First time I really remember this is the thanos memes on reddit or a bunch of friends or acquaintances who weren't star wars nerds sharing 'may 4th star wars day lol' memes on facebook the first year after disney bought that IP.
Whoever disney pays for guerrilla marketing is real good at it
I think to some extent it's done through meme page admins on Facebook and the like, who play the algorithm and get paid if they produce enough content. So these are professional memers who are constantly just pushing out as much shit as they can come up with if it will bring clicks. So Thanos memes just come from these people scrambling to the next relevant thing to be first.
No doubt it's hard to separate organic trend-following from the paid-for shit. But the way Disney trash gets memed is something else. The star wars one especially, that may 4th was a year before they put out any of the new movies, it was cool to hate the prequels and IP as a whole after the third one, and yet all of a sudden a bunch of non-nerds are sharing this shit all over the TL? Slamming :doubt: that it came from organic algo boosting alone.
Like we have so much evidence of the artificial boosting the cryptofash do on social media, it seems entirely consistent that monopolist money spends the same as Koch money with these 'reputation management' firms.
Your comment did remind me of that time the people behind the oCcUpY DEmOCraTs account touted how hard they work on those shitposts, ty for that
Absolutely agree there's astroturfing involved no doubt. Memes are perfect for astroturfing and propaganda because they appear as organic grassroots culture. But it's so easy to just inject any kind of sus shit into memes. For example so many memes about Brendan Frasier, it felt fake (imo)
Keanu too. Which is a shame because some of the stories (ann arbor or wherever in michigan community theater) reflect well on him. An unfortunate casualty of the internet is that I just don't believe a single thing that makes it into the collective consciousness about any public figure or art
:astronaut-2::astronaut-1:
First time I really remember this is the thanos memes on reddit or a bunch of friends or acquaintances who weren't star wars nerds sharing 'may 4th star wars day lol' memes on facebook the first year after disney bought that IP.
Whoever disney pays for guerrilla marketing is real good at it
That vin diesel "family" meme a couple years back was incredibly astroturfed. Or felt incredibly astroturfed
Oh yep great example
I think to some extent it's done through meme page admins on Facebook and the like, who play the algorithm and get paid if they produce enough content. So these are professional memers who are constantly just pushing out as much shit as they can come up with if it will bring clicks. So Thanos memes just come from these people scrambling to the next relevant thing to be first.
The free market :bawllin-sad:
No doubt it's hard to separate organic trend-following from the paid-for shit. But the way Disney trash gets memed is something else. The star wars one especially, that may 4th was a year before they put out any of the new movies, it was cool to hate the prequels and IP as a whole after the third one, and yet all of a sudden a bunch of non-nerds are sharing this shit all over the TL? Slamming :doubt: that it came from organic algo boosting alone.
Like we have so much evidence of the artificial boosting the cryptofash do on social media, it seems entirely consistent that monopolist money spends the same as Koch money with these 'reputation management' firms.
Your comment did remind me of that time the people behind the oCcUpY DEmOCraTs account touted how hard they work on those shitposts, ty for that
Absolutely agree there's astroturfing involved no doubt. Memes are perfect for astroturfing and propaganda because they appear as organic grassroots culture. But it's so easy to just inject any kind of sus shit into memes. For example so many memes about Brendan Frasier, it felt fake (imo)
Keanu too. Which is a shame because some of the stories (ann arbor or wherever in michigan community theater) reflect well on him. An unfortunate casualty of the internet is that I just don't believe a single thing that makes it into the collective consciousness about any public figure or art