in 2016, americans are no longer just spectators at the political circus. they<u+2019>re performers, too. the internet has elevated supporters to the role of surrogates, capable of creating their own messages and running their own online campaigns on their social media feeds. memes and other tools of digital culture empower them to twist carefully orchestrated campaign images <u+2014> or candidates<u+2019> gaffes <u+2014> until they take on new meanings and take over the news cycle. as demonstrated by the entries below, voters <u+2014> like the candidates themselves <u+2014> have become adept at wielding the weapons of the social media age, and their role promises only to grow in future election seasons. so even when donald j. trump and hillary clinton exit the campaign stage, the next iterations of <u+201c>deplorable<u+201d> merchandise, nasty woman twitter handles and hillary health memes will live on. insults, co-opted the reappropriation of insults has a long history in american politics. <u+201c>yankee<u+201d> was a derogatory british nickname for american colonists before the rebels started winning battles and refashioned the slur (and the derisive british ditty <u+201c>yankee doodle<u+201d>) into a badge of honor. and in 2012, mitt romney<u+2019>s claim that he had taken care to hire women on his staff <u+2014> and that he pulled it off by paging through <u+201c>binders full of women<u+201d> <u+2014> was roundly mocked, memed and finally, commandeered. now there<u+2019>s a professional conference for writers who are women called out of the binders . but never before have we seen the campaigns revel in their opponents<u+2019> insults with such obvious glee. after mr. trump, during the third debate, leaned into his microphone and called mrs. clinton <u+201c>such a nasty woman,<u+201d> hordes of hillary supporters rushed to claim the title in their twitter accounts, mocked up images of mrs. clinton as janet jackson (madam president, if you<u+2019>re nasty) and sold t-shirts emblazoned with the offending words. a similar metamorphosis occurred weeks earlier when audio leaked of mrs. clinton calling some trump supporters a <u+201c>basket of deplorables.<u+201d> now <u+201c>deplorable<u+201d> is printed on t-shirts and buttons and mashed up with the minions of <u+201c>despicable me.<u+201d> candidates in future elections may once again wish for a good, clean fight. but for their supporters, a reclaimed insult represents a rare opportunity to connect with a campaign in a way that feels visceral and real. campaign slogans like mrs. clinton<u+2019>s <u+201c>stronger together<u+201d> reek of focus-grouped pandering. but <u+201c>nasty woman<u+201d> or <u+201c>deplorable<u+201d> feel like prizes seized from opponents in battle. and they<u+2019>re the perfect campaign artifacts to pin onto twitter accounts, where users want to publicize their support of a candidate while also telegraphing their sense of humor and sense of self. the new campaign slogan is goading your opponent into saying something deliciously mean. aesthetics of scandal, triumphant welcome to the age of information overload. in this glutted and distractible social-media landscape, a nugget of agitprop can rise to overwhelm actual fact, as long as it<u+2019>s presented in an ominous enough package. the right-wing guerrilla journalist james o<u+2019>keefe is the master of creating a vaguely scandalous aesthetic, churning out dark, shaky, blurred-out (and selectively edited) undercover videos meant to hint at democratic conspiracies. but now that most americans carry around recording devices in their pockets, scandal production is no longer just the domain of experts and ideologues. the democratic vibe makes the content even more compelling. a bystander-filmed cellphone video of hillary clinton nearly collapsing outside a sept. 11 memorial event lit the right-wing internet on fire because it revealed her in a state of weakness, but also because the video wasn<u+2019>t captured by professional cameramen from cnn or msnbc. the shaky tape just looked like something the public wasn<u+2019>t supposed to see. and in 2016, the scandalmonger doesn<u+2019>t even need candid video and secret recordings; all it takes to stir folks into a political frenzy is a screenshot of an email and an online highlighter tool. with an assist by wikileaks <u+2014> which has published the clinton campaign chairman john podesta<u+2019>s illegally hacked campaign correspondence in an easy-to-search database <u+2014> amateur muckrakers can easily rifle through the files and isolate any tidbit that seems a little juicy. the highlighter flourish screams scandal even if the content is stultifyingly mundane, or just plain wrong. one trump supporter highlighted and tweeted an email from the wikileaks dump and claimed it proved that <u+201c>john podesta says islam is a threat to our future.