Original subtitles

All across the internet, thousands and thousands of people are making the same

plea. Yo, can somebody just do it? Can somebody, anybody, just

do it?

Somebody's gotta do it. There has to be somebody out there that is willing to do

it. Who's gonna take the initiative to do it? We all know it needs to be done,

and somebody needs to do it.

If someone does it... Before the summertime?

It's gonna be like that one summer when everyone was playing Pokemon Go and

everyone was a friend.

Gotta do it. Good of everybody.

Do it, please.

You know exactly what I'm talking about.

I'm not saying somebody should. Nobody should.

I 100% dare you to name- one thing that you hope happens in

2025.

pleading for someone out there to just do it. In these pleas, the subject is

never stated, the action is never spelled out, but somehow we all know

exactly what's being said.

But in case you are somehow still in the dark, these memes are about unaliving

Trump. And sorry to say it in very dumb algo-speak terms, but I don't want this

video to get taken down from YouTube.

What we're witnessing is not just an absurd or ironic online trend.

It's something much, much deeper.

We are living in a political tinderbox.

Trump is back in power enacting policies that undermine civil liberties,

environmental protections, and our economy.

Elon Musk is gutting the federal government while billionaires rob us

blind. Institutions that were built to serve as guardrails are bending and

breaking, while Democrats are not even symbolically resisting.

The courts are caving, the press is depleted, and the idea of accountability

feels like a joke. Dissent is being criminalized, speech is being

surveilled, and legal US residents are literally being deported for thought

crimes. These memes are symbols of a society teetering on the edge. Memes

have always reflected cultural moods, but these posts are about something more

than that. They tap into this belief that the system is beyond repair and

that nothing short of a seismic, violent shift will change the direction that

we're heading in. In this video, I'm going to attempt to dissect this belief

and unpack exactly what led us here. I'm not going to get into whether these

memes and posts are moral, legal, or... even advisable. But what I want you to

understand is where these memes are coming from and what they say about the

cultural and political moment that we're currently living in. Because these memes

are not just about unaliving Trump.

They are about collective trauma, political cynicism, our decaying faith

in democratic institutions, and so much more.

To start, I want to talk about exactly how and when millions of people lost

faith in the system. This was not an overnight phenomenon.

There were pivotal events over the past few years that push people to this

moment. And I don't think that you can look at the someone should do it memes

without examining the major cultural and political turning points that we've

recently lived through. To begin with, we have to go back to March 2020 when

COVID hit. And before you tune out, because I said the word COVID, listen to

me. The year 2020 is actually a time in history that the entire US government,

the mainstream media, and pretty much everyone in power has spent billions and

billions of dollars waging a massive propaganda war to try to make you

forget. And that propaganda campaign has worked on a lot of you because the

period in time that most of America has memory hold was actually pretty

revolutionary. In the early months of spring 2020, when COVID began to spread,

the US witnessed a momentary glimpse into a more equitable society.

The entire US government was taking care of its people in ways that it hadn't

before. The US government has spent so many years since blasting the public

with propaganda that a lot of people today have forgotten just how

revolutionary 2020 was.

Policies that we were always told were absolutely impossible in America

suddenly came to fruition.

I want to go through a few notable ones.

There was the CARES Act, enacted in March 2020, which provided direct

financial assistance to struggling workers by extending unemployment

benefits and offering an additional $600 per week. The Families First Coronavirus

Response Act, which also passed in 2020, mandated paid sick leave and increased

funding for food assistance programs, lifting countless people out of poverty.

On a state level in 2020, states like New Mexico began offering free child

care, a policy that lifted approximately 120,000 people above the poverty line.

The state even began taking budget surplus directly from oil and gas

revenue to fund early childhood education.

This stuff was so progressive, I actually can't even imagine it happening

now, which is, again, because of the downstream effects of all of this

propaganda trying to make us forget this stuff.

Other states, including Connecticut, implemented universal free school.

programs, ensuring that all students had access to hot, nutritious meals

regardless of income for the first time.

These policies and dozens more resulted in a significant reduction of food

insecurity across America.

In 2020, SNAP benefits were increased and helped feed over 15 million young

people. From 2020 to 2021, the expansion of food programs across the U.S.

resulted in 2.4 million households no longer being food insecure.

