Tim Wilson goes undercover to look at “memes”

MediaFebruary 28, 2018

How to tell if your child has fallen victim to a liberal meme hate group

Editor

Tim Wilson goes undercover to look at “memes”

On Monday night, Seven Sharp aired a segment warning against the left-leaning political extremist groups, aka meme pages, on Facebook. Madeleine Chapman expands on the report.

It’s a dangerous world out there for young people. No one drives safely, everyone drinks too much, and there’s MDMA laced with something more dangerous than MDMA. But there’s a new threat on the scene exclusive to teenagers. Something that adults have done well to resist but which is sucking in the younger generation at alarming rates. They’re everywhere, they’re nowhere. And as Tim Wilson of Seven Sharp recently discovered, they’re called memes.

Memes, the drug of the youth. A prescribed distraction from the crumbling world their preceding generations have left for them. What even are memes? Why are they evil? How do we stop them?

According to the internet (a dangerous place that should be avoided at all costs), a meme is a virally-transmitted cultural symbol or idea. Yes, that’s right. virally-transmitted. Memes are actually a sex disease. They’re also a funny photo with a caption that, more often than not, pokes fun at a person or group’s behaviour.

Reporter Tim Wilson, who usually loves a bit of quirky humour, wasn’t about to be sucked into the dangerous world of memes so easily. Instead, he pressed play on “ominous_s0unds_royalty_free.mp3” and recorded an investigative report for Seven Sharp.

His findings? “A dark ugly secret that could be affecting your teen.” He’s of course referring to Leftbook, a term we all know and love. For the grossly ignorant, Leftbook is political left-wing Facebook, in particular leftie meme pages.

A dark, secret leftie meme page and a dark, secret leftie meme

“Joining a meme group is something that all teenagers want to do,” said social media expert Jessica Moloney. “However the meme group they end up joining could be something that actually ends up destroying their life,” she added. So Wilson donned his Kanye West shutter shades and applied to join one of many international, closed meme groups to see how rotten the youth core really is. The names of these groups? Sounds like you might die but ok and I will FORCE-FEED this man WASPS until he BEEHAVES. The group names are a gateway meme drug for your children. Bee warned.

Undercover boss Wilson discovered such hateful things in that closed group he was forced to compare liberal meme pages like Humans of Remuera (a satirical page mocking the wealthy residents of Remuera) to the political extremists that rioted in Charlottesville. Incredibly, Wilson described the Charlottesville Riots – which began with a white nationalist rally and included one white supremacist being charged with murder – as “the political left versus its right-wing enemies, fighting for dominance”. And World War II was just the left and right trying to get the upper hand.

Thanks to some fine editing – at the end of the segment Wilson saying “if you think Facebook’s a kind of friend” is dubbed over rioters brandishing confederate flags – the viewer is left with just one hard fact: memes are evil.

Just one of many dangerous memes (Screengrab: Humans of Remuera facebook)

So how can parents identify the symptoms of a Liberally Infected Teen (LIT) and stomp out the disease before it spreads? Here’s a handy guide.

Stage one: happiness

Your child may smile from time to time while looking at their phone. Chances are they’ve seen a meme. It’s made them laugh and now they’re happy, if just for a moment. Don’t worry, you can end this rebellion swiftly. Take away their phone, tell them that memes are dangerous, and check their bank statements to make sure they haven’t recently purchased a pitchfork.

Stage two: resentment

If you failed to notice your child’s happiness but detect that they suddenly have a disdain for the highest tax bracket, you might be too late. Liberal meme pages choose the wealthy and the privileged as their targets. If your teen asks you why there’s no capital gains tax in New Zealand, your child is already LIT. Seek help.

Stage three: open-mindedness

There are rules to getting into the elite left-wing meme groups. Questions must be answered and values must be shared. Call it a hazing if you like. For Wilson to gain acceptance, he had to say that he thought Nazis were bad. I’m telling you, they don’t play around. Just look at these rules, as captured during the Seven Sharp segment.

No, Tim. It’s too dangerous (Screengrab: Seven Sharp)

You may witness your LIT offspring making a conscious effort to not be racist, homophobic, or sexist. This is just one of the possible side-effects of engaging with political meme culture.

Stage four: code language

If, while snooping through your teen’s phone that you confiscated earlier, you find yourself trying to decipher messages that seemingly aren’t written in English, I’m sorry to say that you’ve lost your child. They’ve now fully adopted the language of Leftbook and will soon be unreachable, off retweeting memes about rich, white people and voting Labour. All you can do is learn as much of the language as possible before your leftie meme teen disappears forever. Here’s what little I’ve been able to decipher through extensive undercover work.

LOL – Love Of Liberalism

DTF – Death To Fascism

TFW – Tonight, Fight Whites!

MFW – Memes Forever Woke

BRB – Brokers R Bad

OMFG – Only Memes For Golriz

BAE – Broke And Environmentally (conscious)

LMAO – Liberal Memes Are Our way of punching up to those in positions of power, privilege, and wealth. Conflating young people who make funny pictures with violent extremists is both irresponsible and dangerous. Everyone is at risk of being hurt by what they encounter on social media, not just those belonging to left-leaning meme pages, some of which are made private so as to create a deeper sense of safety. If this scares you, you’ve probably featured in a post or two. Because only a privileged few have the time and luxury to be threatened by weak, liberal memes.

