Why Is the White House Posting AI Memes?
The White House Turned Its Instagram Into a Meme Page
Why Is the White House Posting AI Memes?
The official White House Instagram account increasingly resembles a political meme page.
Its posts have included AI-generated portraits, exaggerated depictions of President Donald Trump, pop-culture references, jokes about political opponents, immigration messaging, and content designed to provoke anger, laughter, or disbelief.
The visual style can make the posts feel unserious. The account publishing them is not.
In this episode of Network Issues, media scholar Jamie Cohen and marketing strategist Destinee Day expand on Jamie’s interview with Dutch broadcaster RTL Nieuws about the White House’s social-media strategy.
Together, they ask what happens when official government communication adopts the language of rage bait, AI slop, shitposting, and internet memes.
Watch Jamie’s RTL Nieuws Interview
Jamie appeared in the January 23, 2026 RTL Nieuws report:
“Dit zijn de AI-posts van Trump” — “These Are Trump’s AI Posts.”
The segment examines the Trump administration’s use of synthetic and heavily edited political imagery. It asks why seemingly humorous content deserves serious attention when it is distributed through official government channels.
Why Is the White House Using Memes?
Memes communicate quickly.
They compress political ideas into recognizable images, emotions, jokes, characters, and cultural references. A viewer does not need to read a policy paper or watch a press conference to understand the intended message.
Memes can:
Reward supporters
Humiliate opponents
Define an in-group
Create an enemy
Test a political message
Generate press coverage
Dominate a conversation
Encourage sharing
Make criticism appear humorless
The Trump administration’s social-media strategy uses those qualities while benefiting from the authority of official accounts.
The result is a hybrid form of communication: part government announcement, part campaign content, part entertainment, and part provocation.
Are White House Social Posts Official Communication?
Yes, but context matters.
A post from the official White House account is a public communication from the executive branch. It may not carry the same legal weight as a statute, executive order, regulation, or formal press release, but it still represents an institutional decision to publish that message.
That distinction is central to the episode.
A meme from an anonymous fan account can be treated as an individual joke. The same image published by the White House gains institutional context, public resources, global visibility, and implied approval.
The visual format does not erase the publisher.
What Is “Institutional Shitposting”?
Shitposting generally means publishing intentionally provocative, absurd, crude, or disruptive material to produce a reaction or derail a conversation.
When a government office adopts the same approach, commentators sometimes call it institutional shitposting.
The term describes official communication that uses the style of anonymous message boards, partisan meme accounts, and online trolling:
Deliberate offensiveness
Absurd exaggeration
Ironic detachment
Low-quality imagery
Pop-culture references
Humiliation
Plausible deniability
“It was only a joke”
The Guardian has also used the term slopaganda to describe the combination of cheap AI imagery and political propaganda distributed by official accounts. (The Guardian)
What Is Slopaganda?
Slopaganda combines AI slop with propaganda.
It generally refers to synthetic political content that is inexpensive, fast to produce, visually dramatic, and designed more for emotional circulation than factual communication.
Examples may include:
Heroic AI portraits
Opponents shown as monsters or animals
Fake scenes of political triumph
Synthetic disaster imagery
Militarized fantasy
Religious symbolism
Humiliating caricatures
Fabricated videos
The low production quality can be part of the strategy.
A polished government video invites formal analysis. An absurd AI image invites arguments about whether critics are taking a joke too seriously.
Why Does AI Fit Trump’s Political Brand?
Generative AI can visualize an aspirational or mythological version of a political figure.
It can depict Trump as:
A king
A pope
A superhero
A warrior
A religious figure
An athlete
A muscular protector
The central figure in a national fantasy
These images do not need to be mistaken for authentic photographs to influence perception.
Their value lies in symbolism.
They present an emotional claim about power, dominance, youth, strength, victimhood, or destiny. Reuters and PBS have documented repeated use of AI-generated Trump imagery by Trump and official administration accounts, including the widely criticized image portraying him as the pope. (Reuters)
Does Political AI Need to Look Real?
No.
Some synthetic political media is intended to deceive viewers into believing an event occurred. Other content works even when everyone recognizes that it is artificial.
An obviously fake image can still:
Signal loyalty
Establish a hierarchy
Ridicule an opponent
Normalize an idea
Express a fantasy
Shift the limits of acceptable speech
Generate press attention
The question is not only:
Did viewers think this photograph was real?
It is also:
What political story does the image invite viewers to feel?
Why Is Rage Bait So Effective?
Platforms measure attention and interaction.
A post that makes people furious may generate:
Comments
Quote posts
Shares
Screenshots
Reaction videos
News coverage
Duets
Stitches
Searches
The algorithm does not necessarily distinguish between admiration and disgust.
From a distribution perspective, an angry critic may be as useful as a supporter.
Destinee’s warning is practical:
If a post was designed to make you furious enough to share it, sharing it may complete the strategy.
That does not mean harmful government communication should never be documented or criticized. It means users should consider whether they are adding analysis or merely expanding its reach.
Are Likes the Most Important Signal?
Not always.
For creators and brands, likes can provide useful social proof. But shares, sends, saves, watch time, and repeated viewing may reveal stronger interest.
A political post can therefore succeed without being widely liked.
If it enters private messages, news coverage, reaction videos, and opposing communities, it has traveled beyond its original audience.
Political communication succeeds when it changes the conversation—not only when it receives approval.
Is This Strategy Actually Successful?
