The Brief: "The left can't meme" is a slight that's spread by conservative and Far-Right memers and trolls.

Bluesquiggle
DEEP DIVE

The phrase “the Left can’t meme” is spread by Far-Right and Conservative memers and trolls to insult the meme-making abilities of Liberals and Leftists. It often refers to how extremely online members of the Right see themselves as winners of “The great meme war” when Donald Trump was elected in 2016. Whatever the role of memes was in the 2016 presidential election, it’s clear that memes have influence in elections and that they’ve been embraced by leaders including President Trump.

“The left can’t meme” is both a serious insult and a trolling tactic used to discourage Democrats online. It’s an inside-joke for Conservative meme fans and a way to goad people on the Left.

The subreddit r/theleftcantmeme has over 16,000 subscribers and is dedicated to making fun of Leftist memes, which are criticized by Conservative meme connoisseurs as being too wordy, pretentious, unfunny, and wrong. The subredit r/therightcantmeme has over 238,000 subscribers and dunks on bad Conservative memes. Many Leftist memers would argue that they can, in fact, meme, pointing to the popularity of Bernie Sanders meme pages, anti-Trump memes, and other online memes aligned with Liberal ideologies. Sometimes, the phrase “the Right can’t meme”Β  is used as a comeback by Liberal and Leftist meme-makers.

Leftist memes be like: W A L L from TheLeftCantMeme