This shit drives me nuts.
All I could think about throughout the length of this On The Media segment is how awful I feel for the Syrian refugees and their families.
The refugees are casualties of politics and war and now also casualties of immigration agendas and fears.
It makes me sad that anyone would take a meme and seriously apply it to the issues that are taking place in Syria without any other knowledge on the topic.
It's either ignorant or hateful.
I would hope people would realize that memes are not a legitimate form of information.
At its best, memes are great political satire and at its worst they are "truthiness," as Steve Colbert says.
The truth is that lazy people and under informed people use memes as some sort of data in the same way they use Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and countless others as news and data.
Though these people may be looked upon as dispensers of news, they're all really just like memes-
entertaining, rarely informative and all "truthiness."
But they are very easy to digest and always at hand so it requires no effort to read a pesky newspaper or do some research on your own.
Like eating potato chips instead of a real meal.
...everybody loves potato chips.
And everybody loves memes, all you have to do is find a meme that supports your deepest, darkest thoughts, pop it up on your screen and feel like you've actually accomplished something or made a statement.
Meanwhile you've just dehumanized a race of people who've just been displaced from their war-torn homeland by political savagery.
And you feel like you've just made your own world a little safer by keeping them out of your precious boarders.
Isn't it great to be part of the inter-web and see how we open our hearts to the plights of those in need?
Long live the information age!
For more information and wiser insight, listen to OTM: Debunking Migration Memes.
Hannah,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your stance on the situation in Syria and I do have sympathy for the families and for all the victims that are involved. I had to actually do some additional research according to the memes that were made because I wasn’t aware of them. Just looking at some of those disgust me and proves to me how dirty and messed up our world really is, for example, there is one picture of a little boy holding an assault rifle with a bomb and walkie-talkie strapped to his chest and he’s standing in front of an older car. The caption reads, “WHY SO SYRIAS”! I can’t quite wrap my head around it and don’t know exactly what to say but it seriously doesn’t leave a good feeling in my stomach.
You’re correct when talking about that people will usually only make a meme like that because they don’t understand the situation and apparently care probably because it isn’t happening to them. I guarantee that if they were in that situation, they wouldn’t want memes being created about them. People really do fascinate me because they are quick to judge a situation they aren’t quite familiar with and try and transform a serious incident into something comical to them. Americans want to know why other countries don’t like us, here is another primary reason and it shows how social media can hinder us. People need to be smarter about their decisions before the whole country will have to pay consequences.
I agree with where you stand on this issue. Why would anybody even think that it is morally ok to make a meme like this in regard to the families that are struggling and suffering. I love how you compared the people who made the memes to the memes itself, especially now a days because everybody relies on social media for information and its their only outlet.
ReplyDeleteYou've smeared potato chips.
ReplyDelete