By social-media standards, often yes.
Success on a platform does not necessarily mean:
Informing citizens accurately
Building consensus
Improving trust
Producing constructive debate
Making people feel positive
Platform success may simply mean:
Capturing attention
Increasing distribution
Creating reactions
Dominating coverage
Generating repeat engagement
The White House social team appears highly fluent in the mechanics of online attention.
That does not make the strategy healthy, ethical, or appropriate for a government institution. It makes it effective at generating platform activity.
Is a Younger Social-Media Team Manipulating an Older President?
The episode considers this possibility, but the identity, age, and internal decision-making authority of individual staff members should not be assumed without evidence.
Several explanations could coexist:
Younger staff understand meme formats and engagement tactics.
Senior officials approve messages that match Trump’s preferred image.
The administration adopts material already circulating among supporters.
Fan content is elevated into official communication.
Trump’s own aesthetic preferences align with exaggerated AI imagery.
Platform performance encourages the team to repeat what generates reactions.
The useful analytical question is not exactly who pressed “publish.”
It is why the institution continues to reward this style.
Can Memes Be Used to Test Policy Ideas?
Yes.
Political actors can release an exaggerated image or joke and observe the response.
If supporters embrace it, the underlying idea may be repeated more seriously. If the reaction is strongly negative, the publisher can retreat behind irony.
This creates an informal test:
Publish the meme.
Measure the reaction.
Identify supporters and opponents.
Preserve the successful emotional frame.
Deny seriousness when necessary.
The joke becomes a low-risk way to introduce a high-stakes idea.
What Does “Just Joking” Accomplish?
“Just joking” creates ambiguity.
It allows a speaker to communicate an idea while avoiding full responsibility for it.
Supporters may interpret the message literally. Critics are told they lack humor. Journalists must decide whether the post deserves serious coverage. The publisher receives attention either way.
This is sometimes called ironic plausible deniability.
A useful media-literacy question is:
If the post were serious, what would it be asking the audience to accept?
The answer often reveals why the joke matters.
Are Government Memes a Form of Distraction?
They can be.
Steve Bannon famously described a strategy of overwhelming the media environment with information and controversy. A constant stream of provocative posts can prevent audiences from sustaining attention on any one policy, investigation, conflict, or institutional change.
The meme becomes both the message and the diversion.
Destinee compares the strategy with derailing a group conversation through a disruptive post. At a government scale, the derailment may redirect journalists, political opponents, and citizens toward debating the latest image rather than the underlying issue.
However, not every meme is necessarily evidence of a coordinated attempt to conceal a specific event.
The responsible framing is:
Repeated provocations can produce a distraction effect even when a direct connection to one hidden story cannot be proven.
Why Does Official Cruelty Matter?
Some administration posts have used humor, music, or popular visual formats to celebrate detention, deportation, punishment, or humiliation.
The concern is not merely poor taste.
Official communication helps establish behavioral norms.
When an institution treats another group’s suffering as entertainment, supporters may interpret that as permission to imitate the tone.
Government language can influence:
Public attitudes
Employee behavior
Enforcement culture
Media coverage
Harassment
Treatment of targeted communities
A meme does not stop being consequential because it uses a funny soundtrack.
Can News Organizations Call It Propaganda?
News organizations can analyze and describe propaganda, but traditional reporting norms often encourage them to attribute that conclusion to experts, researchers, critics, or documented evidence.
Jamie’s role in the RTL Nieuws segment was to explain the cultural and political meaning of the posts from his expertise in memes and internet culture.
International coverage can also provide useful distance. A Dutch audience may see the transformation of official American communication more clearly because the content is not already normalized inside its everyday political environment.
Did the White House’s Posts Normalize AI Political Content?
They are contributing to that normalization.
A study of visual political communication during the 2024 election found that synthetic imagery became intertwined with meme creation and partisan political messaging. The researchers described this as generative memesis—memes increasingly produced and mediated through AI systems. (arXiv)
Once official accounts repeatedly use synthetic images, audiences may become less likely to expect:
Labels
Authentic photographs
Verifiable events
Clear distinctions between fantasy and documentation
That creates a deeper trust problem.
Even authentic media may later be dismissed as artificial.
How Should People Respond to Political Rage Bait?
Before sharing, ask:
Is this from an official account?
Is it authentic, edited, or AI generated?
What policy or value is beneath the joke?
What emotional response is it trying to create?
Am I adding useful context?
Will my repost expose the strategy—or simply enlarge its audience?
What other event is occurring at the same time?
Can I discuss the issue without reproducing the original media?
Sometimes the strongest response is a sourced explanation rather than a repost.
The Network Issues Political-Meme Test
Use this framework:
Publisher
Who posted it: a citizen, campaign, candidate, agency, or official government account?
Format
Is it a meme, synthetic image, edited video, authentic photograph, or formal announcement?
Emotional target
Does it seek fear, humiliation, anger, belonging, pride, or amusement?
Political claim
What idea remains after the joke is removed?
Distribution strategy
Who gains when supporters and opponents share it?
Accountability
Can the publisher retreat by saying it was not serious?
Key Takeaways
Official White House social posts are institutional communication even when formatted as memes.
The administration has repeatedly used AI-generated and heavily edited political imagery.
Slopaganda combines low-cost synthetic content with political persuasion.
Obviously fake imagery can still communicate power, hierarchy, cruelty, or aspiration.
Rage bait succeeds through reaction, not necessarily approval.
