The internet is a strange place. This is a truth universally recognized by anybody with a Wi-Fi connection (ethernet cords tend to filter out the middle tier of bizarre - anything past that is generally being looked at by people who themselves are far too weird to notice anything abnormal about the content they are consuming).

One of the odder examples of this is political meme culture. It has actually become a significant meme in itself (think of characters like your conservative uncle sharing image macros claiming Obama is a socialist, or liberals whose activism consists entirely of sharing posts comparing the current political situation to Harry Potter.)

Please stop

One of the greatest gems of this culture is Turning Point USA. TPUSA, "a national student movement dedicated to identifying, organizing, and empowering young people to promote the principles of free markets, [sic] and limited government," was founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk, a now 24-year-old whose entire existence immediately made sense to me when I found out he grew up in Wheeling, IL.

TPUSA is fairly representative of the anti-snowflake vanguard, even being so dedicated to free speech as to have a watchlist of professors whose ideas they deem dangerous. (They also have issues with racism and anti-Semitism). But their ill-fated attempts at millennial messaging have propelled them into a unique sphere of internet fame.

Where to begin? There is, of course, the infamous Kent State diaper protest:

Needless to say, this did not go the way they wanted it to.

The most memetic staying power seems to come from the image macros they post on Facebook and Twitter. Many feature Kirk in a condescending pose with some sort of capitalist rhetoric written as a caption:

But sometimes it's hard to tell the parody from the reality. Take, for example, this image featuring a quote by Nelson Mandela:

literal Communist. Is Turning Point USA run by a closet comrade?

Actually, I think there might be someone on the team who's sympathetic to the proletarian struggle. Here's another example:

heavy tax breaks. So, standpoint dependent, but definitely not the resounding capitalist argument they seem to think it is.

Then there's this:

Unless they have other reasons for hating socialism.

Eh, you win some, you lose some.