The Bernie meme, one month on
Why did Bernie in some mittens spread so fast? Pi Media speaks to the digital content strategist of UCL Institute of Education, whose team was behind posting the now-infamous meme of the Vermont senator, sitting in front of the faculty building.
I am once again at the IOE (Source: @ioelondon)
Most memes are already forgotten by the time of their one-month anniversary, but the Bernie Sanders meme was never like most memes. A month later, it may no longer dominate our feeds, but that indelible image of the Vermont senator from the US presidential inauguration remains imprinted onto our retinas.
Wearing a pair of big woollen mittens, one of the few coats he seems to own, a blue surgical mask, sporting two tufts of white hair and a remarkably unbothered demeanour, Bernie’s unpretentious look received worldwide attention for its contrast to the extravaganza of the occasion. As the image swept across the internet, Bernie ended up in all kinds of unexpected places. An online “Put Bernie anywhere” generator, literally, allowed us to place Bernie anywhere, from the Moon to Mike Pence’s forehead and, according to the website’s creator, at least 9,849,938 places in-between before the site became too expensive to run. But the image also travelled far on a meta-level; the meme itself breached our conventional meme realms, escaping from meme pages into real estate listings, charity fundraisers, flat-pack furniture ads, and as some may recall – even UCL’s social media pages.
A handful of faculties shared their own versions in the days following the inauguration, all catalysed by a post on the Instagram account of the UCL Institute of Education (IOE). The photo, which showed Bernie bundled up outside the faculty’s main building, received over 1,000 likes in just a couple of days and was reshared on many of our Instagram stories: “I love this uni,” a student commented (and that’s a sentence we’ve used sparingly this year!).
“Does a shared laughter immediately repair the fraught relationships and rebuild the broken trust between Americans and their political system, students and their university administration? No, but it is a moment of ceasefire. ”
Something about the Bernie meme, and not just his cosy wool-and-fleece mittens, warmed our cold hearts, but as with almost anything that goes viral, the meme spread quicker than we could comprehend why. People tried to decipher what the meme meant, and since all the other inauguration outfits were jam-packed with symbolism, the attention naturally fell on his mittens. An article in the Intercept set out to analyse their hidden message: did they symbolise reserved judgement? A subtle warning? The conscience of liberals? Street cred? A “movement flex”? “It’s too soon to tell,” the author concluded at the time.
One month later, we unfortunately don’t seem any wiser. Those mittens still look as innocent as ever, and any attempt to force a deeper meaning out of them only gives unpleasant GCSE literature flashbacks. Maybe there really isn’t a deeper meaning – but maybe, that was also exactly what we needed.
Timing and context are what make or break a joke, and there is something especially cathartic about humour where and when we don’t expect it; people love the relief of a wholesome joke at the end of a eulogy, rarely because of the joke itself, but because they’ve been holding their breaths since the service began. Equally, it was never really about Bernie and his mittens. It was about Bernie and his mittens on the bleachers of Capitol Hill during a pompous inauguration ceremony, after four years of relentless turmoil in the U.S.. Bernie and his mittens appeared on UCL’s social media pages after a term of pretty impersonal, dead-serious emails and infuriating invoices. Does a shared laughter immediately repair the fraught relationships and rebuild the broken trust between Americans and their political system, students and their university administration? No, but it is a moment of ceasefire. A chance to reset.
“Not only do we want to inform and educate, we also want to entertain and provide value – something you’d be happy and proud to share with the people you care about.”
We have all been curious to know who masterminded that post on the IOE Instagram page; not only to credit for their impressive Photoshop work, but for reminding us that behind that post and all the other posts, emails, and invoices, there are real, relatable people. So, in honour of the meme’s one-month anniversary, I did some investigation, which led me to Jason Ilagan – the IOE’s digital content strategist. Jason has led the faculty’s social media efforts for five years now, and trusty followers will know that it is not the first time that he and the team sneak in a meme. Nor is Bernie the only celebrity to visit the IOE building; in 2016, they devised a post of Drake admiring the “#Views” from its rooftop, and more recently, of The Weeknd struggling to navigate his way out.
“Since I started leading the IOE's efforts on social media, the team has been working towards being more than just a channel that churns out announcements and headlines. Not only do we want to inform and educate, we also want to entertain and provide value – something you'd be happy and proud to share with the people you care about,” Jason says about the team’s motivation behind infiltrating the usual content with an occasional meme or one-liner. However, he adds that the question of whether to meme or not to meme at work is a fine balancing act; since “@ioelondon” is, nevertheless, one of UCL’s official social media pages, it is important to have a sense for what is appropriate and not.
“I saw the [Bernie] meme slowly trickle into my Twitter timeline in the evening following the presidential inauguration and though I gave it some thought, decided that it was better to sleep on it and check to see how things panned out the following morning,” Jason explains.
Clearly, a lot of thought goes into posting a meme where it doesn’t fully belong, but again, that’s what makes us appreciate those posts a little extra. The teaser tweet that Jason’s team used to “read the room” before starting the Photoshop work seemed to suggest that a little act of rebellion was underway, a gesture which made it feel like someone was on our side after all.
Humour has certainly carried us through a lot in the past year, but those Donald Trump memes, coronavirus memes, and self-depreciating student life memes were almost always accompanied by a bittersweet aftertaste of anxiety. We have laughed to cope, to dissociate, to forget, but a month ago today, we finally rediscovered our ability to laugh at something inherently meaningless, just for the sake of laughing. As the lifespan of the Bernie meme slowly reaches its inevitable end, let’s at least commemorate what it has taught us this past month. That we don’t need to take ourselves so seriously all the time. That once in a while, it’s okay – maybe even vital – to sit back, cross our arms and legs, and slouch a little.
Oh, and that dressing appropriately for the weather always makes you the winner. Even if everyone else turns up in monochrome designer outfits.