Writing for memes, with lots of Ben Carson examples

I was updating some slides for a class on writing for social media last week and wanted to update the memes I used early in the class.

When I taught a similar class last spring, I used some Rand Paul memes to illustrate points after using some Hillary Clinton memes. The Republican race didn’t have a clear front-runner, but Paul had inspired some pro and con memes that fit the writing points I was making in class. In both cases, I wasn’t trying to make partisan points about the candidates (and used pro and con memes about each of them). I was just trying to use timely points about applying the craft of writing to memes.

Paul is lagging in the Republican presidential polls, though, so I updated my slides last week with some memes of Donald Trump and Ben Carson.

Within a week, my Carson memes were out of date. A gusher of memes was fueled by Carson’s speculation that the Egyptian pyramids were built for storing grain, followed by media debunking of his claims about getting a “full scholarship” offer to West Point, meeting Gen. William Westmoreland as a young high school ROTC cadet, behaving violently in his youth and a story about a hoax by a professor at Yale. (I’m working on a subsequent post on fact-checking, relating to these stories and Carson’s response to them.)

Each of the stories prompted more memes, including some that played on humor from multiple Carson stories.

I don’t know whether memes are a permanent form of writing that will endure, or whether they will pass as a fad. But clearly writing in social media, for now, is a matter of both the visual effect of blending words and photos and the visual use of type fonts, sizes and styles.

From a journalism standpoint, the meme combines many of the principles and techniques of headline writing with newer social-media writing techniques.

I’ve never claimed expertise in design, but I expand here (with some newer Carson memes added to the ones I used in class) on the points I made in classes last week about writing in memes:

Ben Carson memes

My former Digital First Media colleague, Ryan Teague Beckwith, did a great story in 2012 about Barack Obama as our first meme president.

Now memes are a regular part of the social media conversation about politics. Whether they love or hate Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders or Carson, partisans express their opinions, often with humor, in memes. You blend words and images to make a clear point supporting your candidate or mocking the opponent. If political campaigns don’t already have meme specialists, they will soon. I know of news organizations that have posted memes on social media to promote stories. I don’t know whether that will become standard, but I would be experimenting with it if I were in a newsroom someday.

Below are some Carson memes I used in last week’s classes, with some advice on writing memes (updated with a few memes that came out since my classes ended last Wednesday):

I used this meme to illustrate the importance of brevity, font and choosing when and whether to use all-caps in a meme. The quote is probably too long for an effective meme, especially for an all-caps meme. At the very least, the attribution in the last two lines needed to be a different font in caps and lower case.

This one isn’t in all-caps, but is still too long to be effective as a meme. A meme should provoke an immediate reaction and this one requires reading extended text in white type on black background, which makes reading harder. White type on black background should almost always be large type to be easily readable.

The meme above makes the same point as the previous one. The points are still too long, though, too much type for all-caps. It also squeezes the face too closely between the type. A meme demands a strong image, even if it’s just a talking head, and the type overwhelms the photo here. The “hypocrisy, much?” tagline should stand out from the rest of the type.

This Carson meme is a much better use of all caps. Many effective all-cap memes follow this writing style: two short blocks of text at the top and bottom, related but each making a separate point, tied together by a strong image.

This shows that you can cover a lot of ground in a few words in an effective meme. This imagined quote doesn’t try to explain too much, but manages to mock two challenged Carson claims: That he had a violent temper in his youth and spurned a “full scholarship” from West Point. Perfect choice of photo, too, with fists clenched (even if one of them is holding what appears to be a remote-control of some kind).

The meme above shows how varying the typeface makes a meme more effective. The quote is still fairly long, but works better than the longer, all-caps memes higher up in this post.

This meme probably could use slightly larger type (at least in the top line), but it shows the importance of brevity in choosing words. It also illustrates the importance of matching the words with the image.

This is effective use of all-caps. Both halves of the text are short and readable, and the photo is immediately recognizable, again playing on themes of Carson’s week in the meme spotlight. You don’t need to use the subject’s photo in every meme.

Update: I added this after the initial post. Takes a similar approach to the Coliseum and Stonehenge memes. I like that it makes the point in just two words

The text is used fairly effectively here, with a large font and caps and lower case for words that might be too much in all-caps. But the Willy Wonka image of Gene Wilder has probably been overused and should be retired from meme use. I can agree with you or disagree, but when I see the Willy Wonka meme, I usually just keep scrolling.

The “most interesting man in the world” is probably approaching Willy Wonka status in terms of meme overuse. The words here probably aren’t clever enough to carry of this meme.

Perhaps it’s because I enjoyed the Kansas City Royals’ extra-inning heroics so much, but I thought this most-interesting-man meme was more effective. Certainly more clever than the Carson one using the same image.

Repeating the meme I used at the top of this post, this meme blends two images, using a quote bubble for the words, which get quickly to the point, mocking Carson’s bizarre speculation about the pyramids. It was the best use I saw in the Carson memes to use words and visuals together to convey a message.

Some tweets from my students, echoing the meme-writing points I was making in class.

The use of all-caps and large amounts of text diminish the effectiveness of a meme #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/FRuLvuZGAQ

— Rachel Campbell (@rachelcaampbell) November 4, 2015

Good meme! The scripted font is more engaging than ALL CAPS. The attribution in a different font. #Manship2010 pic.twitter.com/A21idDU3Yg

— Chelsea Tassin (@ChelseaTassin) November 3, 2015

The quote and attribution are the same size/caps. It doesn’t quite work. Make the attribution smaller. #Manship2010 pic.twitter.com/0Ct3IXAGsV

— Chelsea Tassin (@ChelseaTassin) November 3, 2015

“Memes seek instant reactions” xd #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/K2pxcYk3L6

— Raymond Stratton (@Doctor_RayRay) November 4, 2015

Hillary has her share of memes, pro and con (see the slides I used in my class), and Donald Trump is great meme fodder (also featured in the class slides). If memes had existed during Bill Clinton’s or Ronald Reagan’s presidencies, one of them might be the all-time meme champion (they still show up occasionally). I show one from each below, the first effective because of sparing use of all-caps, the second an example of using caps and lower case with a quote that’s not too long:

What other memes are effective?

How have you used memes (or seen others use them) to make humorous or serious points in social media? Share links to memes you like (or dislike) in the comments and I’ll either add them to the post or do another post on memes. They don’t have to be Carson memes. I picked on him because he’s been so popular in memes lately.

Or share your own memes here. You can do so easily with meme tools for Carson, Hillary Clinton, Trump and more politicians.

Slides for my class

Here are the slides for my class on writing (including memes) for social media:

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