Kamala is brat. J.D. Vance had sex with a couch. Joe Biden joyously proclaims, “Soda!” [cut from a clip where he mentions Minnesota] and Donald Trump stumbles over, “Obamna.” Biden, Trump and Obama can all be found playing Minecraft together, joking and quipping, even rapping along in parodies of Ice Spice and Pink Pantheress’ “The Boy’s a Liar.” Quotes, pictures and videos are deep-fried and reused until many forget the original circumstances from which they originated. In this climate, one must look inward and ask themselves, do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree? No, you exist in the context of all of the political satire, meme culture and media coverage in which you live and that came before you.
Politics has always been deeply intertwined with media. “Basically as long as everyone who's alive right now has been alive, politics and media have been inseparable. The media will always influence how people look at politics,” noted Tristan Surbaugh (’27). In America, politicians have used the media as a tool to influence the general public since the Revolutionary War, providing financial support to newspapers that endorsed their party and their policies. As technology evolved, politicians evolved alongside it; the advent of the radio made speeches and debates accessible across the country. Television completely changed the political landscape, as illustrated by the famous story of radio listeners who reported Nixon won the debate, while those who watched on television overwhelmingly reported Kennedy. As soon as the internet was widely available, politicians began utilizing that as well.
Politicians weren’t the only ones adapting to changes in media and technology; their critics adapted just as smoothly. Political cartoons were prevalent during the American Revolution and remain a popular tool to lambaste politicians today. Comedy making fun of politicians got a larger stage after television became a staple of American households, and political satire and impressions of politicians became an essential component of many late night shows. The internet furthers and quickens the transition public figures make from people into caricatures, but the ideas aren’t new. People have long coped with the absurdity of American politics by heightening and embracing it, and it’s not a new concept for people to speak truth to power in the most accessible language: humor.
Although satire as an inherent part of the political ecosystem is not a new concept, the specific way that it manifests in today’s social media-driven landscape presents unique challenges. “Most people are consuming a lot of their news and political content through TikTok or Instagram, where the algorithm will feed you what you engage with. So you might not get stuff that is particularly truthful,” Surbaugh said. In some cases, this means individuals get caught in an echo chamber, surrounded only by posts or news sources from those who share their beliefs. For others, it means they’re consistently promoted rage bait, outlandish content designed purely to upset them into sharing or commenting, all in service of keeping people on those sites for longer. “The internet is super attention farming and time wasting because that makes money,” Phoebe Whipple (’28) said. Contrary to popular belief, many young people, like Whipple, are deeply aware of the detriments of social media, preferring instead to get information from peers and assess politics through the lenses of their community.
AI has also begun to impact politics, as exemplified by the videos of politicians singing and playing together. These deep fakes lead powerful political figures to be seen as silly characters; they’re not calling for bombings, they’re just gaming together. “I think [this] makes it so you're not taking them seriously. And I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing,” Whipple said. Those videos are somewhat unsettling, but potentially the least harmful use of AI: this same technology has been used to discourage voters in swing elections around the world.
The unregulated and rapid nature of social media also allows misinformation to spread faster than ever before. One recent example is the J.D. Vance couch story, wherein an X (Twitter) user edited a picture of Vance’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” to include a passage describing lewd acts involving couch cushions, which quickly picked up traction and circulated around X, eventually being referenced by Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. This joke has been incredibly divisive and led to outcry from both sides, with some on the left defending the joke as harmless fun. The meme is less damaging than many right-wing falsities, like Pizzagate, and isn’t motivated by prejudice like the Obama citizenship conspiracy. (Freaks are not a protected class.) However, the widespread nature of the story and the fact that many people sincerely believe the passage was real raises concern about the ease with which fabrications become fact.
Not only is misinformation present on many social media platforms, but many, like X, actively promote it. After purchasing Twitter, Elon Musk undid many of the platform’s content regulations, supposedly in defense of free speech, although this point is a clear lie considering Musk’s attempts to make “cis” a slur on the platform. Since Musk’s purchase of the app, right-wing propaganda has taken over the platform, with conservative conspiracy-prompting tweets (promoted as ads) appearing on everyone’s feed, regardless of attempts to block and limit the content. Social media has already been shown to promote extremism and violence, and when the primary determinant of a website’s function has a vested interest in promoting hate and lies, abstract threats become visceral ones very quickly.
Economics professor Brian Gross noted the regulation of information as one of the biggest differences between the pre-social media age and now. “Media provided gatekeepers,” Gross said. “Like, you want to get your ideas across, you have to go through us. We do our editorial, fact-checking, filtering whatever. You label it, and then it gets pushed.” In some ways, it’s helpful that mainstream news outlets aren’t the primary provider of news or information, as they can leave out a variety of perspectives and tend to primarily promote ideology that is already widely accepted. However, as Gross says, “Certain messages can be essentially insulated from reality, insulated from fact-checking, insulated from scrutiny or any pushback. Those can sort of persist and grow, whether it's through certain news channels, social media bubbles, whether it's bot-influenced or not, it greatly affects the [political] landscape.”
For many people, social media has filled the role that newspapers and mainstream media outlets used to play, which makes the misinformation present on these sites a far more pressing danger. Although it doesn’t always feel like it, especially when fearmongering, conspiracy theories and conservative grifters are near permanent fixtures on channels like Fox News, there are standards for acceptable information to publish that aren’t present on social media. It’s near impossible to dam the river of progress; the internet will continue to impact politics, regardless of how dangerous. Thus, it is increasingly important to arm people with the necessary skills to identify misinformation and distinguish harmless jokes from concerted efforts to spread hate.