“Every election throws up something new, and this one has thrown up something called a dank meme.” With those words, we — for once, unified as a country — should decide to just shut the whole thing down. No more election, no more badly Photoshopped pictures of frogs on unicycles, no more internet.
On the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday morning, The Courier Mail’s national affairs editor and political commentator Dennis Atkins educated the panel on the meaning of the phrase ‘dank meme’ — that is, a meme that’s “intentionally bad or bizzare”, “used to mock online viral media”. He went further, though, with a longer opinion piece explaining the background of said memes and how they’re being used in this year’s upcoming Federal election.
And boy, are they being used.
If you’re looking for someone to blame, blame the Australian Manufacturing Worker’s Union and the Young Greens. Almost always targeting the comparatively staid, and definitely more conservative coalition of the Liberal Party and National Party, those groups are absolutely loving creating nonsensical crap like this:
44 days until the election!
Remember: there’s only one party that thinks regional Australians don’t need internet. pic.twitter.com/f2G1ugrlIf
— The AMWU (@theamwu) May 19, 2016
— The AMWU (@theamwu) May 19, 2016
51 days until the election!
Reminder: only one party has a leader who is named in the Panama Papers. #whatup pic.twitter.com/9ck6DcYRFP
— The AMWU (@theamwu) May 11, 2016
Remember when it was just annoying kids on 4chan making memes? At least those were easy to ignore.