memes

memes

New Year’s Resolution: No More Memes

New Year’s Resolution: No More Memes

Angry women and smug cats.  Tiny green Jedis.  Gummi bear challenge.  2019 was full of memes both irritating and ingratiating, and as usual we as a public could not get enough of them.  Easily shareable, graphically enticing, sometimes inspirational, memes spread rapidly across all social media platforms.  For something so fun and silly, what could be the harm? Well, it turns out those memes may not be entirely innocent.  According to the work of Clemson University professors Patrick Warren and Darren Linvill, those memes may be the work of Russian trolls.  The Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) played a role in the 2016 election by promoting false information on social media.  While fake news stories remain a major problem mostly … Continued