Shares, sends, saves, and media coverage may matter more than likes.
“Just joking” allows political messages to travel with reduced accountability.
Memes can test how audiences respond to more serious policy ideas.
Constant provocation can distract from sustained scrutiny of other events.
Sharing an offensive post without context can increase its reach.
Political media literacy requires examining the publisher, emotional target, underlying claim, and distribution strategy.
Questions Answered in This Episode
Why is the White House posting AI memes?
AI memes are inexpensive, emotionally powerful, easily shared, and suited to Trump’s exaggerated visual brand. They also generate attention from both supporters and critics.
Are White House Instagram posts official statements?
They are official public communications, although they do not carry the same legal authority as legislation, executive orders, or regulations.
What is slopaganda?
Slopaganda is high-volume, low-cost AI-generated political content designed to persuade, provoke, or dominate attention.
Why does rage bait work?
Platforms reward interaction. Anger can produce comments, sharing, watch time, news coverage, and repeated exposure.
Does sharing political rage bait help it spread?
Usually, yes. Sharing can expand distribution even when the person sharing it strongly disagrees.
Can a political meme be a serious policy signal?
Yes. Humor can introduce, normalize, or test an idea while giving the publisher room to claim it was only a joke.
How can viewers identify AI political media?
Look for disclosure labels, source information, inconsistent movement or anatomy, unnatural texture, and independent reporting—but remember that visual inspection alone is increasingly unreliable.
Jamie appeared in RTL Nieuws’ report “Dit zijn de AI-posts van Trump”, discussing the official White House Instagram account and its use of AI-generated political content.
About the Hosts
Jamie Cohen
Jamie Cohen is a media scholar, professor, writer, and expert on internet culture, online extremism, memes, media literacy, and the manosphere.
Website: jamesncohen.com
Substack: New Media Homework
Destinee Day
Destinee Day is a marketing strategist and founder of Rudy & Company. Her work focuses on branding, digital strategy, communications, online influence, and responsible marketing.
Website: rudyandcompany.com
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Destinee Day (00:00.894)
Okay, so Jamie, you were just interviewed by a Dutch media outlet and they were asking you about the White House Instagram and I know that there's more that needs to be said that wasn't all said on that program, so let's chat about it.
Jamie (00:16.662)
Yeah, thank you. Out of the blue, RTL News, the Dutch news agency, it's the national news agency for the Netherlands, gave me a call and said, Hey, we're doing a story about the White House official White House Instagram. And I said, Okay, great. And they said, we want your comments on it, because you're the person that's been studying some of the memes that are coming from the administration. And I said, memes, I didn't know. Like, I know they post memes, but I'm like,
not thinking about the memes in general. And so then I went to the Instagram page, I was like, oh, this is an aggressive account. And so my first thought was, okay, what they're looking for, because this is a Dutch news agency, is to explain to Europeans, or at least Northern Europeans, what it means to use official messaging with memes. Like, what does that mean? And then my assumption then becomes, I guess no one else on earth is doing this. So.
So I had to do a little bit of research to figure out why this is important. But then it only took me a short amount of time to basically notice that it isn't just memes that the official White House page is posting, but they're actually not even up to date memes or vice versa, they're AI slop. they're not your typical, like it's not a meme page where somebody's making like cool edits on a picture and they're like telling cool stories with something that like kind of makes you think a little bit harder. It's actually just memes that are being recycled from
fan accounts or uplifted from fan accounts. But the odd part here, of course, the thing that makes it a story and necessary to like record and have me talk about it in Times Square, which was fascinating, is the fact that this is official messaging. And one thing I think we forget, because it's Instagram is that Instagram, like other social media has official messaging channels, people who have to talk to us from an important standpoint and inform us or
tell us about policies and how they're distributed to the audience. And in the case of memetic storytelling, it's not just like in academics week reductionist takes a big message and makes it tiny and shareable and remixable, but it is actually the end point. So it's like, they're basically posting it as official messaging. So I think what I found fascinating about the story was the Dutch in particular, if you know like about the Dutch stuff are,
Jamie (02:41.466)
are agnostic people, like they're very much open minded. They're very clear to that the world is strange. People are different. We should tell stories about things that are different. But in this case, they were very much like fair. You could tell they were fairly curious and somewhat disturbed by the content on it, especially the content that was more dangerous. And so the story that I told in Times Square was about the posts that really were meant to show or
uh, celebrate harms, uh, on these platforms. And I would like to talk to you about how this happened, like a little bit of an evolution of Instagram, how it got to this point and how it's allowed to be like this. But I think the second part of this is like how much it, what it actually means when an administration administration, like the official one does this because it's hard for news agencies in particular, aside from the Dutch to explain this in a sober objective way.
Because when it comes from an official channel like the White House, you have to assume it's official, even if it seems silly.
Destinee Day (03:49.12)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, right, as you're talking, the things I'm thinking about were all the posts that the White House channel did during the government shutdown, which if it came from a channel that was not the official White House channel would have been absolutely hilarious. But.
Several times I found myself going like, like that's really kind of funny. And then I realized, no, the White House is posting this.
