Srs Bsns: Why Meme 2020's Latest Social Media Campaign Is A Concept That's Here To Stay For American Politics

Back in early February, while the world was still relatively calm, a newly formed company called Meme 2020 began working closely with Mike Bloomberg’s campaign to create a series of social media posts that attempted to “make him look cool” and boost his standing as a Democratic presidential candidate. Through a series of memes that included fake text conversations with Bloomberg, the company cast a wide net across social media, appearing on a number of influential accounts.

Despite the advertising push’s lack of success with propelling Bloomberg into candidacy, Meme 2020 is back with a new campaign, once again helmed by Jerry Media (Fuck Jerry) CEO Mick Purzycki. As a self-described “collective of creatives, designers, videographers, political operatives, influencers, writers and strategists,” Meme 2020 is gearing up for the incoming 2020 U.S. presidential election with a mission to “make memes that matter.”

With the backing of some of social media’s most-followed accounts, such as Tank Sinatra, Shitheadsteve and Fuck Jerry, the individuals involved in the campaign have an undeniable reach and influence online, with tens of millions of followers between the participants of the collective.

That being said, what exactly does Meme 2020 hope to accomplish with all of this, and what does it mean for the intersection between memes and politics in a broader sense? First, let’s take a brief look at what their latest effort involved and how it differs from the previous push.

Near the end of June, Meme 2020 kicked off its “Vote By Mail” campaign on a swath of Instagram pages. Using the Text from FBI format, these memes encouraged followers to sign up for mail-in ballots, depicting screenshots of applications for various states with an incoming text from “FBI Agent” that made simple, one-liner jokes.

Unlike the February campaign, this latest push doesn’t try to promote any one particular candidate. Instead, the goal this time around is much looser, with the hopes of appealing to a broader audience of potential voters.

Even so, that doesn’t mean they don’t have a horse in the race. To put it simply, the newest campaign is squarely aimed at one goal -- preventing the re-election of President Donald Trump.

During an interview with the New York Times, Purzycki, who’s also the CEO of Meme 2020, said, “We found that memes that were intended to be explicitly anti-Trump weren’t as persuasive as those that weren’t so explicit. People have become so good at identifying when the voice of the meme feels like it’s coming from the left, and it forces the right to entrench. Memes that are cloaked in a way to slightly make fun of the left first, then lean into a hard critique of Trump, end up moving both moderates and Republicans in the intended direction.”

Adam the Creator, another participant of the recent push, told the NYT that he wanted to “awaken people without villanizing anyone,” adding that he isn’t a Trump hater and doesn’t consider him the worst person in the world either. “The sides shouldn’t be defined as the left and right,” he said. “They should be defined as what’s right and wrong, what’s better for the people and what’s harmful.”

With a new partnership between the company and The Lincoln Project, a committee formed by Republicans who oppose Trump, as well as Rhyme Combinator, a media company promoting progressive causes, Meme 2020 has beefed up their efforts to influence social media users by leveraging their massive followings unlike anything seen before in the convergence of memes and politics.

Between the Bloomberg campaign and their latest efforts, Purzycki also said they worked with data scientists and statisticians in order to optimize their efforts. By conducting months of testing on hundreds of memes to determine the most effective formats, Meme 2020 hopes to resonate with voters in a more effective way going forward.

The recent campaign is certainly not their last either, as Meme 2020 has plans to continue with their political meme efforts in the months leading up to 2020’s election. How exactly these future pushes on social media will take place remains to be seen, but those involved in Meme 2020 so far shed a bit of light onto what we can expect down the road.

Sarah Lenti, executive director of the Lincoln Project, also told the NYT that she felt too many political campaigns have shied away from doing something as unique as Meme 2020. She expressed that, in order to be heard over “the loudest president in the history of our country,” creative projects like this must meet with voters on the platforms they spend their time.

While memes attempting to have an impact on politics in the U.S. isn’t a totally new concept (see the 2016 presidential election in particular), an organized, highly funded and strategic campaign backed by those with millions of followers across multiple sites and platforms is certainly unprecedented.

Unlike Meme 2020, the memes that some attribute to Trump’s successful 2016 run, a period often referred to as "The Great Meme War," largely stemmed from smaller, more isolated groups of the internet (like 4chan), whether they were genuine supporters or trolls who thought the concept was simply humorous. In addition, those efforts were also organically developed, rather than an organized group comprised of a company that’s essentially made an industry out of memes.

Despite our attempts to reach out to Purzycki and the team at Meme 2020 to learn more about their plans for the future, they did not respond to our request for comment, so only time will tell. For those who thought the backlash many participants faced after the Bloomberg campaign would mark an end to memes being used as a strategic political tool, we’d be willing to bet that this only marks the beginning of a new era in meme history.

Meme 2020 might be the first of its kind, but we doubt it’ll be the last … whether people want it or not.