When Getting Political On Your Meme Page Goes Wrong With Boomer.Jim

Getting political is one of the riskiest things a person can do online, no matter what their political affiliation happens to be. By stating your political opinions online, or even opinions that simply border on being political, you're effectively taking a side in the eyes of other politically-minded people on the web. When you take a side, you'll get support from many, but people from the other side often see only a target. They see someone they can debate with on the best end of things, and on the worst, someone they can try and "destroy" if they feel it necessary.

People have lost their careers for stating their political opinions in the wrong place online, and the phenomenon isn't exclusive to people with high follower counts. However, if you do have a large following online, the backlash to going political on main can not only be detrimental to your clout, it can also be a legitimate risk to your mental, emotional and physical wellbeing.

For proof of this, look no further than Boomer.Jim, a meme creator on Instagram with nearly 300,000 followers who hasn't stopped taking heat since subtly letting his political opinions come forward in a meme from April captioned, "Take your sexism back to iFunny where it belongs." I talked to Boomer.Jim over DMs to get the scoop on how this whole debacle happened.

“This is the first time I got 'political,'" Boomer.Jim told us. "Clearly that’s not political at all, but to the Republicans, it was.”

Believe it or not, Boomer.Jim isn't known for his political memes, and he never was before this post came along (examples of typical Boomer.Jim content below). His memes tend to run more on the wholesome and ironic side of the tracks, including plenty of Impact font memes, nonsensical captions or imagery and just straight-up good vibes all around.

According to Boomer.Jim, the April 27th post was the first time he managed to inspire what seemed to be passionate hate from a portion of his followers, who took the claim of being "actually sexist" as the meme describes to heart, linking it with what is potentially their more right-leaning beliefs, as those closer to the right are frequently (and often unfairly) bashed for being sexist. The fact of the matter is, though, that Jim's post is a joke before anything else, and it's the same kind you might see on an "edgier" meme page, albeit with the opposite target.

"I was just so sick of a lot of the meme community basing their humor off racism and sexism," he said. "I lose a significant amount of followers every time I post something like that but in my eyes, I would rather not have people who don’t respect others as my followers. It also helped strengthen my community of followers, cause for example I have a lot of LGBT+ followers that know I support them, unlike many other pages they have followed.”

What Jim is talking about is the presence of "offensive meme pages" on Instagram, his primary platform for sharing content. This isn't a new phenomenon. The meme landscape on Instagram is diverse and only getting more so, however, much of the humor from bigger meme pages is undeniably on the "edgier" side of things, relying on light shock humor and taboo topics for success. It's a big reason why so many self-proclaimed offensive meme pages stay private in an effort to avoid being reported.

For someone who wants to share positive messages like Boomer.Jim, that content simply doesn't gel with him, and the over-abundance of it rubs him the wrong way. With his page, Boomer.Jim seeks to give a little balance to the meme landscape on the platform, avoiding politics altogether or going in what he sees as the opposite direction. Jim doesn't shy away from things other meme pages might, like his common shows of support for the LGBTQ+ community (example below). Doing this has gained him a lot of fans, but unfortunately, the sudden decision to "clap-back" at edgier pages didn't mesh with some of his more vocal followers, just as all the edgy content doesn't mesh with him.

“I think what happened for my page is that the humor I use is also the type a lot of the right-wing accounts use. So they liked my page then I guess felt betrayed that I didn’t have the same political opinions as them," he said. "Around 2015-2016 memes started to become pretty right-wing. I have no idea why. The right-wing and edgy memes go hand in hand because they’re all about 'not being offended' and 'triggering the snowflakes.' More recently I have seen a lot more memes that are apolitical and not edgy because that trend is dying off. But for whatever reason on Instagram in particular there is a huge community of ironic meme pages that still use edgy humor for shock value. Like on Twitter the memes are definitely more left-wing or just not political at all. But on Instagram, it was so radically different for my page to not use edgy offensive humor that there are people who dedicated entire accounts to posting about how much they don’t like me.”

Once Boomer.Jim put his "politics" out there there was no turning back. From then on, his followers split into sides, those who supported his politics and those who don't. The former defended him valiantly in his comment sections, while the latter bashed him every chance they got.

The most extreme of them have even made Instagram pages specifically for hating on Boomer.Jim, with names like "Boomer.jim.dissection," "fuck_boomer.jim," "boomer.jim.is.a.nazi" and "boomer_jim_but_funny." On these pages, the owners repost Jim's memes and describe how they're unfunny, analyze exactly why they hate Jim so much and simply harass him mercilessly. To dedicate a portion of your online life solely to hating on a meme page is a level of hate and trolling not often seen, and it's not pretty. Despite this, Jim has been handling them with as much grace as he can.

“I’ve seen them pop up over the last few months just cause they would tag me in posts," Jim said. "When that happens I block them, not because I care, but just so that they can’t keep trying to tag me for clout. In my opinion, it’s pretty immature to start an account for the sole purpose of harassing someone else. They actually have a group chat that they added me to, I’ll get you a few screenshots from it so you can see what they talk about.”

The screenshots are fairly shocking, especially considering all of this started over a simple meme. A selection of these from the group chat can be seen below. Highlights include a failed doxxing attempt, lots of general shit-talking, talks of a "collab" between the Boomer.Jim hate pages, and a pretty questionably George Floyd meme. That's only the tip of the iceberg though.

“They had a picture of some random guy and a random address that they spread around and legitimately thought they were doxxing me," he said. "Doxxing anyone is horrible and the fact that they’re willing to do it says a lot. Some accounts from that community also were spreading a fake DM conversation (shown below) that accused me of saying horrible things. It got spread so much that Cowbelly (whose collective Boomer.Jim is associated with) actually asked me about it. I don’t think many people actually thought it was real but it’s just crazy that they would fake something that terrible to try to hurt me. I try to spread positive messages and be respectful of everyone so I just don’t get why they would despise me so much.”

In a way, the hatred for Boomer.Jim brings to mind the trolling that iDubbbz went through earlier this year when his girlfriend announced her OnlyFans page. iDubbbz's longtime fans saw this as a betrayal since he postured himself as such an "edgy" boy throughout his career, the type of person who would be strictly against their girlfriend having an OnlyFans page. When he showed support for it the fans who followed him for his content taking down SJWs and making politically incorrect jokes were triggered, causing a massive amount of hate to come his way.

The same logic can be applied to Boomer.Jim's page, which attracted users from all corners of the platform with formats often used for edgy jokes applied in a more wholesome, positive way. If Boomer.Jim was "political" from square one, he might not be getting so much rapid-fire hate, but that's not the point. The point is, whatever your political opinions, nobody deserves this level of hate from anonymous internet users.

Thankfully, his vehement supporters have stuck around and continue to defend him, helping Jim keep climbing the ranks of Instagram as one of its major meme players. The whole incident has even started a joke among his followers, where on almost every post now Jim's fans will say some variation of, "Wow too political, unfollowed," to mock the haters. Now, he tries to keep the politics mostly to Twitter, where he tweets under @wholesomechonk and continues to spread positivity.

“Twitter is easier to talk about politics because you can just post words without having to post a photo," Jim said. "I either block or ignore the trolls because I know they just want my attention. I think it’s important to use my platform to spread positivity and speak against hate. I don’t often actually get political I mostly just advocate for people to respect others. And if people hate me for that then so be it.”

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