Jamie (04:23.342)
Yeah. There is a sense of officialness. Let's let's talk about how we met no official messaging. So that's the first thing I thought of was when you're when you're in a world with leaders, world leaders around the planet, and each of them come to their world leadership through in mostly democratic processes, or in some cases, authoritarian measures, and sometimes a mix of both.
you judge them based on the fact that they are in charge, regardless of what it is. So this is what I when I was doing the pre interview with the the producers at the Dutch News, News Agency. One of the things I brought up was how when you're like at the BBC, and you listen to somebody in the administration blatantly lie or spit extreme propaganda, you don't say it, you can't say this is you can't like interject and be like, well, this is to the audience, you can't say to them and say, Hey, listen,
you just heard his propaganda a lot, you can't because it would destroy the idea of structure, the structure of democracy or the structure of officialness. When somebody is the president, they are in charge. When somebody has a a spokesperson, they are the spokesperson for that president. So therefore is official. Regardless of what you may hear, it still is that. And that is to keep like basically the idea that this government even exists or even
international diplomacy continues to exist. And so you have to do this because it's more for the safety of like the environment of the planet, because the opposite is chaos. And like, no matter how much chaos you may be enduring today, you can't, they're able to collapse that structure to be responsible for the collapse of that structure would be far more damaging than just upholding it and being like, well, this is how democracy works. Sometimes it's weird. Sometimes it isn't.
Destinee Day (06:14.796)
Ow.
Jamie (06:16.856)
Yeah, yeah.
Destinee Day (06:20.076)
Because I don't know you the news right now right is very much seems like democracy on the edge of collapse I can't even engage with news outlets, so I was glad you mentioned the BBC because It's a little more removed from the situation like it's very hard to trust any American news outlets Because I know who they're owned by
Jamie (06:29.891)
Yeah.
Jamie (06:48.236)
Right, right. Yeah, typically I would turn to the BBC. when I, we don't have, I've been a cord cutter now for over 10 years. So we don't really have cable during the holidays. We signed for YouTube TV. So occasionally now I'm like, I get to watch news. Like, like, and YouTube TV has the quad box. Do you use that? Like, yeah. Yeah. And I like it. actually like, like, it's a little, it's a little overstimulating, but the get to watch four news channels simultaneously and like,
Destinee Day (07:05.836)
I use it all the time.
Jamie (07:15.638)
I like picking different ones so could see what's the top coverage. And so I usually put BBC as my sound and I could see the other ones airing it. And so you kind of expect something like the BBC to be more like Reuters or AP a little bit more objective. But even then that it's still you remember it is the British Broadcasting Company. So they are still broadcasting to a country and still telling a story. So there is a level of realism that anybody who interacts with the news must understand. Like this is a problem with media literacy too, which is
to read the media properly, you have to do more work than they're doing because they're telling you the story you need to hear, not the story you should be hearing. And in the US, it's tougher like you just mentioned because you're right, like in the US, our corporate media is literally corporate media. Like it's not like, it's not like corporately owned and like, it's a corporation broadcasting system where it's like shareholder express. No, no, it's like a corporation, you know, it's basically business media. And so when you think about that, you're like, okay, well, there's a slant.
There's a message, there's a bias, there's a editorial directive to what can be told and what can't be. And so you kind of expect the BBC to at least be a little bit more like that. So I was actually a little happy about the Dutch agency because the Dutch, well, of course they have the same media situations. They're just a bit more like blunt about it. They're just like, well, this is what you're seeing. Sorry. So, but just like all the news organizations, they cannot say that out loud. And that's what commentators for are academics.
So they interview people so you get their perspective because they can't take a stand, but they could ask somebody else to take the stand. My research for
18 years has been in this realm. So it's like there, this is like what I diagnosed and understand. And obviously within the last decade, like it's grossly more towards, towards what I would consider extremism, although not extremism in the sense that most people consider it. What I mean by extremism is that extremism is a paradox. can't, nothing can be extreme because once it becomes extreme, it becomes normal normalized.
Jamie (09:24.206)
So then it has to become more extreme. So this applies to algorithms, this becomes information, this becomes people. You normalize anything that's towards the borderlands of your reality and that normal, you just accept it. So it stretches. So it keeps on going. So then when we're dealing with extremism, you kind of have to put in like the center, have to be like where, so we have to agree on something. We have to agree that there's like a real something to say this is what real is and.
Everything else is outside of those boundaries of norms. And so the one thing that shocked me, I think the one thing that shocked me about the idea of telling this story was a lot of what I saw on the White House official channel did not seem extreme to me because of the nature of other material that I digested on a normal basis. I was like, oh, this is pretty tame. But then thinking, but I don't think the White House has ever done memes with Frank Sinatra singing
Merry Christmas and talking about sending people to deportation camps. I was like, that's fairly new. And so I'm, I'm a person that doesn't like using the word unprecedented because history rhymes, but this is fairly unprecedented.
Destinee Day (10:36.908)
I find myself looking at the White House account and questioning if things that are real, not a meme, are actually AI generated.
Jamie (10:54.304)
Yeah, so this, okay, I don't know where you want to go with this answer because I have a very strong take on AI aesthetics. My...
Destinee Day (11:05.516)
I've never looked at the president's hands more closely. And in a video where he seems to be sitting in the Oval Office and delivering a message very officially, but there's something that's not right about it and I can't figure out what it is.
