2017’s Most Surprising Popular Trend: Politics
We’re showing we pay attention, one meme at a time.
The snap election this year saw the largest turn out for youth voters in 25 years, with 72% of 18-24 year olds making their voices heard. But why? What was it this year that finally caught our attention? Be it the hordes of celebrity endorsements, an unlikely friendship between Stormzy and Corbyn or the floods of memes taking over our social media feeds, our generation has shown we are not to be forgotten.
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the phrase ‘fields of wheat?’ If it’s not Theresa May, you must’ve spent your summer living under a rock. Even for those with no interest in politics at all, it was impossible to hide from in June. On Twitter, Facebook and Instagram we found a way to make politics interesting – and even funny.
The memes I’m referring to of course were in response to May’s ludicrous answer to the question, “What’s the naughtiest thing you’ve ever done?” but that was only the start. The memes took over in such a way that The Guardian even published an article named ‘Was it the Corbyn memes wot won it?’ discussing how they believed the images circulating the internet were to thank for the Labour Party winning the youth vote.
2017’s most bizarre collaboration was one between grime artists and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, which was no doubt one of the reasons politics and the labour party in general have risen in popularity. It all started when grime artist JME interviewed Corbyn for ID Magazine, which led this particular genre of artists taking such a liking to Corbyn they even joined together to start a national trend on twitter, #grime4corbyn. With big names such as Stormzy and JME tweeting the hashtag out to their fans it didn’t take long for the campaign to gain momentum.
A J Tracey of Boy Better Know tweeted “It’s not a ‘I don’t care who you vote for, just please vote’ – it’s a ‘If you’re a real g vote Labour’ ting right about now”.
Rapper Akala tweeted ‘Homie @jeremycorbyn was anti-apartheid back when the Tories had Mandela down as a terrorist. Safe.”
JME himself tweeted: “If you want to vote Corbyn. Step 1: Register gov.uk/register-to-vote. Step 2: vote Corbyn…”
These tweets lead to a demographic of people usually ignored by MPs gaining interest and feeling motivated to have their say for the first time in a long time
And it wasn’t only grime artists promoting voting in the election this summer. With Lilly Allen, Russel Brand, Ricky Gervais, Liam Gallagher and even Danny DeVito publically pledging their allegiance to the left, Corbyn wasn’t short of support. The Conservatives had well-known names such as Katie Hopkins, John McCorrick and comedian Jim Davidson in their corner, but the message from celeb land to the people of twitter was clear: you have to vote. And it was heard.
If celebrities and memes didn’t do the trick, perhaps the 18-24 year olds were still seeing red after the older generation voted to leave the EU in last year’s referendum, and won. Data released post-Brexit showed that whilst 70% of the
18-24 year olds who voted were voting to remain, the whopping 90% of 65 + yr olds who voted mostly wanted to leave.
Twitter user @TweetsByBilal tweeted at the time: “I just want to shout out all the old people who voted to ruin my future and the futures of generations to come #EuRefResults” and his anger was mirrored by @ravenclvws, who added: “young people are going to be affected by this. the old people who voted will die before they can get affected. #brexit”.
Comedian James Corden expressed his apologies, tweeting “I can’t get my head around what’s happening in Britain. I’m so sorry to the youth of Britain. I fear you’ve been let down today x”.
18-24 year olds were even among the predicted 100,000 that stormed the streets of Westminster to protest the decision. Those too young to even vote in the referendum called for the voting age to be lowered to 16 and held banners saying “Where was my vote? Our future, our choice.” A petition that was shared on social media sites for a second referendum reached 2 million signatures in just 24hrs. Our generation was not pleased, and we made no attempt to hide it. Could this bottled up rage be the reason we showed out in force less than a year later?
We proved our love for politics recently by voting the self-proclaimed ‘politics nerd’ Georgia Toffolo as Queen of the Jungle on I’m a Celebrity get me out of here. Just the fact that she, and Stanley Johnson (ex-mayor of London Boris Johnson’s father) were chosen to be on the show in the first place serves as an acknowledgement from ITV that the interests of their target audience has evolved since the days Katie Price and Peter Andre were contestants.
Whatever it was that made our generation wake up and pay attention, the rising popularity of politics can only lead to good things – more voters make a more democratised society. The more 18-24 yr olds show an interest, the less politicians can ignore us. We’re changing the country, the course of history, and we’re doing it one meme at a time.