Heather, from the US, opened up to Bored Panda about how their political views changed over time and everything that led to them creating ‘Memes to Radicalize Your Friends.’ "I grew up fairly privileged, white, Jewish, with 2 white collar parents in a higher income area of a blue state. I didn’t pay much attention to politics and would call myself a centrist or moderate." However, that soon changed with the election of Donald Trump.
"When Donald Trump was elected, it became apparent that I could no longer ignore politics. Several factors came together to educate me about the experiences of folks with less privilege. Content on Facebook led me to more political groups and the beliefs that resonated as the most aligned with my personal values were anti-capitalist. It didn’t take me long to accept that many of the problems with the world today are rooted in capitalism and America’s adherence to it. I learned that the American party system was between right-wing centrists (Democrats) and further right conservatives (Republicans)," Heather explained.
"As hate crimes against Jews rose, I started my first page, a centrist page, to make sure people knew what was going on. I quickly retired that one though as it took only a few months for me to completely abandon centrism and move hard left. I joined 'leftbook' groups, places on Facebook where anti-capitalist beliefs were shared. I was growing more and more radicalized by the content I was seeing and I liked who I was becoming. I started to explore my gender and became involved in queer spaces as well. I got an unjust ticket and in using my privilege to take off work and have a lawyer to fight it, I appreciated how few others were simply being screwed by the system without the privilege."
It was around the same time that Heather was experimenting with another meme page over on Facebook. They were learning a lot about how to grow a page into a successful social media project.
"When Covid hit in 2020, I started 'Revolutionary Memes for Rona-Ridden Quaranteens,' a play on a few other pages and groups who had names with similar rhyming schemes. I was sharing content about quarantining and the need for us to worry less about the economy and more about the well-being of fellow man," Heather told Bored Panda about the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"When George Floyd was murdered and protests began, I focused on content that supported the Black Lives Matter movement and how the destruction of property is a valid form of protest against injustices such as those faced by people of color at the hands of the police," they said. "My goal was to share the same kinds of content that had helped radicalize me from centrist to leftist. The page grew fast but I wanted to make it clearer what it was for." That's when they changed the name of the page to 'Memes to Radicalize Your Friends.'
"I was targeting fellow leftists primarily. I wanted people who agreed with me to share the content. I wanted people who saw the content to be curious about it and explore more. The page was growing but Facebook’s algorithms were more strict. After January 6th [the Capitol riots], it was hard to share political content without getting violations. I suffered many violations for content most people would agree was benign. Even after the violations expired, I saw my page reach was savaged by the Facebook algorithm," Heather explained that it became more and more difficult to express their political thoughts online at this time.
"I attempted to run a new page, Memes to Radicalize Your Friends 2.0. It performed a bit better but the growth of the page didn’t compare to the early days. A year later, I retired this page, it having grown at about a quarter of the rate of the 1.0 version. I resumed running content only on the original page. The reach appeared to be repaired but I resigned myself to not seeing the growth I had originally. In 2020, the page would get 1-200 likes a day. Now it gets a fraction of that. But the content is still seen by millions of people. Facebook is not interested in political content being shared. But I’m still interested in using Facebook to share it."
Heather explained to Bored Panda that it would be more accurate to call them a curator than a creator of content. They source posts from all over the net, but they're very selective in what they post.
"I don’t share anything I don’t personally agree with and I don’t share about subjects I’m not well-informed on. The content that performs best is short and sweet, timely, pithy, lightly humorous…" However, it's impossible to know what exactly will perform well or not. There's a bit of luck involved in what content will resonate with the audience. Unfortunately, some posts get quite a bit of hate, and Heather is forced to delete some comments.
"I usually find a piece of content I like then preschedule it. The content that is most interesting is when I share trans-positive pieces, They’re pretty benign but TERFs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists] and transphobes like to flood the comments with hate. It continues to be appalling to me that Facebook will punish me for a jocular post about punching nazis Captain America style while allowing such horrific transphobic content calling for people to kill themselves. Facebook’s moderation quality has definitely declined since Covid. People are very full of hate," she pointed out that the quality of Facebook as a social ecosystem seems to have only declined throughout the pandemic.
