Elizabeth Warren's Meme Team

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Part of a series on Elizabeth Warren. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Warren's Meme Team refers to an unofficial campaign launched by MIT graduate Misha Leybovich to which aims to spread awareness and support for democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren through memes on various social media platforms. The campaign, launched in November 2019, began by sharing their social media strategy. The campaign was widely mocked online for attempting to organize meme culture.

Background

On October 26th, 2019, the Warren's Meme Team Twitter^[1] account announced that they were launching on Monday November 4th. The tweet gained over 40 likes and 13 retweets in nine days.

Notable Developments

On November 4th, 2019, Warren's Meme Team^[3] shared a Google Documents^[2] file through Twitter and other platforms which outlines their strategy and vision. It states that "the right understands the importance of memes […] We fight back, in a way that's authentic to our values"(shown below, left). Misha Leybovich^[4] is cited as organizer of Warren's Meme Team (shown below, right) and has been interviewed for the New York Times.^[5] The Op-Ed NY Times piece states, that "Mr. Leybovich, who says he has spoken to the Warren campaign about memes and also applied for its deputy chief technology officer position, is optimistic that the right infrastructure and coordination can make Warren plans like a wealth tax and universal child care into base-rallying content."

On November 2nd, Tim Pool uploaded a YouTube video "Leftists Have Declared MEME WAR on Donald Trump, Call For MORE Woke Outrage But In MEME Form" which gained over 179,300 views and 11,000 likes in two days. Two days later, Computing Forever uploaded a similar video calling it "Warren's Cringe-level Meme Team" (shown below, right). That same day, Redditor HitlerSexToy posted a screenshot of the Google Doc to r/cringetopia.^[7] On November 4th, Redditor RedditIsDestructive posted to r/elizabethwarren^[6] asking "Is the whole "Meme Team" thing for real or just a joke?" To which many Redditors responded saying it was a joke.