“Meme magic” is a relatively new phenomenon. Beginning in 2015, the practice has nothing to do with potions, poltergeists, or Potters, but instead describes the art of creating memes that transcend the internet to have real-life consequences. According to 4Chan’s controversial Pol board – an anonymous forum where people go to be politically incorrect – the election win of Donald J Trump was meme magic in action. “We actually elected a meme as president,” wrote one user on the site.
Although this was arguably the most successful time 4Channers used memes to influence popular opinion, they didn’t stop there. Over the last month, a conspiracy known as Pizzagate has ascended from the depths of the site to become a mainstream news story. On Sunday, a man was arrested after he walked into the pizza restaurant at the heart of the conspiracy and fired an undisclosed number of shots with an assault rifle.
This is undoubtedly meme magic in action. Pizzagate technically started in March, when WikiLeaks released a batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, and an anonymous 4Chan user claimed a photo Podesta received of two girls sharing pizza proved that he was involved in human trafficking. The conspiracy theory received renewed attention in November when a new batch of emails was leaked. References to “pizza” in the messages were considered by 4Channers to be a paedophilic code, and one restaurant – Comet Ping Pong in Washington DC – was alleged to be a front for an underground child sex ring favoured by Hillary Clinton.
So how did the theory go from an obscure 4Chan thread in March to a trending Twitter topic covered by most major media outlets in November?
The conspiracy first moved from 4Chan onto Reddit’s r/The_Donald a month ago, and this is the key to its mainstream success. As a hub for Trump supporters, this subreddit has been influential in spreading pro-Trump news. When Pizzagate reached r/The_Donald, users began engaging in the great art of internet conspiracy theories: circling things and using excessive exclamation marks. They then began specifically asking people to tweet about the conspiracy to get it trending.
Next the theory was shared by a popular Twitter user @PizzaPartyBen, who identifies himself as a winner of “The Great Meme War” (a phrase 4Channers use to describe the American election) in his bio. A YouTube video was then uploaded by the channel Evil Hillary before the theory received its first mainstream attention in the Washington City Paper.
At this point it’s worth noting that Pizzgate is many things to many people. Some genuinely believe they are doing important work uncovering a scandal, others are spreading a smear campaign, and more still are just trolling and hoping for the aforementioned meme magic to occur. To the mainstream media, Pizzagate quickly became a joke – much like Trump himself – which only inadvertently exposed it to millions more eyes.
Commenting on this, one anonymous 4Chan user who claimed to believe Pizzagate is “nonsense” wrote: “If the MSM keeps talking about this story, there is a certain percentage of people who will start to believe the PG nonsense… Conspiracy minded people and other wackos will start to believe that CNN, the Clintons, Pedesta, etc all have something to hide.”
Like everything in this election cycle, however, it is fake news that had more impact than the mainstream media. Sites like Infowars and Planet Free Will capitalised on the theory’s popularity and spread it further still. Stephanie MacWilliams, a contributor to the latter site, said today: “I really have no regrets and it’s honestly really grown our audience.”
But how does a laughable hypothesis suddenly become very, very serious? Just ask President-Elect Trump. Arguably the most influential move of the entire Pizzagate affair was when the son of General Michael Flynn – Trump’s choice for national security adviser – tweeted about it. “Until #Pizzgate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many ‘coincidences’ tied to it,” he wrote on 4 December.
Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many “coincidences” tied to it. https://t.co/8HA9y30Yfp
— Michael G Flynn (@mflynnJR) December 5, 2016
Flynn Jr had been working for his father on the transition team but lost his job on Wednesday for spreading the conspiracy theory. According to the Guardian, however, Flynn Sr – along with many others on Trump’s team – still continues to spread fake news on Twitter.
With the election of Trump, a handful of conspiratorial men now have the power to spread rogue theories that once remained safely tucked in the corners of the internet.
Though the arrest of Edgar Welch for shooting inside the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant seems to make a fitting book-end to the saga, there is no doubt that Pizzagate is not over yet. 4Channers are calling the shooting a “false flag”, ie. they believe it was orchestrated to discredit the conspiracy theory. Pizzagate has gone mainstream; only time will tell where it goes from here.
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