I can't explain how life-changing This stuff was for millions and millions of

people in America. And people weren't just being fed.

Millions were also suddenly able to get health care in 2020.

The government made it easier than ever to enroll in Medicare and Medicaid,

which resulted in millions of people who had been previously unable to afford

health insurance suddenly able to get care. The government invested $145

million in expanding telehealth services, meaning millions of disabled

and housebound people could finally access care, some for the first time in

decades. In 2020, housing insecurity plummeted thanks to federal policies

like the Treasury Department's ERA program, which provided over $46 billion

to support housing stability for renters. There was a nationwide eviction

moratorium, and the government rolled out a suite of tenant protections.

California, actually, where I live, helped thousands of previously unhoused

people gain access to permanent housing.

I don't want to go on too much, but these are just a sliver of the policies

that we saw the government enact during the early days of the pandemic. And they

showed everyone in America for the first time ever what was actually possible if

we allocated just a fraction of the billions and billions and billions of

dollars that we spend on the military and things like tax cuts for the rich

towards the public good.

I just want to talk about 2020 a tiny bit more for a couple of minutes,

because again, there's this multi-billion dollar propaganda campaign

to try to make you forget all of this stuff. And it's really important to

remember what happened that year if you want to understand why we are where we

are today.

In 2020, as millions of people shifted to remote work or faced unemployment,

they began to question traditional structures of labor and productivity.

People started to realize that the economy could function differently and

that it could prioritize human well-being over relentless productivity.

These mass realizations sparked widespread Thank you.

In 2020, we also saw the rise of the Nature is Healing meme, which spoke to

the environmental impact humans were having on our planet. As skies cleared

with fewer people commuting to their offices, carbon emissions dropped, and

many wondered out loud, what if we didn't go back to normal? What if normal

was the problem?

Climate disasters from wildfires in California to hurricanes devastating

Central America reminded us all how urgent the climate crisis had become.

The climate movement gained momentum in 2020 as people started to argue that the

economy should be restructured to be both greener and fairer.

As everyone became extremely online, people began to leverage the internet as

a powerful social justice tool.

TikTok became a tool for IRL organizing and protest planning.

Masses of people began connecting with each other online and building support

networks. Suddenly, people realized that the internet could be a weapon against

elite systems.

The online world became the default reality overnight, and people leveraged

social platforms to speak truth to power.

The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 served as a catalyst for nationwide

protests against racial injustice and police brutality.

Millions participated in demonstrations demanding accountability and systemic

change. The sheer scale of protests in 2020 reflected a profound shift.

In 2020, phrases like white privilege, systemic oppression, and defund the

police entered the mainstream.

Institutions from corporations to universities rushed to acknowledge their

role in perpetuating injustice.

A lot of it was performative, like a lot of it was performative, but some of it

was real. Again, in 2020, for the first time, millions of people began

questioning the legitimacy of systems. that were long seen as unchangeable. Why

is healthcare tied to employment?

Why do billionaires exist in a world where children go hungry? Why do we

spend more on police and prisons than on schools and housing? 2020 marked a

turning point, a realization that the world as it was wasn't working for most

people and that another better world was possible, one where people are valued

more than profits.

Millions of people began to see clearly what had been hidden in plain sight for

decades. Of course, not everyone embraced this moment. The backlash was

real and predictable.

The term woke was- treated like a slur in some circles and a way to dismiss the

very real empathy and awareness that defined this era. But the pushback only

confirmed that a major power shift was underway.

People were finally beginning to seek systemic change, but then the boot came

down hard.

Biden was elected that fall and began working overtime to dismantle the social

safety net that had expanded in 2020.

This is when we saw the beginning of the disenchantment that would ultimately

result in these assassination memes.

Immediately after taking office, Biden falsely declared the pandemic over in

order to force people back to work. Officials began blasting the public with

far-right propaganda on COVID, lying to them about the disease, and convincing

people to sacrifice their health and their bodies for the stock market. The

message was clear.

Forget 2020.

It's back to work, now with even fewer health protections and no meaningful

treatments for the brand new, highly transmissible airborne virus that

ravages your heart, neurological system, and immune system, and is still

spreading at pandemic levels, even today in 2025.

