A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal

Memetic commenting: Armenian curses and the Twitter theatre of Trump’s deselection




AuthorsPilipets Elena, Paasonen Susanna

PublisherSAGE

Publication year2024

JournalInternational Journal of Cultural Studies

Volume27

Issue3

First page 302

Last page322

ISSN1367-8779

eISSN1460-356X

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231220397

Web address https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231220397

Self-archived copy’s web addresshttps://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/380853597


Abstract

On 7 November 2020, strange things were happening in the comments to @realDonaldTrump’s
tweet erroneously arguing that he had won the US presidential election, ‘BY A LOT’. Posting
quote tweets and replies in Armenian in tandem with ‘cursed images’, memes, and creepypasta,
users engaged in a spam-like trollish intervention, even as Twitter kept removing the said content
in real time. Exploring this online incident through various analytical techniques, this article first
attends to absurdity and ephemerality within the polarized social media event. Second, it makes an
argument for the productivity of digital methods in cultural studies inquiry aiming to understand
the temporal, contextual, and infrastructural aspects of memetic commenting. Third, by focusing
on the social (media) theatre of Armenian curses, we make a case for the analytical importance of
studying materials deemed niche and anomalous in networked exchanges.


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Last updated on 2025-25-03 at 13:26