Memetic commenting: Armenian curses and the Twitter theatre of Trump’s deselection

Abstract

<p>On 7 November 2020, strange things were happening in the comments to @realDonaldTrump’s<br>tweet erroneously arguing that he had won the US presidential election, ‘BY A LOT’. Posting<br>quote tweets and replies in Armenian in tandem with ‘cursed images’, memes, and creepypasta,<br>users engaged in a spam-like trollish intervention, even as Twitter kept removing the said content<br>in real time. Exploring this online incident through various analytical techniques, this article first<br>attends to absurdity and ephemerality within the polarized social media event. Second, it makes an<br>argument for the productivity of digital methods in cultural studies inquiry aiming to understand<br>the temporal, contextual, and infrastructural aspects of memetic commenting. Third, by focusing<br>on the social (media) theatre of Armenian curses, we make a case for the analytical importance of<br>studying materials deemed niche and anomalous in networked exchanges.<br></p>