Memetic Pathos is my theory on how culture wars invade everything—even Thanksgiving. Post-election, a lot of liberals said, ‘No thanks,’ to debating democracy with Uncle Mike over turkey. Maybe it’s not ‘division’—it’s survival. Sometimes the healthiest choice is to take your stuffing and go.

Memetic Pathos is my theory about how viral memes become emotional weapons in political rhetoric. It’s about imitation, rivalry, and scapegoating—why we laugh, cry, or rage over the same images. Dive into the chaos here:

#medialiteracy #politicalrhetoric #substackwriters #memetic-pathos

As I work through René Girard’s I See Satan Fall Like Lighting for my memetic pathos project, I find myself grappling between the tension between his emphasis on forgiveness and the harsh realities of the paradox of intolerance.

Voss, with the pathos of the memetic mistreated cat Miette: you SHOOT Mother? You shoot her eye like the enemy? oh! oh! Penal labor for daughter! Penal labor for Gwenneth for one thousand years!!!

You are such an obvious clout whore that it's not only annoying but unbecoming how you try to protray real factions but conflate ideological or memetic categories to invoke a particular pathos.

Memetic Pathos—the collision of pop culture references, viral internet memes, and raw emotional manipulation in the service of politics. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of weaponizing your Twitter feed, complete with reaction gifs and flaming hot takes.

open.substack.com/pub/jhyams/p...