [the presidential election of] 2008 in terms of harnessing the power of the internet as a way to organize,” Yonkers said. “Sometimes, you just have a younger candidate who gets ita little bit more, or at least has a [savvier] social media team.”
As a part of the younger demographic older politicians are striving to appeal to, Edson has felt the disconnect firsthand.
“I find that a lot of the time when older people are making [meme content], it comes off as really offensive, no matter what side you’re on,” Edson said. “And I feel like it isn’t the smartest move to be playing off of younger people’s emotions and understandings by using these memes.”
However, Edson has found himself influenced by the content in an unexpected way.
“I wouldn’t say [political memes] shape my political beliefs as much as they inform me and intrigue me to look into certain people and issues more,” Edson said. “Recently, people started using AI to put the Israeli flag on people’s clothes, especially Jeffrey Epstein or Charlie Kirk. Because of this, I looked into what was going on in Gaza and Israel, and I think it was good that I did.”
Despite any potential positive aspects of political meme culture, it has undeniably been a major agent of the acceleration of polarization in the digital space.
“The algorithm is always pitting us against each other and creating more social and political division,” Yonkers said. “[Social media] creates this echo chamber, where you are being fed things that you only agree with.”
Because of this constant propagation of divisive meme content, Yonkers urges politicians and voters alike to return to the political culture of the past.
“We need to keep talking to more people that we don’t agree with and go back to debating them again,” Yonkers said. “In the marketplace of ideas, there should not be a monopoly on who’s right.”
Yonkers believes that meme culture should not be normalized in politics, for the sake of maintaining a system once built on dignity.
“You do need to hold politicians accountable for what they say, but a lot of what they say is being filtered instantly into something different and packaged in a way to be consumed by people from a particular audience,” Yonkers said. “It’s really eroding our democratic ideals.”
