At 9:05pm Eastern Time, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton shook hands on the debate stage at Hofstra University for the first presidential debate. At 9:17pm---12 minutes later---a parody account poking fun at Donald Trump’s distracting sniffles tweeted its first tweet.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
And thus a meme was born.
For those who didn’t watch the debate (it's not too late), the meme is in reference to the incessant and highly audible sound Donald Trump made trying to clear his sinuses as he spoke. In total, there were upwards of 50 times over the two-hour debate that Trump sniffled---and trust me I hate myself more than you hate me for actually counting. But I couldn't help myself. Sure, in any other election, this sort of thing might have (and likely should have) been overlooked, but thanks to a gaffe-hungry public and the fuss made over Hillary Clinton’s health these last few weeks, tweeters seized the opportunity at karmic retribution for the Republican nominee.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean also weighed in on the issue with this controversial tweet:
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Trump, for his part, has since denied that he was sniffling, claiming that what millions of people actually heard was just a "very bad" microphone perhaps picking up the way he breathes.
Trump’s sinuses, however, weren’t the only meme to take off on the cyber. “The cyber” itself was turned into one.
Addressing a question about how he’d handle cybersecurity and the threat of cyberwarfare, Trump repeatedly made mention of “the cyber,” while muddying any indication of who the U.S. should be focusing on to stymie these attacks. The answer, by a man who is accused of cozying up to Vladimir Putin—the Russian president who is believed to be behind hacks into the DNC, election websites, and other targets—was so thoroughly discordant and nonsensical, that it met all the criteria of memeification.
[#twitter: https://twitter.com/thisjenlewis/status/780592288309321728 ] https://twitter.com/jonhumbert/status/780591360566960128
By contrast, Hillary Clinton was mostly the subject of memes that celebrated her on-stage victory and retorts.
To wit:
That time Clinton shoulder shimmied in response to Trump’s accusation of possessing the wrong temperament to be president.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
That time Clinton responded to Trump’s accusation of “staying home” while he visited “the inner cities.”
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Are these memes particularly high-brow? No, of course not. Few are. But these are the sorts of things you get when watching the most-tweeted about debate in history. And just in case some of this tomfoolery makes you question the state of political discourse in this country---particularly as last night’s debate played in the shadow of pleas from journalists, politicians, and pundits for a “jokes aside, this is serious” disposition---just know that Twitter was used for more important stuff, too. It was also the site of much real-time fact checking, where Trump took took the lion’s share of falsehoods.
All’s fair in memes and war.
