THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019 NY P7
Twitch stream where #OrbGang members crowd-
sourced fresh memes. The Williamson memers run a
shadow campaign, discussing strategy, philosophy
and psychology. The day after the debate, they were
capitalizing on a report from The Hill newspaper that
claimed they were organizing an “occult task force” of
“chaos magicians, witches and energy workers.”
It was the kind of straight-faced reporting of man-
ifest absurdity that creates a richly ambivalent envi-
ronment for memes to thrive. A supporter began
assembling an “Orbgang Chaos Magician Starter
Pack” on Photoshop featuring occult objects. “I’d rec-
ommend a classical painting of witches,” someone
advised over chat. “Or possibly the Goya painting of
the seance with the goat devil.”
I
RONIC OR NOT, all the meme energy behind
Williamson’s campaign was not strong enough to
propel her into the third Democratic debate. But
Williamson's fans are undeterred. “We will be orbing/
meme-ing Marianne into the debate coverage,” Mari-
lyn wrote in an email to supporters.
Or to put it in the language of Williamson memes:
They will astrally project her onto that stage. Soon,
Williamson had announced that she would hold her
own kind of shadow debate: a “What I Would Have
Said Had I Been There” livestream. Marilyn is stock-
piling memes in anticipation.
Williamson may not be our next president, but
this kind of half-parodic campaign — in which disen-
gaged voters proficient in memes plumb the psychic
undercurrents of the American electorate to forge an
ambivalent relationship with the candidate’s official
efforts — may just be our future. After all, as Marilyn
puts it: “Ironic votes are just votes.”
LAST MONTH,when news broke that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the 86-year-
old Supreme Court justice, had received radiation therapy for a cancerous
tumor, my brother’s former high school English teacher posted this on
Facebook: “Today I changed my organ donor status so that now all of my
organs go to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, even if I’m still alive.”
This is a familiar meme format on the left, where Ginsburg possesses
an almost talismanic power. In the liberal imagination, she is styled as
“Notorious R.B.G.,” (fig.21)cast as an action figure and used to market an
improbable fitness plan. (fig.22) (“Notorious,” a nickname cribbed from
the rapper the Notorious B.I.G., is of a trendy class of digital blackface that
seeks to imbue professional white women with black male swagger.) Fans
operate as if this tough-gal persona might ward off all-out Republican rule
— maybe even death itself.
The gap between Ginsburg’s petite physicality and her judicial weight
is stretched for a laugh, but there are graver power differentials at play.
Ginsburg holds one of the most powerful jobs in the country, and yet the
zealous cheerleading around her functions as if she is somehow underap-
preciated. The whole exercise feels oddly strained.
Maybe it’s because the fandom around Ginsburg arose just as she
transformed into a writer of fiery dissents — in other words, as she started
to lose. In her fandom, real judicial losses can be refashioned into rheto-
rical wins. Cultural victories act as Band-Aids for political wounds.CASE STUDY
Through her internet persona, liberals twist
legislative losses into rhetorical victories.RUTH BADER
GINSBURG’S FREAKISH
ONLINE STRENGTH
T
HE AMERICAN PRESIDENCYhas always been
a content business. A successful campaign
captures the national mood, like a best-sell-
ing novel. Candidates are assessed on the quality of
their live performances. The president’s role includes
sustaining an image. It is as much about what he says
as what he does.
But lately this arrangement has become more lit-
eral. Donald Trump leapt to the presidency from reali-
ty television, (fig. 23)while Barack Obama retired into
deals with Netflix, Penguin Random House and Spo-
tify. All this prompts a new way of looking at the Amer-
ican presidency: as the election of a kind of content
creator-in-chief.
Once engineered through speeches, summits and
ads, the job is mutating to fit new mediums. When
newspapers and television and even early websites
mediated politics, candidates were positioned to
appeal to mass audiences, and they were evaluated on
broad personality metrics: how they kissed babies or
drank domestic beers. But on the internet, politics is
organized through niche affinity groups, carried on
the backs of unexpected cultural properties and trans-
lated into arcane jokes.
If any remnant exists of the American monocul-
ture, it is the presidency. We may not watch the same
shows or recognize the same celebrities, but people
know who the president is. The difference now is that
we can each cast that presidential “character” into our
own preferred story lines and imbue him with differ-
HAIL TO THE
CONTENT
CREATOR-IN-
CHIEF
These days, everything is content,
including the presidency.
Candidates were also
judged on their willing-
ness to consume fried
foods at state fairs.Teddy Roosevelt with
his granddaughter.Photograph via
Library of CongressT
fig. 20
fig. 21 fig. 22fig. 23