Abstract
This essay examines several prominent memes that have circulated on Right-wing social media during the Covid-19 pandemic. The memes coordinate what I describe as a mode of interpassive humor, which positions those who “believe” in the crisis as naïve dupes, infantilizing those subjects who have fallen prey to the idea that they should take the pandemic seriously, and thereby delegating fearfulness to the other so that reactionary Covid-19 denialists may continue with their lives unaffected. The essay thereby seeks to draw suggestive lines of affiliation between studies of digital memes, evolutionary mimetics, and psychoanalytic theory, pointing to the algorithmic spread of disinformation during the coronavirus pandemic as a case of interpassive humor.
Recommended Citation
Krzych, Scott.
"“There is no pandemic”: On Memes, Algorithms and other Interpassive Forms of Right-wing Disbelief."
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
24.4
(2022):
<https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.4087>
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