Jamie (11:08.59)
This
Jamie (11:20.462)
So there is a lot right now, unfortunately. There's a fair amount of academic research on AI aesthetics, especially the aesthetics of generative AI. And it's shininess, it's surreal, uncanny valley space where if you do the resolution right and you use the right face tuner on any app, you're getting a similar effect, but AI is a complete.
fabrication, whereas like face tuning is one part or like skin tuning or whatever. So when you're looking at AI material, the reason why people mostly on the far right would lean into it further than anybody else is because it can generate a reality that doesn't exist at all in our reality. And what I mean by that is like, how do I put this?
beyond the idea of the misogyny built into AI, where it undresses women or it creates a, it enhances the details of women a little bit more aggressively than men. It also does something where it euthorizes, if that's a word, it turns older people youthful, it changes the way that their skin tone looks, but it also allows them to change their expressions. And so one of the interesting parts of the aesthetics of AI is that it can make somebody look more upset.
it can make somebody look like they're in pain, can make somebody look like they're laughing and everything's a little slightly more grotesque. And so that grotesquerie that's inside of this like aesthetic is something that like enhances a reality of grotesqueness to its actual reality, which may is like kind of interesting when you think about it, because AI can imitate reality because it actually expresses what they're thinking and not what reality is.
Destinee Day (13:14.144)
That's upsetting.
Jamie (13:15.328)
It is upsetting. And that's why I'm not a big user of it because of that action. It can do things that are real. it's kind of like, think of AI this way, or at least the White Houses or anybody use of AI in the terms of manipulation AI. It is you're actually watching what imagination looks like on reality, whereas reality itself isn't as exciting without that. a lot of the... And there's nothing wrong with you to think that the White House is posting AI because...
He posted the video of him and Ronaldo, which is totally AI up until the last two seconds. And it's not even good AI. So he gets up and does a lot of soccer kicks. But you could clearly tell that's not Donald Trump in the image. It's just an AI guy. And then all of it snaps to reality where they're standing next to each other. Because that much movement for him would be phenomenal to see just in general.
Destinee Day (13:51.201)
Yes.
Jamie (14:14.668)
But like that is, that's obviously not even, not even your basic soccer player can kick a ball around with Ronaldo, you know? that's, that is, that was that I found fascinating. So it's like the normalization of like that unreality in those things is, strange enough. But I think what I want, what I talked about with the post is the, not just the AI images of like muscular Trump or like the God Emperor Trump from the mid 2000s, but the stuff that was like,
specifically designated as like mean or performatively harmful to the audience. What I mean by this is like back to the official messaging part. If you're the official messenger, you're telling the public official messaging and you are expressing these types of messages, you are giving permission to everyone who's under you that this is okay to do.
This is not only okay to produce, but it is okay to participate in. And why would you say it isn't? The top guy says it is, you know, like this is it. There's only one person in the entire United States that is immune, that cannot do libel lawsuits. A single person cannot sue somebody for libel or character defamation. And that is the president of the United States. that's because defamation is about the loss of power. And when you're the top power, there's no way you could lose it.
And so when you're the top power, you're also the top messenger of information.
Destinee Day (15:45.836)
Okay, no, I'm just thinking you said something and it's in the AI vein and I have two competing thoughts that are happening at the same time one is It's becoming clear and clearer to me that Someone younger is in charge of the social media
And if that person, if that's true, which I'm assuming it is, there's no reason for me to assume that it's not at this point. you know, they're, they're doing a really good job. And if this was not the white house, the brand, like if this were a brand, if this were Coca-Cola or whoever, would be absolutely incredible. Marketers would be studying it for use of AI. However, at the same time, do you think that there are.
an increased amount of these obviously unrealistic videos that Trump is putting out there. Obviously he's approving it. We know how much he cares about his image. You can see it by the fake tan and the messed up hair.
but it reminds me of dealing with the older family members I have in my life that are obsessed with the AI videos, whether that's portraying reality in the way they find amusing or they can't quite distinguish or was how they wish it was. Like what do you think about? Like is it a younger audience manipulating an older audience or is it an older
person in power distributing how he wants to be seen.
Jamie (17:32.141)
That is amazingly hard to think about. There's two ways of thinking about. One is you might have this young 20-somethings griper far right poster from the internet who has figured out the model of messaging that fits into this administration and is just amazing at it. Because in terms of marketing, right. What I mentioned in the piece is they know more than anything, the White House official account knows how to make a successful post.
They are successful. This is, if you want to know how to do a case study on successful media marketing, take a look at this channel. Because what people think of as success isn't what they're doing. Our mind, when we think about success, we think about like making the world a better place, know, seeing our metrics go up, seeing more followers, seeing people smile and engage positively. That's sure, that's your success, but that's not success on social media. Success on social media is engagement and response.
and algorithmic exploitation. So when they post something and let's say the majority of the people hate it, but they respond by engaging with it and talking to it being angry at it, it's possibly more successful than it was meant the other way. And so they are, this is a case study of what success is in terms of this. So you could look at this and be like, wow, this is a borderline genius poster.
that has a way of manipulating the public because they're so fluent in internet that they just know how to speak internet. Or you could look at it as like, is what an adult old man just likes to look at. Because the audience for generative AI is the elderly and babies, gen alpha. So you get the borderline extremes of who likes to look at slop. You do get the late millennials who enjoy Bigfoot talking about something, but it's like,
You, you really get, you get the majority of like the AI truly AI content or like aggressively fake content in the places where people like enjoying media that fits their narrative, rather than media that they have to fit into their narrative. But I don't know, I can only be speculative. There's a there's a pretty big, I was asked this a lot during the first administration, I got a lot of questions, a lot of interviews.
