As Russian forces began their invasion of Ukraine last week, our news feeds began to show us memes about World War III. They're not helping, writes michellem_sc
Photo-Illustration: Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Getty Images You’ve seen them: the one where the Wordle is “peace. ” The Harry Potter jokes about Putin. That John Cena tweet about his show Peacemaker. As Russian forces began their invasion of Ukraine last week, our news feeds began to show us — in addition to plenty of misinformation, legit harrowing footage from on-the-ground war reporters, and whatever this is — memes about World War III.
This kind of online behavior treats memes as social currency — things to post to get attention, to fit in, or to make public statements about who we are. In a way, it makes sense. Memes are woven into our language and culture, and they’re ridiculously good at packaging information and projecting it across the internet at uncanny speeds.
Consider the history of these particular memes. They are not, if you can believe it, the first World War III memes to go viral. In January 2020, “#ww3” memes followed then-President Trump’s admission that he’d ordered the assassination of a high-ranking Iranian official. The memes jumped to the WWIII conclusion because those are, historically, the kind of assassinations that prompt world wars . It was mostly a meme about Trump, about his political bravado and cartoonish antics.
Between her Russian and Ukrainian friends, she admits that memes have been passed around “to share a smirk,” but overall they don’t “give us any hope or relief at the moment.” Memes prove limited in their ability to help people cope in situations like these. “There’s a specific type of content that, as much as I try to avoid it, always finds its way on to my FYP,” Pilot tells me.
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