"I think of myself as a propagandist. This is my praxis, putting theories into practice. I believe that people are swayed by what they are exposed to. My personal beliefs most closely align with eco-socialism. I am neither a militant communist nor a staunch anarchist. I am a centrist among leftists," Heather shared.
The founder of ‘Memes to Radicalize Your Friends' told Bored Panda that, in their opinion, the biggest problem with capitalism is income inequality, and how this affects one's ability to own property. Many of you, dear Readers, might agree if you happen to live in the US. "The minimum wage is atrociously low and hasn’t been raised in decades. Meanwhile, the tax rates on the wealthy have been a joke since Reagan’s era," they said.
"I’m most excited about the 'anti-work' movement and the prospect of improved labor rights for the working class. I continue to be privileged with a high-paying and rewarding job in technology but even with my income, I yearn for my own house. Far too many millennials are living in apartments and renting rather than owning and as housing prices climb, they remain out of reach for anyone but the wealthy who buy housing and then rent it back to those who cannot afford it."
At the time of writing, the page had nearly 71k followers on Facebook, as well as a further 852 fans over on Twitter. ‘Memes to Radicalize Your Friends’ is all about calling out the hypocrisy of the current capitalistic way things are structured. In short, the goal is to show people that, hey, there might be a better way of doing things that doesn’t leave people exhausted and exasperated.
Predatory student loans and landlords, unfair minimum compensation for work in the service industry, a lack of paid time off, an absence of federally mandated parental leave, and a very inefficient healthcare system—these are just some of the things that some internet users believe are wrong with life in the United States in 2022. They feel that these things desperately need to change in order for people to live their best lives.
There’s a deep sense of disillusionment that you get while reading the posts shared and curated by ‘Memes to Radicalize Your Friends.’ You realize that things are pretty darn bad in certain areas. That’s not to say that all aspects of life are horrible (they’re not—it’s essential to make the best of bad situations), but it’s more of a call to action to not be indifferent.
Speaking up at work, fighting for change in small ways, being actively engaged in bettering your local community—that’s what ends up making your life better, alongside that of your loved ones, coworkers, and neighbors.
‘Memes to Radicalize Your Friends’ is far from the only anti-capitalist page to be found (somewhat ironically) on social media. It’s actually a very popular topic. For instance, a while back, Bored Panda spoke to Angel, the founder of ‘Humans of Capitalism,’ who had a lot to say about the “absurdism of the current capitalistic society and its flaws.”
They believe that capitalism has changed into corporatism. "We often see many small businesses collapsing because they are not able to fight with the current trend or to combat with the giant competitors. So they have two options, close the business or sell it," they told us during an interview.
"We have many companies that have been bought by enormous giants that I do not want to mention and they won't stop there, they are trying to get their hands on any business category. Is there a solution for it? I believe that there can be some solutions, but capitalists will work and find a way to bypass those solutions and continue with the destruction of the system while being totally ignorant about it," Angel, from ‘Humans of Capitalism,’ told Bored Panda earlier.
"If we go back in time where socialism or communism were at their prime, we can see that the top of the head of the system was corrupted and that resulted with the fall of the system," Angel noted that these two systems are not viable alternatives to capitalism. Any system can be corrupted, and it’s essential to look at history realistically instead of through an overly romantic lens.
The future doesn’t look all that optimistic, according to them. They see a future that is fully automated, where machines produce, deliver, and take care of the food supply, clothing, and health. In this particular case, who controls the distribution system will be the people in power.
Another issue with mass automation is that many people will be left without a job. “The idea of getting free food, water, health, clothing, is nice and, in reality, if we take a closer look at the current system we can see that more people are let off and replaced by machines. For example, we can see that McDonald's workers are fired and they have been replaced with machines that work on touch or by sound and they take orders, forward orders to the employees, etc."