Jamie (19:54.585)
when you and I worked together about this question, because it was about who's making these posts? And he had a team, he had a bunch of mid-millennial creators doing it. And today I would say that it could be either. The team could, I would, if I were to speculate, it's people who were raised, probably born in either the early 2000s or the late 90s, and they were raised in the worlds of 4chan, and they just know how to make engagement bait. And their engagement bait is
I don't like saying this, but it's like near perfect. Like it's, is like what, if you're going to manipulate a social media feed, this is what you do.
Destinee Day (20:33.45)
Yeah, it's what I tell the people in my life that get, you can tell when it's happening to someone that they spend too much time online and they get that bitter, angriness just constantly about anything. doesn't matter what side they're on. And my number one thing is that feed is exactly what you hover over. So stop hovering, clear your algorithm out.
All of this is based on what you react to and you are more likely to react to something that makes you incredibly angry than something that is inherently positive. I love looking at puppy videos all day. Do I engage with them? Do I put low comments on there? Absolutely not.
Jamie (21:14.112)
it.
Destinee Day (21:27.328)
people were like, propaganda to me is inherently making someone mad and pissing someone off. And I'm like, just stop. just, you're doing exactly what it wants you to do. And you're not making the world any better by responding to some random who's probably a bot online. Like it feeds that beast. So if you want to stop it, cut it off.
Jamie (21:51.183)
The little heart is the least effective part of social media. Yeah. Yeah.
Destinee Day (21:57.064)
yeah. But it's the part to take a marketing view of this. And I work with influencers, that little heart is the most important thing to them. And those comments are the most hurtful, but no one's willing, like my POV of it as the marketer are saves and shares. It's not either one of those.
Jamie (22:07.084)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jamie (22:19.726)
Mm hmm. Yep. That's right. That's 100 % right. Save shares. Uh, the other that arrow pointing to the upper right or the save that that tells you people are actually want the video and they actually they want what's interesting. Okay. So the case goes the same here too, which is like in marketing you want, you don't want to be alone with the media. Like that's the, if you go back to the original viral recipe, like pre influencer content or pre, um, my hyper nicheification of the internet.
When you go to like, when there was like a main character, like a hyper viral person, like double rainbow or Chewbacca mom or like whatever, like you experience it and you can't be alone with it. You must show somebody else. You have to, and it's a compulsion. Therefore that's the highest value. Like you're, you are using social media as a social product. Liking it is nice for the creator because it proves to the creator that people are there. It means that there's an audience that exists, which is fine. That's great.
But in terms of like making sure that your material is seen or like somebody feels something from it, you really want it to end up in a place where they can return to it, which means that you get a return audience, a long tail. And then you could also get like the hate view, you know, like the hate enjoyment, which is like sharing it because you want somebody else to be angry because you can't be alone with this anger. And then it's like, you're not actually pushing the needle one way or another, but you are changing the way their content is seen by other people, which is...
Destinee Day (23:44.556)
Hmm.
Jamie (23:45.463)
a really, I think it's an underserved part of social media because people don't want to know that. Like they don't, they want to believe in a better thing, but it's like, you're talking about machines and math. You're not talking about people. You're talking about how marketing works. And it's like, I love the idea of like having idealism, but it's just not realistic.
Destinee Day (24:06.89)
was having a conversation with my husband last night. You know, he's a retired police officer and he was trying to find a way to explain to police departments that like the way they run press conferences is where a lot of these issues are happening. And if they would just hire
someone with a ton of experience in it to deliver the press conference that it would go better and he was so idealistic about it and that's amazing and it's beautiful and he's 100 % right. However, the press conference is these small people's one chance.
to stand in front and deliver the news and have people ask them questions in that little important piece of humanity that says, this is my moment, whether it's good or bad, most of the time it's bad, they don't see it that way. And like, I was like, that's never gonna happen because people are never gonna give up the platform no matter how small, no matter how big.
Jamie (25:15.246)
That's right. Yeah. So there's a bit of history from this. This is fascinating that you brought that up. The platform itself is part of the story. If you're going to work on a platform, first off from experience, it's really, really hard to write books about this or write papers because like Wikipedia, where the data changes in the topic, so does so to platforms like where it like just the, the the Ellison ownership of Tik TOK has already changed the algorithm. It's already happened.
You know, it's it's happened already in real time. So that means all my previous writing gone, you know, just it's awful. There was a moment, it's either 2017 or 2018. There's a paper that I consistently returned to over and over again, or article it was in the Atlantic and was by Taylor Lorenz. Taylor is a one of the like, OG internet culture reporters. And so in 2017 or 18, she was working for the Atlantic or maybe freelance. And she wrote this essay called hate finds a new home on Instagram. And
She talked about the fact that Instagram, until this maybe was why we're, side note, why we're yearning for 2016, because that was the period just before this. Around 2017, when Trump took office, the algorithms obviously shifted. The audience is now in charge. So whatever was the audience in the Obama hope years, mid-millennials, libertarian, neoliberal optimism, was shifting more towards like this very much of,
anger driven algorithmic exploitation of punching into emotions that move things, you know, so anger is a great motivator. It always works. So then where do you fill that gap of anger as a motivator? And you get like these influencers, these new influencers. And she was writing specifically about like DC train hour, the typical liberal who were going on to Instagram to basically create memes, their meme generators, and they would take a very small snippet selective part of the news, cut it out and then
directed towards a propagandistic audience. And it was not permission because these are user generated content. This wasn't coming from the top level, but it was engagement. They were creating like such a phenomenal engagement model that they were gaining followers by the thousands every single day. And so what Taylor critiques is that shouldn't the platform have some sort of safety switch? But no, of course not because platforms are expression zones that aren't dictated by the first amendment or just amendments in general. They, as an expression zone,
Jamie (27:39.627)
It's what makes the most expression, not what is right, you know, and who makes the decision of what is right. So there's still content moderation and there's still trust and safety teams that keep the extreme harms out. You know, like there are tens of thousands of people right now that allow you to use the internet as safe as possible because you don't see CSAM material, extreme gore in most cases, occasionally it slips through. Yeah.
