The internet is continually becoming a bigger part of our lives. Many Americans have 24/7 access to internet through their cellphone and use that for everything from trying to find a place to go to dinner while on vacation, to getting up to date on the wars in the Middle East. Now, with the election almost over, experts, news outlets, and the candidates themselves are looking at how the internet affected the presidential election.
Spending any amount of time on the internet exposes a user to a multitude of advertisements and pop-ups which the younger generation tends to ignore. Ads have become the background music of the internet. So how are the candidates and their teams supposed to reach out to the younger audience? By speaking their language, and digging deeper into the online community.
Memes, or internet jokes, have been around since the dawn of social media. They rise to popularity swiftly and then fall just as fast. In the past and present, candidates have tried to reach out directly through these jokes with minimal success, but this year, voters and citizens took it into their own hands to reach out to their contemporaries by acting as unofficial surrogates for the candidates.
With all the emotions that surround this presidential election, the younger generation has taken to poking fun at the candidates to get people interested. Many of these jokes originated or rose to popularity on the blogging website Tumblr.
Now, as these are internet jokes, they are highly, highly biased, resulting in many of the most popular posts being skewed liberally. Especially in the case of Tumblr, many of the users were supporters of Bernie Sanders due to the far left nature of the blog's users. Therefore, many Tumblr users "drag" both current candidates. However, Donald Trump himself has become an object of ridicule far more than Hillary Clinton.
This all started in primary season, with Bernie Sanders such a large presence on the internet and the famed "Zodiac Killer" Ted Cruz conspiracy. Very few people actually believed Ted Cruz was the Zodiac killer, but that was not the point of the meme. It was just meant to be funny
Things soon escalated from isolated posts popping up, to the entire campaign becoming a meme, Hillary's confidence in the primaries, Sanders on her coat-tails, Trump's remarks to Jeb Bush and "Little Marco," it all became one big joke, like a web comic. The internet community was waiting for the next thing to happen so it could be memed.
Outside of memes, YouTube also took to the podium. YouTubers were making videos about each of the candidates and why they would, or would not support either one. Many also made fun of the candidates in the same way the memes did. Minority YouTubers were speaking out against Trump for his comments towards Mexicans, African Americans, Muslims and women, and the LGBT+ community spoke out about his choice of Mike Pence as a running mate.
Hillary Clinton was not spared either, though a general bias could be seen, as many YouTubers made her out to be not as bad as Trump. They would mock her changing policies, her cold demeanor, and what can be seen as narcissistic ambition. They mocked her confidence in her ability to win.
With the rise of Hamilton to popularity in the past year or so, parodies swept the internet. The most common songs parodied were the opening "Alexander Hamilton" and "The Election of 1800" as many younger voters saw the elections as similar: two undesirable candidates.
Social Media platforms across the internet have taken an interest in this year's election. A major voting campaign has been implemented through out the major social networking sites to encourage people to vote, no matter which candidate they choose to vote for.
It remains to be seen what impact this movement will have on the presidential election. While it has gotten many of the younger demographic interested in politics, there is an issue. There is no way to know how many in each audience are of voting age. That was part of the problem with Sander's campaign, he relied to heavily on young people and therefore, many of his supporters were below voting age. So will this make a difference on Nov. 8th? It may take months of polling to figure out, but it can be seen that the 2016 Presidential Election made an impact on the internet community.
