Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? Memes, Design and Politics

Politicians in Europe are more afraid of financial markets than of their own people.

Jokes are an active, living and mobile form of disobedience

a state of permanent crisis, either looming or actual, is normalized. Capitalism is then established as “the only viable political and economic system” to the extent that “it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.”

A friend reminds me of Ethan Zuckerman’s “Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism”. It holds that a digital platform where many people exchange pictures of cute cats is also an excellent place for political activism: if the state were to shut it down, people would protest because they could no longer exchange pictures of cute cats. (More likely, if this did happen, they would find another platform to exchange pictures of cute cats). Zuckerman contends that it is inherently fruitful to embed messages of political activism within widely popular online platforms, so that subversive content can’t be easily isolated by authoritarians

Memes play a distinct role in protest; they seem to be to the resistance of today what “political posters” were to yesterday—the embodiment of shared ideas in a community.

Jokes, in the past, were considered for what they really are: incredibly dangerous political weapons. The court’s jester was employed by the king, and was free to say whatever he wanted, but unfree to say it to anyone but the king. The jester’s speech was free because the jester was, as a political subject, unfree

Jokes are an active, living and mobile form of disobedience.

The economist Thomas Schelling, in a 1958 experiment, famously found that when two people are to meet in New York City, but have not agreed on a place and time to do so (and have no way to coordinate their movements), they are likely to expect the other to show up at the clock in the middle of the Main Concourse of Grand Central Station at 12 noon.

The smartest is the king who, indeed, is his own jester.

Cats are today’s political animals.