<u+201d> except the email wasn<u+2019>t even written by mr. podesta. it was sent to him. whatever: the original tweet spread further than another exposing it as a lie. now that one of the most simple and accessible document forms <u+2014> an email <u+2014> has been recast as a blueprint for scandal, we can expect only more hacks, leaks and sinister highlighting down the road. the hackers who exposed the emails of mr. podesta and the democratic national committee have been rewarded for their risk. and the scandalmongers<u+2019> job is a lot easier when all they need to find is an email, no matter what it says. debates, font of a million memes one image from the 2008 election provides a glimmer of what future elections would have in store. barack obama and john mccain are walking across the stage during their third debate. out front is mr. obama, walking normally. behind him is mr. mccain. he is caught mid-lurch, his hands reaching stiffly out in front of him, his tongue wagging. a meme was born. its name: zombie mccain . in 2016, the presidential debate has become a constant, roiling center of meme production, a viral video threatening to explode from every little look or line. the debate stage is an ideal setting for meme ignition <u+2014> a critical mass of people are focusing on the event simultaneously, and the plain blue or black backdrops are perfect for isolating and capturing the candidates<u+2019> tics. in the first debate, social media lit up with mr. trump<u+2019>s sniffling and mrs. clinton<u+2019>s exultant shimmy . the second debate produced a swift succession of indelible images that lit up the internet: a snapshot of mr. trump clutching his debate chair with a look of seeming sexual gratification; mr. trump looming behind mrs. clinton, in the posture of a horror movie villain. and a gif of mr. trump caught grimacing and ripping apart his notes at the third debate<u+2019>s end was retweeted nearly 10,000 times. these memes are more than just gags; they<u+2019>re campaign opportunities. richard dawkins coined <u+201c>meme<u+201d> in 1976, defining it as a <u+201c>unit of cultural transmission<u+201d> that persists by <u+201c>leaping from brain to brain.<u+201d> just as right-wing memes used images of mrs. clinton coughing and stumbling to help whip up a hillary health crisis, these trump memes helped to extend the shelf life of news stories about mr. trump<u+2019>s treatment of women. not that memers have that thought in mind <u+2014> they<u+2019>re more likely coping with the psychological torture of the campaign cycle with some comic relief, or just scanning the political landscape looking for a joke that will rack up followers and likes. it seems likely that debate prep will soon adapt to take memeability into account. one can easily imagine a candidate in 2020 plotting to prepare a <u+201c>shimmy moment<u+201d> for the stage. but the memes are moving so swiftly and savagely, they also threaten to supersede campaign image control. no candidate is slick enough to appear presidential in every single frame. social media army, republican division for the past couple of elections, meme production was dominated by democrats. the party<u+2019>s base <u+2014> young people, college graduates, people of color, women <u+2014> matches the demographics of people who fuel internet culture. but now meme culture has grown to reach the facebook outposts of red staters. consider joe the plumber, that real-american figure who rose to prominence during the 2008 election and has since restyled himself as a honcho of conservative media. scroll through the set of more than 2,000 pictures on his facebook page, and you<u+2019>ll see images created in the aesthetics of early meme culture <u+2014> funny and grotesque static images with punch lines written in big, white impact font. but mr. trump<u+2019>s candidacy has also made inroads among a constellation of subcultures with strong online presences <u+2014> among them, men<u+2019>s rights activists, pickup artists and white nationalists, all of which feed into the freewheeling <u+201c>alt-right<u+201d> movement. trump<u+2019>s own internet perch <u+2014> he now has over 12 million followers on twitter, but was a force on the site even before his run <u+2014> has done much to mobilize a right-wing social media army. it doesn<u+2019>t hurt that mr. trump has run his campaign with the improvisation of meme culture, subordinating a fixed platform in favor of running with lines that get him a joke, a laugh or a cheer. and in the hands of his supporters, images are manipulated to reflect the candidate<u+2019>s worldview. they photoshop hillary into orange prison jumpsuits, interpret a wink from her as <u+201c>a mild stroke<u+201d> and scribble humiliating monica lewinsky jokes over her face. memeing is officially a bipartisan act. donald j. trump, the ringmaster of 2016, will not always dominate the american political imagination. but even when he<u+2019>s gone, his fiercest supporters and opponents will still be logging online. with every election cycle, the citizenry seems to amass more and more tools for bending the online political narrative to their will <u+2014> or to feel as if they<u+2019>re doing so, anyway. correction: november 13, 2016 a picture caption last sunday with an article about internet memes and the presidential campaign misstated the debate that was shown. the photograph, of hillary clinton and donald j. trump, was taken at their second debate, not their third. a version of this article appears in print on november 6, 2016, on page ar16 of the new york edition with the headline: memes, myself and i. order reprints | today's paper | subscribe
memes, myself and i: the internet lets us all run the campaign
amanda hess