Jamie Cohen, a media studies professor at CUNY Queens College, told me, quote,

Biden rushed the end of the safety protocols in part because people started

to gain a sense of consciousness.

Biden and other elite leaders realized the collective power that the public had

in 2020, especially online.

People were realizing that we too could have the social safety net that many

other countries in the world benefit from. And it's a conscious choice by

people in power not to let us have it. People on the left and the right also

gained clarity about who was really in charge. and who controls those levers.

But while Biden could force people back to work in unsafe conditions, he

couldn't force them to be less online.

And by 2021, we were already seeing that there was no longer any distinction

between the offline and online worlds. The wall between the two was completely

obliterated. And nowhere was this more apparent than at the Capitol on January

6th, 2021.

As protesters stormed the building that day, they carried flags and wore t

-shirts emblazoned with memes like Pepe the Frog and the Kekistan flag, which

originated an extremist online subcultures. Reactionary influencers

live-streamed the insurrection as fans rewarded them with digital gifts and

money, depending on how far they made it into the building.

This convergence of internet culture and physical action signaled a new era where

internet-borne ideologies could precipitate real-world upheaval at

scale. The insurrection proved without a doubt that the Internet's influence

extended far beyond screens and could manifest intangible, often violent

actions. The event also marked a moment where a significant portion of the

populace began to perceive violence as a viable means to achieve political ends.

Surveys conducted around this period revealed that approximately 40% of

Republicans and 41% of independents believe that violence against the

government could be justified.

This idea that violence is the answer or that violence is necessary for political

change is not typical in a functioning democracy.

And this was back in 2021.

A Pew Research poll at the time showed that the American public's confidence in

the government had reached its lowest point in decades.

There was a widespread perception by late 2021 that our government was driven

almost wholly by self-interest. and corruption, leading to distrust in the

entire system.

Arielle Hassel, assistant professor of communication and media at the

University of Mission, conducted a study at the time that found that cynicism was

skyrocketing, and pretty much everyone was starting to see our political system

as a farce. This cynicism was being seen outside the political arena, too, in

things like the rise of meme stocks and the great GameStop pump around this

time. Online communities like the subreddit WallStreetBets were suddenly

bringing institutional stock market investors and trading apps like

Robinhood to their knees.

People, especially young people, began to see that every Everything could be

manipulated and nothing mattered. The entire idea of working a nine to five

for 40 years just to one day retire in a meager house before dying of lack of

health insurance seems like a scam when you could just make millions overnight

pumping AMC without ever even going to college.

The crypto boom throughout 2021 and 2022 exacerbated this nihilistic sentiment.

This period led to what was essentially a mass blackpilling, a term that denotes

a deep-seated cynicism and disillusionment with systemic

structures. This disillusionment manifested in various ways. Most people,

including most liberals and leftists even, retreated into full-on COVID

denial. Overwhelmed by the scale of public health challenges and apparent

indifference of leadership to mass death, they drank down right-wing

propaganda. Others vocalized their dissent, trying to explain that COVID

never ended. It didn't just go away.

The government just wants you to ignore it and to keep working. They only face

backlash and abuse.

This environment of gaslighting and suppression amplified people's feelings

of isolation.

By 2022, pressure built and people could feel that life was never going back to

normal. The ground had fundamentally shifted beneath them. Something felt off

and wrong.

It was different, but it was hard to pinpoint what. These feelings were

immortalized in the meme that year that became known as the vibe shift.

Denialism took hold, and this is when the memory holding of 2020 really

accelerated. People were pressured to rip off their masks, throw caution to

the wind, and stop caring about others.

The public dealt with their collective trauma through hedonistic nihilism and

deep narcissism. This was also reflected in a slew of memes that became popular

around that time, all of which prioritize centering yourself above

others. Pretty much everyone had main character syndrome, and there was this

heavy refocus on individualism.

The juxtaposition of mass death from unmitigated COVID spread and government

inaction, coupled with a seemingly rigged financial and political system,

fostered a sense of betrayal.

Nothing matters anymore, so you might as well enjoy life and alive your neighbor

by infecting them with a deadly disease.

Who cares about vulnerable people anymore?

