We are all aware of the significance of social media. Something that has been seen as the centre of misinformation and polarisation, is also the place younger generations seem to spend hours and hours on. One person’s main source of news is another’s way of dissociating. 

Doom scrolling can be addictive, but our attraction to funny videos is not new — our desire for comedy and light-heartedness has always been with us. We, as Brits, have a great sense of humour and memes have become an extension of our comedy catalogue… even if most memes are American, but that is beside the point. Our comedy has been used in a variety of ways and memes are no different — whether they are used to distract, as satire, or more recently, for political gain.  

Our love of memes is known by the CEOs of these platforms and the algorithms are designed to send more of the type of content we have either liked before or content liked by those in a similar demographic to us. This is why companies use memes and trends; they utilise the algorithm to gain more traction on their page and, hopefully, for these companies, on their website.  

This year, we saw how companies and influencers are not the only ones using memes and trends. All the UK political parties utilised them and began the ‘meme wars’, with the two major parties making fun of each other on our FYPs. However, there is a more serious side to what is seen as a joke. Memes not only attract consumers to the page of a company, but also the algorithm, believing that you are interested in this particular person or page, will also send you more content from that person. The Labour Party, developed these memes to not only call out the previous government but to bring attention to their serious content.  

Despite this somewhat hidden agenda, some of these memes fell short, with many voters, especially younger voters finding it cringy, if not insensitive considering the political climate. The use of PowerPoint fonts, Jason Momoa sneaking up on Henry Cavill and James Acaster’s Bake Off breakdown, have all been part of the winning party’s Instagram page and while some did make me cringe, they did actually make me laugh.  

I doubt the use of memes affected how people voted, but what we do know, is that all the political parties saw the value of memes and all of them used them and it will be interesting to see how they will be employed in the next election.  

The irony of these memes, of course, was that the British public saw an opportunity and mocked as we always do, making memes and satire to not only make us laugh but hopefully hold the party’s promises to account too.