Arachno-Communism

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About

Arachno-Communism refers to a joke political ideology which is a parody of anarcho-communism. The joke, which is based on the prefixes "arachno" and "anarcho" being anagrams and easily misread, has led to various memes exploring the joke ideology. Memes about Arachno-Capitalism, parodying anarcho-capitalism, have also been made.

Origin

On April 28th, 2007, user of parody encyclopedia website Uncyclopedia Oceanhahn created^[1]^[2] an entry for Arachno-Communism, describing it as "a system of political and economic government where the people are governed freely and fairly by giant spiders." The joke political ideology parodied similarly-spelled anarcho-communism.

Later on the same day, Uncyclopedia^[3] user Major Major Major Major uploaded a flag for the joke ideology. The flag, depicting a black spider spinning a web against a red background, used the same red-and-black color scheme as the flag of anarcho-communism (shown below, left). Another image, depicting "The Anarcho-Communist Manifesto," was added^[4] on the same day (shown below, right).

Spread

On September 12th, 2007, YouTuber^[9] DarwinsHampster posted a video "Arachno-Capitalism is Stupid" that received over 50,000 views in thirteen years (shown below).

On July 15th, 2017, Facebook^[5] group Arachno-Communsim was created. On July 20th, 2017, and December 19th, 2017, Imgur^[6] user RocketManDan1 and Redditor^[7] kohlapse posted alternative flags for anarcho-communism (shown below, left and right), with the latter post gaining nearly 900 upvotes in /r/vexillologycirclejerk subreddit in six months.

On August 29th, 2019, American programmer Foone Turing (@Foone) tweeted^[8] a joke about arachno-communism (shown below, left), with the tweet gaining over 470 retweets and 1,500 likes in one year. In the Twitter thread, @Foone posted follow-up jokes about arachno-capitalism, arachno-nihilism, arachno-primitivism and other spider ideologies (shown below).

The meme did not see further spread April 15th, 2020, when Redditor^[10] Zuazzer posted a meme which gained over 440 upvotes in /r/newackyideologies (shown below). On April 18th, Twitter^[11]^[12] users @cableknitjumper and @ialika_lifina posted jokes about the ideology, gaining over 420 likes and 410 likes, respectively. On July 23rd, 2020, Redditor^[13] curlytopdotcom reposted Zuazzer's meme to /r/PoliticalCompassMemes, where it received over 16,700 upvotes in four months.

Following the July repost, the meme achieved significant popularity in /r/PoliticalCompassMemes subreddit, with more viral memes about spider ideologies being posted in the following months.