DIY Cruelty: The Global Political Micro-Practices of Hateful Memes

Abstract

Cruel memes spread messages of hate via social media. The Internet itself extends the memes’ geographical reach, and many such cruel memes circulate across borders. This article examines the activities of cruel memeing—practices of creating, commenting on, reinforcing (“liking”), sharing, remixing, and otherwise endorsing cruel memes—as microscale hostile engagements in global politics. This is a politics of the everyday that is accessible to people in their ordinary lives and that is designed to be entertaining as well as cruel. The research draws on a large dataset of memes, comment threads, and related information from two opposed Reddit communities, r/TheLeftCantMeme and r/TheRightCantMeme. The power-flow theoretical framework structures an interpretive analysis of how cruel memes circulate within the social media space. We examine content (including narrative, degree of cruelty, and other components), and velocity of information flow, as well as access to the flow. Focusing on racism, antisemitism, and disdain for political opponents, we draw on interpretive methods to analyze the flow of information that spreads hate. We find: (1) normalization of divisiveness, derisiveness, and bigotry; (2) justifications of violence; and (3) emergence of agents despite pseudonymity. Cruel memeing activities combine with the structure of the online communities to spread hatred far beyond social media platforms.