If you opened TikTok anytime this year, you probably struggled to tell whether you were watching election coverage or scrolling through a pop-culture fan edit page. In the span of thirty seconds, the official Democratic Party posted the Bills’ infamous missed kick with the caption “Watching Trump say affordability is a ‘con job’ and Epstein is a ‘hoax,’” an Olivia Rodrigo × Sabrina Carpenter edit criticizing Trump for using their music and a holiday list titled “Things Trump Does NOT Want for Christmas,” featuring the Constitution, American beef and a gua sha. Even the comments reflected confusion, with reactions like “What is American politics even about bro” and “Trying to be hip with the kids,” highlighting how unserious these edits can feel.
These are the digital communications arms of major American political institutions speaking to millions of young voters in the grammar of memes. On the political right, there’s the Charlie Kirk phenomenon: hundreds of AI-generated edits placing him on album covers like Taylor Swift’s Midnights, Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS, Travis Scott’s Utopia and Drake’s For All the Dogs. They are unhinged, sometimes funny, sometimes unsettling, and undeniably effective.
This shift from traditional news to meme-driven politics arguably began during the Kamala Harris “BRAT” moment of 2024. After pop artist Charli XCX jokingly crowned her the “brat candidate,” campaigns adopted a lime-green aesthetic, grainy flash photos, and chaotic edits that belonged more to pop culture than politics. It was the first time mainstream political communication fully entered the visual language young people were already fluent in. Memes made politics feel relatable, especially for audiences who do not follow traditional news, but they also introduced communication built on aesthetics and speed instead of depth.
The normalization of meme-based political communication comes with significant risks. The first is dehumanization: political figures become caricatures rather than individuals. Viral audios like “rat is a traitor,” which began as SEC football shade toward Lane Kiffin before becoming a political attack line, show how dehumanization spreads. As Grant Martorella ’26 put it, “When a politician becomes a meme, students stop seeing them as real people.”
The second consequence is miscommunication, as AI exaggerations and deepfakes favor emotional impact over clarity. Increasingly realistic tools like OpenAI’s Sora can place candidates into fabricated speeches, interviews or scandals with cinematic precision, blurring the line between messaging and editing. TikTok edits put quotes next to faces without context, and algorithms reward whatever keeps users watching, not whatever is accurate. “It doesn’t even register as political content until the comment section starts exploding,” said Annabel Kaplan ’26.
The third risk is what scholars call cultural disorientation, where people absorb political meaning through remix culture rather than civic learning. One example is the George Bush “fool me once…” line, which many teenagers know only from J. Cole’s “No Role Models,” not from the 2002 press conference where Bush misspoke about foreign policy. The original context disappears, yet the edited version continues shaping public perception.
A similar pattern appears when audios like “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” get stitched onto political clips, or when Trump and Bill Clinton are edited into romantic mashups over “Good Luck, Babe!” with LGBTQ-coded framing that turns political rivals into a queer situationship. These videos are entertaining, but they teach almost nothing about policy, governance, or actual political consequences.
The result is emotional reactions without understanding. A candidate can become a joke, a villain, or a character before voters ever learn what they stand for, and impressions are shaped more by algorithms than by context.
Yet dismissing meme politics as wholly corrosive overlooks the idea that these formats also serve as valuable points of entry into civic life. Research consistently shows that memes can enhance political awareness among younger audiences. “Memes are often the first time I hear about an issue, then I look it up on my own,” said Roan Hurwitz ’28.
This pattern aligns with findings from Social Media + Society, which report that meme sharers demonstrate higher levels of political participation, including commenting on news and engaging in electoral activities. Memes lower the barrier to entry for individuals who may feel excluded from traditional political discourse and can spark curiosity that leads to deeper engagement.
The challenge, then, is not to eliminate meme politics but to cultivate the literacy required to navigate it. “Students don’t need to reject memes. They just need to know when a meme is trying to inform them and when it’s trying to provoke them,” said Enzo Stoka ’27.
This dual awareness is essential in an online environment where entertainment and information are increasingly indistinguishable. Scholars describe this skill as “critical digital competency,” the ability to evaluate the intentions behind political content rather than its aesthetic appeal. Developing such competency requires pausing to ask: Who made this? What emotion is it trying to trigger? Is any of this even accurate? For a generation raised in algorithmic environments, this reflex may determine whether social media strengthens democratic participation or erodes it.
