How Russian Trolls Used Meme Warfare to Divide America

The money line for me in the article was the one below.

"The authors also note that even silly memes can change minds. “While many people think of memes as “cat pictures with words,” the Defense Department and DARPA have studied them for years as a powerful tool of cultural influence, capable of reinforcing or even changing values and behavior."

The real issue we have in this country is that people believe meme's to be true if they tell them something they want to believe. We have stopped critical thinking and too many people no longer will even check a meme (I don't mean with Snopes or other "fact checkers") but by looking up stories on the info being pushed in the meme.

Almost any meme is likely to tell either an outright falsehood (a misquote, bad data etc) or to tell a lie of omission (the do not tell the entire story). That is by design of course. Memes can only have a sentence or two, perhaps 3 or a few factoids sprinkled in them etc. The purveyors of the memes now that most Americans (and others) will accept the meme as essentially true/accurate if it plays to their preconceived notions (not necessarily facts).

How can voters be discouraged by a meme not to vote? They have to be pretty simple minded, ill informed, undereducated, easily confused etc. The meme generators are playing on a largely ignorant, ill informed public that is easily fooled by a few words and a picture.

Memes are only effective when there is an element of truth. Doubtful anyone with a room temperature IQ changes their vote as a result of them. Nothing new here except a modern technological media.

Again, why are we bothering with this? Don't we pay billions of Dollars a year to the UN to deal with these issues? The current residing DC warhawks need another war to pump up their profits.