Destinee Day (28:05.868)
Charlie Kirk
Jamie (28:07.346)
Charlie Kirk, well, Charlie Kirk's an aberration as is Alex Priddy. You know, it's like there there are aberrations where you do see a snuff film, like it becomes so viral so quick, it can't be contained. And it actually goes back to a story in Iran, Iran, where Neda, I forgot her last name. I want to make sure I say it right. Neda.
Jamie (28:33.07)
Iranian YouTube. Neda's death. It's just Neda. Neda Aga Sultan. Neda Sultan. I'll just call her Neda Sultan. There's a story that goes all the way back to 15 years ago now. 15 years ago, and more than 15 years. In 2009, a young protester in Iran during the Green Revolution was shot on camera and she bleeds out to death live on camera.
And it was a horrific death. She bleeds out of her eyes and ears. Like it was horrific. There was a huge discussion of whether or not that should be seen. And this is where the turning point was because they decided this is newsworthy and necessary and motivating. And they left it online. You can still see it today. And it changed the way that we have discussions about what stays on the internet, what is safe, what is harms. And so when we're occasionally shocked by it Kirk's death was so aggressively
horrific that you're like, well, how are we supposed to even deal with that? And you're like, well, it must be worthy enough to repeat, but we as time changes, we also change how we see or react to like horrific material. And so that's, again, why I was like, not as shocked by the White House's talks is like, this is like, mid level posting, you know, it's like in the world of posting right now, this is like, middle, you know, it's like, there's, there's many worse things. And in 2017,
that those accounts when they originally were private, because Instagram would block them if they started posting hate content publicly, Instagram would be like, Nope, or you get a shock warning or you get like a flag. And then all of a sudden they realize, we, what if we didn't keep them private? And then they saw a usership go up, they saw engagement go up. like, this is the way they saw it was like an increase of an increase of an audience. And so again, even if you're not an Instagram user, you're probably coming across official White House.
Instagram posts being repost or replayed somewhere else. And that helps the platform that helps the platform increase. And there's a recent article about the fact that Instagram is so filled with bots and so filled with AI that they kind of have to prove that people still exist there. So the more the White House account does this, the more likely it is that real people engage with a platform that they traditionally might not have liked. And now they're there. And so it is like
Jamie (30:57.42)
This is you're looking at business. You're really and it's like I hate to downplay it like that, but you're really looking at the business of marketing, especially when you have to market politics in a very different world than we're very used to. And that is fascinating to me.
Destinee Day (31:12.736)
I'm glad you said that because I'm having another one of those like thoughts that I'm sure that, you know, is going to take us down a rabbit hole, but.
since we can't market politics like we used to, right? Let's take it from the view of, know, the CNNs and the Fox Newses have obviously diverted our audience, our identity as people, how we consume news, but no one I know actually watches those channels unless they're much older than us. We consume our news online. Do you think that the Trump administration is using
these internet memes as a way of deflecting and being like obviously this isn't serious like
Because I have a theory about how the Trump administration functions. And I always believe that he causes the most nonsensical, newsworthy drama when he needs everybody to focus on something else. And then that's what I'm like, what aren't we looking at? And then that's where that's my number one indicator that maybe something else is going on.
when the news blew up about his relationship with Elon who they were in love with each other and that whole thing happened I was like I don't care about that.
Jamie (32:45.87)
Right.
Destinee Day (32:48.716)
What are we talking about that must be going on somewhere else? Because why else would you lob a grenade that ridiculous? But I think these memes are ridiculous. So is it distraction?
Jamie (32:55.778)
Right.
Jamie (33:03.022)
interesting. Okay. There is a that's this is a great point you bringing up, which is, first off, this comes downstream of Bannon's, who was his first chief of staff in the first administration who came up with this model called flood the zone with ship. And it was basically to overwhelm the audience so they could not see the stories that they were supposed to see. They were only hearing the stories that were coming at them. The overwhelming nature was designed specifically to obfuscate or distract people from
what was going on underneath the scenes. And obviously we found that out to be too true. The first administration is obviously a bit different than the second administration where there was adults in the room and now there's everybody's kind of sycophantic. But I think what you're saying, which is fascinating is you're actually saying shitposting by government because shitposting originally is designed to derail conversations. So if you're in a thread and you're having like this long form, the thing about online media is that it's
unless you're live streaming, it's all takes place in like a radio, like a walkie talkie. You leave a message, get a message, leave a message, get a message. You know, it's like, it's kind of like this relay system. And so the relay system, because it takes time, sort of like texting, like somebody could come in and maybe this happens in group chats too. Somebody like this doesn't feel comfortable with the discussion. And so they ship post in it. They basically create a derailing conversation. They derail the conversation and distract people enough that they can't think about
I never really thought about the idea that the memes themselves on these pages are a macro sh*tpost. Like it's big enough that it derails it so far that you can't look backward because it becomes the object rather than typically a sh*tpost you get back on your conversation. But here it's like, it becomes like a speed bump that's so big you can't get over it. It's like it just, you kind of have to figure out do I go around it? Do I wait it out? Do I wait for a plow?