This section is made possible by Simplicity, the online nonprofit KiwiSaver plan that only charges members what it costs, nothing more. Simplicity is New Zealand’s fastest growing KiwiSaver scheme, saving its 12,000 plus investors more than $3.8 million annually in fees. Simplicity donates 15% of management revenue to charity and has no investments in tobacco, nuclear weapons or landmines. It takes two minutes to join.

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MediaFebruary 27, 2018

RNZ and NZ on Air are battling over Labour’s $38m media funding windfall

Duncan Greive

Founder

Redactions which disappeared due to a technical glitch point to a standoff which pits NZ on Air and the big private media companies against RNZ. The stakes? A huge funding boost which could shape the future of our media.

A standoff is brewing between RNZ and NZ on Air over who will control the annual $38m in additional media funding likely to be revealed in the Labour-led coalition’s first budget this May. Cabinet and Terms of Reference papers reveal the makeup of the panel convened to look at the allocation of this funding, and investigate the role of a public media funding commission. The documents had a number of redactions, thought all were able to be copied and pasted. What is behind the black bars hints at the shape of the media turf war.

At stake is who controls the money, which has profound implications for the future of public media funding in New Zealand. Currently NZ on Air dominates the space, receiving around $130m a year, with around $30m of that earmarked for RNZ. Labour announced prior to the election its desire to see RNZ expand its work in digital and television, a service it dubbed RNZ+. To help accomplish this there will likely be $152m allocated over four years – which, if RNZ were to receive it all, would more than double the organisation’s current budget.

The issue is the role NZ On Air plays in the allocation of content funding – whereby all platforms aside from RNZ apply for budget from a contestable pool, currently dominated by projects for television. The larger private print media companies in New Zealand are understood to be keen on maximising the contestable portion of the $38m for their digital platforms. The cabinet paper notes that the current commercial environment is “straining the business models of private and other commercial media companies… threatening their ability to practice journalism in depth.”

On the other side of the debate sits RNZ, which is believed to favour a direct allocation of some or all of the funds. While the public broadcaster’s relationship with NZ on Air is thought to remain on good terms, the funding system is already convoluted. At present RNZ has three paymasters: NZ on Air, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and Treasury. Why, some have asked, look to add another layer through Labour’s mooted public media funding commission?

The makeup of the panel provides few clues as to the likely direction it might head in. Michael Stiassny is amongst the most experienced board members in New Zealand. Sandi Beattie has spent nearly two decades in the public service – her background suggests a drive for streamlining and efficiency might be pushed, potentially favouring RNZ. Josh Easby is a journalist, executive and recent former deputy chair of RNZ. He and Irene Gardner, a former TVNZ commissioner who ran the NZ on Air-funded NZ on Screen website until 2016, provide the bulk of the industry-specific experience of the panel.

“Serial advisory group founder Clare Curran,” was how Chris Keall acidly described the new Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media. Her new group has been allocated $1.381m over 18 months to complete its work. Curran’s office say this is to provide fees, meetings, research and support for the group, and that “the Minister expects this to be used prudently”. Whether this represents value for money remains to be seen. The sector has been consistently reviewed over the decades, though given the pace of change it has experienced there is a case to be made for caution and care with the allocation of this new funding.

The decision has major implications. If it breaks toward private media the $38m could provide for a major expansion of public good media and journalism within the private sector, and the large scale adaptation of our current model of funding television for the digital age. Under changes announced last year NZ on Air has become more platform agnostic – allowing a much broader range of bidders for funding (declaration of interest: The Spinoff TV received funding in December for a multi-platform show airing on Three in June).

There remains a preference towards television outcomes for big projects, though, with an effective $500k cap on pureplay online content. What the big private media companies will tell the panel, not without justification, is that they have the biggest online audiences and the journalists to provide the kind of public good content Curran appears to desire.

Over the other side a resurgent RNZ will point to its huge digital growth, its buoyant radio survey numbers and Labour’s push for RNZ to grow in digital and TV as reasons it should hold the money. The state broadcaster would point to the inefficiencies of reporting and applying, and the way they will eat into its precious budget without any tangible benefit to its audience.

For evidence of just how seriously this is being taken by both organisations, look no further than the cabinet paper itself. There were 11 separate redacted sections – all of which were swiftly revealed after NBR reader (and NZ Initiative research fellow) Sam Warburton discovered the sections were readable due to what Curran calls a “technical issue with the redaction process”. Which is to say someone screwed up.

Those sections often related to the fact both NZ on Air and RNZ are assembling business cases for holding the funding directly. This seems relatively innocuous, except that it is likely only one business case will prevail – or that the outcome will be a lot closer to one case than the other. Whichever that is will have massive influence over the future development of publicly-funded media in this country – and likely whether that is predominantly manufactured by the private or public sector.

The four person panel, then, holds the future of our media in its hands. And while they will research and interview and contemplate for another 18 months, the decision about backing RNZ or NZ on Air’s vision for that funding will likely be made by the time the budget comes out. So while it will all happen in whispers and behind closed doors, these discussions will be up there with the merger as among the most keenly fought in recent media history.

This section is made possible by Simplicity, the online nonprofit KiwiSaver plan that only charges members what it costs, nothing more. Simplicity is New Zealand’s fastest growing KiwiSaver scheme, saving its 10,500 plus investors more than $3.5 million annually. Simplicity donates 15% of management revenue to charity and has no investments in tobacco, nuclear weapons or landmines. It takes two minutes to join.