imgflip.com/i/4ieu9n?nerp=1662639332#com20847898
This thread, a case in point. Not even one of the worst ones from that time period, but gives you a taste.
I joined Imgflip in late-2019, right around the time of Trump’s 1st Impeachment. The thing that finally got me to sour on Trump. I thought Russiagate was a bit overhyped — Russians aiding the Trump campaign? Really? Seemed fanciful. (In retrospect, I was wrong — Russiagate was more a canary in the coal mine for a bottomless pit of Trumpian whataboutism, deflection, projection, and lawbreaking.)
I saw the Ukrainegate blackmail as a more straightforward violation, one that actually implicated Trump directly, unlike Russiagate which had only directly implicated Trump’s underlings, albeit quite a few of them.
I made quite a few memes explaining the Ukrainegate impeachment. As someone who myself had only recently soured on Trump, I thought that by illuminating the basis for it, I could cut through the fog of right-wing propaganda and show his supporters how blackmailing a foreign leader — one who happened to be on the front lines of the New Cold War against Russia, in fact — to dig up dirt on a likely campaign rival was as bad, or worse, than anything Nixon did.
(And then not long after that impeachment, COVID came: a matter of the country’s life-and-death on a large scale. Another discrete issue where Trump’s hackery could be debunked, this time in the service of saving lives.)
I was wrong. All my commentary on these points was wasted, and in fact only made me the target of some persistent RWNJ harassment. I learned a bitter lesson: that sustained good-faith efforts to engage the other side often only bring out the worst.
Don’t get me wrong, I *love* that Imgflip is an ideologically contested space. It’s why I hang out here, rather than the NYT comments section. Political debate is exciting. It’s invigorating.
But there comes a point where the other side is resorting to posting diseased women and that sort of thing where any productive debate breaks down.
No doubt, during the Trump era, Imgflip moderation on the politics stream was more “permissive,” if that is the right word for it. A lot of worst abuses have since been curbed, but the cancer of all this toxicity is only in remission, IMO. If Trump gets re-elected in 2024, it will be right back. The President sets the tone for the national debate, and mods can only do so much.