So that's a really good point, which is these memes aren't memes in their traditional sense, which are tiny shareable bits of information, but rather complete story changers. You it's like you could see the move. honestly, like what you just said is like makes me feel very strange to be honest, like as somebody who studied this, because it's like have memes reached their moment where their official communication in that way, you know, like because they act in a way that maybe we didn't expect them to.
Jamie (35:28.3)
because now they're doing that, but it's like, maybe that's the end point of what memes do is that they eventually become the most powerful means of communication, which is like not what they're supposed to do.
Destinee Day (35:38.828)
I mean it makes me remember when I remember one of the first times I was like the White House is posting this was Trump announcing that he was gonna revamp the West Bank or something and make it do you remember that and the amount like the divide that happened of people that took it seriously and The people that were like this is obviously
not serious. And it was very dividing and I but like AI so but obviously wasn't like it was a distraction.
Jamie (36:12.365)
I think.
Jamie (36:19.288)
There's a piece of truth in every meme though, because memes are emotional objects. And so when somebody uses a meme, are sharing what here's what I like about memes. Here's what I whenever I see a meme or like talk about memes, I always remind people they are they are a positive piece of media, regardless of what you think. And it's because it allows you to know that someone else out there feels the way you feel. And it is very humanistic in that sense. Like how how if you share a meme that is so niche, something that like only you think you could connect with.
Destinee Day (36:40.364)
Hmm.
Jamie (36:49.326)
somebody else likes it, you're like, Oh, I'm not alone. This is somebody else like somebody else shares is very, very niche thing. And so when he posts that underneath it is, it's kind of like a, here's another marketing tip is like it kind of memes can act as a way of feeling out the audience, you can kind of get it's like a B testing it without a B testing it, you don't have to try it, you can kind of put the sensors out there and see how people react to it. And they react well, you'll be like, Oh, go with it. And if they don't, well, now we know.
Destinee Day (36:52.501)
Hmm.
Jamie (37:17.912)
So the meme allows, and this is something I've been working on for now, now a decade, which is the media literacy of just joking or irony. Like how do you do a media literacy of just joking? Because that's an easy out. So that's like, I think this administration has that as their underlying thread, which is like, if, if shit goes sideways, they just go, well, we're just joking. You know, it's just a meme. Just so you're just, you're, taking this. That's like that, that very subtle nihilistic post that people do. You're taking this too seriously. They'll say,
Destinee Day (37:40.812)
That's it.
Jamie (37:47.853)
And it's like, so then you have to ask yourself, did you take the bait and you're not taking it seriously enough? Or am I taking it too seriously? You know, so that that's like a weird global gaslighting, I guess. But but it is a way of like really downplaying the severity or the seriousness of any given issue. So yeah, that is there's a lot to unpack with this that I could I don't I don't know how to put into words quite yet.
You know, this is we I really am like I said at the beginning this at the at the top, which is that I didn't really pay too much attention to the White House's page until RTL News called me and I was very happy they wanted to talk to me about it. But I also was like. Oddly, like, I guess maybe I became cynical towards the idea of it because I was like, well, there's no way anybody takes this seriously. And then I forget it's the official page. Yeah, people are taking it seriously. And some people don't have the media literacy or the skepticism necessary to see it as a joke.
Consumers in general are not that smart, you know, and it's not like they're dumb. I'm not saying they're stupid. I'm just saying they're not as smart to be able to detect the irony or just joking in it, and they take it as real.
Destinee Day (38:57.546)
I mean, do believe the, the public, this is a joke. I believe it's a wrong white joke. That's like, the public is not as smart as, know, cause it's a group of people. A person is smart. The public is not. And that like, I just watched the Joe Rogan episode with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck talk about how they renegotiated their
Contracts with Netflix and they did this big awesome thing. It's very interesting what they did. But the number one thing I took away was Netflix told them here here and here in your script People are gonna zone out. You need to repeat the plot because people are on their phones You have to have a big fight scene in the front and a big fight scene at the end It's no longer you save your fight scene for the end. So
The fact that Netflix knows you have to repeat your main point over and over and over again signals to the people that maybe know the American public better than any other media platform right now. They're not very smart.
Jamie (40:01.518)
or they're making them like that? it, it's the question of advertising. Does advertising reflect the world or make the world? Like, it's an unknown, that's not an answer. There's no answer. I'm just saying like that it acts in that same way, which is, is this storytelling shaping the world or is it reflecting the world? You know, like, I don't know. That's an I don't know, but that is, that's a fascinating question to like consider in your mind. As a consumer, you should just have that in your mind at the same time, which is the knowledge that it could be both.
Destinee Day (40:04.065)
no!
Destinee Day (40:16.812)
Thanks.
Destinee Day (40:31.946)
Yeah. Well, this conversation didn't make me feel any better.
Jamie (40:37.07)
I liked having it though. I appreciate you helping me talk this through because you've made my brain start cooking here because I don't know how to think of these things in a way that makes it conversational or talk to somebody about it. So this is a conversation that has to keep going until there's a language for people to grasp in a very mature way because I think we are at a mature point in history and I think there's the
The stakes are a bit higher than they've ever been. And so I think it's time for us to be concerned and be curious.