So, did any hilarious new memes come out on the internet over the weekend? Indeed one did.
This is Josh Romney. One of Mitt Romney's sons. This still was taken from last Tuesday's town hall debate between Romney and Obama, uploaded on October 17th, and started seeing heavy circulation on the 18th. Josh seems to be taking the debate very...seriously. Too seriously. Like a "I'm secretly a killing machine" kind of serious. Poor Mitt. He seems to always get the short end of the stick when it comes to debates, especially when it comes to the internet simply finding unfortunate material on him that's not particularly his fault. As discussed in previous blogs, whether or not this is because Romney is just a more embarrassing guy or because the internet community generally has it in for him remains to be seen.
But I digress. Bring on the memes!
Here's Terminator Josh
Here's Josh keeping tabs on the Obamas
And here's a reference to the Binder meme that came from the same debate.
In other meme news, it seems that the Republican National Committee has made an attempt to reclaim the binder meme (with questionable success, in my opinion).
Also, this video was put out by jest.com regarding parody Twitter accounts, which throughout the campaign have complemented memes. I believe it makes an interesting critique on whether or not these memes are able to influence anyone due to their failure to remain relevant.
Now I believe that this video might be a bit harsh by portraying these accounts/memes as frivolous. Though I did discuss the effect that memes might have on distracting the debate from real issues, I will admit that it brings attention to politics that would not otherwise be there. They serve their purpose, and we move on.
For Post It Politics news, it's official, there are now things to post on here at UMD!
The first is somewhat like the Marriage Equality Rally material that I discussed last Thursday. But this time, the material is surrounding an October 25th Rally for the Dream Act (which will be Question 4 on the ballot). I have found fliers for this absolutely everywhere here on campus. In fact, so many bulletin boards have so duplicates of theses fliers, that I find myself only posting once for each bulletin board for the sake of time and resources.
It will be interesting to see how people react across buildings based on whether I posted up or down.
I wonder if the reason that so much of this material has been distributed has been due to how many campus groups and organizations are involved with this event (far more than the Marriage Equality Rally). Take a look.
I tweeted a picture of a thumbs up (which was the first post I made on one of these fliers) to a few of the organizations that have been very active on Twitter about this event, specifically the College Democrats (who may finally be showing some activity on campus), Lambda Theta Alpha, the Association of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting, and once again, the UMD Student Government Association. And once again, I am surprised to see the SGA becoming so deeply involved with such a political issue, though this time slightly less so, seeing that the Dream Act is an issue closely related to higher education. And though they never did respond the last time I tweeted at them, this time the SGA was kind enough to retweet me. Very exciting. We shall now see if any of this work translates into real world activity or interactions, especially after I take the opportunity tomorrow to go to academic buildings all over campus looking for fliers to post on.
*Also, didn't mind posting up/tweeting for a liberal cause. I was beginning to get concerned about my project being seen as anti-liberal due to the way my coin has been flipping for the past week or so. Happy to be provoking both sides again.
The next was in response to some of the work of All Terp Everything, a collegiate apparel line run by the Sneaker Cartel, a Maryland student and alumni based urban wear business out of College Park. Recently, during the campaign, they have put out an "All Obama Everything" shirts and have been selling them around campus. And because of their campus connections, they have been allowed to put up this product in the display cases in the student union. So I posted there.
Interesting for the student union/university to display such overtly political material so publicly. And though I understand that this business's main customers probably aren't Romney people, I questioned why only the president get's any support when I tweeted this photo at them.
Still, perhaps this being so visible worked out better in the end for my project, for when I checked back later, I found this.
The thumb has been flipped! I feel this is a major moment for my project. Up until now, I've been wondering whether the inactivity of others surrounding my project has indicated that people don't care about showing approval or dissent, or perhaps they simply ignore political materials all together. But something about this post contradicted that. Perhaps it's because people are willing to fight dissent. Maybe people don't like seeing criticism of a popular student business. Or maybe it's because how visible this post was, what with display case and t-shirt and all. Regardless, I can now confirm that using images to send political messages can create real life reactions. The potential for discussion is alive on this campus. Now may it awake!!!
Alright, so there's my flair for the dramatic in this blog. Thanks for reading folks. Will give you an update on how everything is going on Thursday. Plus, we'll see how the internet reacted to the last of the 2012 presidential debates. Hopefully it should be pretty exciting ;)
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