Meme scholar Aidan Walker described it as an “ironic dog whistle”—material that is plainly anti-Semitic, but stylized and self-referential enough that users can deny belief while still spreading the narrative.
This is why when I first started hearing the ills of young adults in society being heavily blamed on TikTok when that was only like 2 years old I knew we were a bit screwed. Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram were poison by 2016 yet Facebook only got attention for a short period because of Cambridge Analytica while YouTube and Instagram got to face little to no blowback since we were busy with our ongoing yellow menace/red scare of scapegoating the problems fostered by our own people and companies. Meta/Facebook ran a lobbying/advertising masterclass shifting all attention towards TikTok while Instagram and Facebook had influenced modern American society for about 15 (Facebook) years by 2020
YouTube is still the worst of all though. Everything people get mad about for social media trends were well practiced on YouTube by like 2015. Only change was boiling it down to super short videos which YouTube was quick to adopt and master
This is why when I first started hearing the ills of young adults in society being heavily blamed on TikTok when that was only like 2 years old I knew we were a bit screwed. Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram were poison by 2016 yet Facebook only got attention for a short period because of Cambridge Analytica while YouTube and Instagram got to face little to no blowback since we were busy with our ongoing yellow menace/red scare of scapegoating the problems fostered by our own people and companies. Meta/Facebook ran a lobbying/advertising masterclass shifting all attention towards TikTok while Instagram and Facebook had influenced modern American society for about 15 (Facebook) years by 2020
YouTube is still the worst of all though. Everything people get mad about for social media trends were well practiced on YouTube by like 2015. Only change was boiling it down to super short videos which YouTube was quick to adopt and master