If you still don’t know who to vote for in the current election, a new meme-voting game making the rounds probably won’t help. But it will at least make things more fun.
Brooklyn-based agency Big Spaceship has created Electmeme.lol, a site that asks users to vote for their favorites from among a collection of 200 of the funniest election memes, be it Sanders-inspired #BirdieSanders memes or Donald Trump’s “We shall over comb.”
“Until a few years ago, memes were only to be found in the shadowy corners of the Internet, but they have become mainstream now,” said Victor Pineiro, svp of social media at Big Spaceship. “Electmeme taps into that while letting us explore how such content impacts the overall narrative of this election season.”
The idea was born out of Big Spaceship’s “Hack Day,” a twice-yearly tradition where teams from the agency’s different departments work on a given brief for 24 hours. The brief this time was to make something “weird, yet shareable.” Electmeme tied for first, along with a Twitter-powered, emoji-fueled Mortal Kombat-style game in which top celebs battle it out.
When users go on the website, two memes are pitted against each other. With one click, viewers can vote on their favorite meme and also learn more about its meaning by clicking a link underneath. Electmeme also has a leaderboard that displays the overall meme rankings, sorted by political party. Users can also submit their own memes for consideration and share their experience via social media.
“By staying neutral and including memes from all candidates and parties, the team is trying to appeal to ‘political dabblers’ from both sides of the aisle,” said Michael Lebowitz, founder and CEO at Big Spaceship. “It comes from a good place and will hopefully engage a new generation of voters in this election – through content and a medium that they are native to.”
The game has attracted over 17,500 votes since it was launched mid-April, with a meme featuring Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump accompanied by the line “Bernie doesn’t share food” occupying the top spot:
According to Big Spaceship, there are more Republican memes since the GOP started with so many more candidates. With both Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropping out of the Republican race this week, though, the most recent entrant in the meme club is the #NeverTrump meme. The hashtag and its associated memes have been gathering steam on social media over the past few days, and is trending on Know Your Meme, a site that researches and documents Internet memes and viral phenomena.
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