Just get yours. Our entire

But while everyone was dancing their pain away in 2022, elites were

reclaiming their power. In October 2022, Elon Musk arrived at Twitter HQ in San

Francisco carrying a bathroom sink. In the first few months after taking over

the company, he rolled back DEI policies and allowed hordes of white supremacists

and extremists back onto his platform.

He revamped the algorithm to boost billionaires and downrank progressive

activists. He banned a slew of journalists, including... for reporting

critically on him and other tech leaders.

Far-right extremists that were previously marginalized were suddenly

waging successful comebacks by capitalizing on the manufactured

backlash to woke.

Alex Jones was replatformed in 2023 as influencers like Andrew Tate surged in

popularity. Billionaires like Musk were able to operate seemingly with impunity

and Democrats who were ostensibly in charge weren't doing anything about it.

By the summer of 2023, you could see this nihilism and anti-elite sentiment

creeping out all over the internet.

In June 2023, the implosion of the Ocean Gate Titan submarine piloted by

billionaire Stockton Rush on a vanity expedition to view the Titanic became an

immediate meme.

Within minutes of the news breaking, people were joking about imploding

billionaires all over TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram.

People posted with glee about, quote, natural selection.

They made playlists joking about it and posted lists of other billionaires they

hoped would take a submarine ride. People weren't openly calling for

billionaires to be executed yet, but they were certainly celebrating when

they died. I would argue that the submarine memes of 20 were the moment

that it became clear that millions of people online believed that maybe the

rich shouldn't make it out alive.

That same month, we saw people rally around orcas who inexplicably began

attacking and sinking yachts.

Memes and parody news sites joked about the orcas literally eating the rich.

By the end of that summer, Burning Man was engulfed in mud due to heavy

rainfall, and the entire internet once again began relishing in rich people's

suffering. The perceived irony of a gathering that championed radical self

-reliance yet attracted tech elites arriving in private jets and luxury RVs

was too much. The Schadenfreude wasn't just merely about the festival. It

reflected a broader societal disdain for the wealthy, particularly those seen as

out of touch or hypocritical.

Then October 7th happened.

Palestinians who had been oppressed, tortured, and ethnically cleansed by

Israel's apartheid regime for decades fought back.

Israel responded by committing a livestream genocide for the entire world

to see, slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent children, and committing

grave atrocities and war crimes. Israel murdered hundreds of journalists, bombed

schools and hospitals, and did it all in the open for anyone with internet access

to witness.

But that's not how the mainstream media reported it. Suddenly, U.S. airwaves

were flooded with pro-Israel propaganda.

Papers like the New York Times began pushing outright lies and easily

debunked hoaxes in an effort to manufacture consent for the war crimes

and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

College students and other people who spoke out against this were met with

extreme violence from the police.

Young students at Columbia University faced federal charges for peaceful

protests, and the government under Biden began cracking down aggressively on

speech. At the same time, RICO charges were being levied at protesters fighting

against Cop City in Atlanta, and people who spoke up about social justice were

fired from their jobs and blacklisted from industries.

It was a radicalizing moment on the internet. Suddenly, people could see

that our system is actually totally comfortable with violence, as long as

the violence is perpetuated against vulnerable and oppressed people. It's

only violence against powerful people that's punished.

Kyle Rittenhouse, for instance, was acquitted of all charges for shooting an

anti-fascist protester dead while peaceful college students were ending up

in jail.

Witnessing the most graphic and horrific war crimes in Palestine constantly via

their phones also normalized violence to the American public in a way that I

don't think it ever had been before.

I think finally people were able to see exactly how violent and hypocritical the

US empire is and how cavalier people in power are about that hypocrisy. You can

see these beliefs reflected in polls throughout 2023.

For instance, a 2023 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute

showed that about a quarter of US citizens agreed that Americans quote,

quote, may have to resort to violence in order to save our country. This was up

sharply from just 15% in 2021.

And I also just want to stress again how high both of these numbers are for a

country that's theoretically a democracy.

Like in normal democracies, you don't have these high numbers.

By 2024, a pervasive sense of disillusionment had taken hold. Joe

Biden's decision to seek reelection, despite widespread concerns about his

age and cognitive abilities, caused people to question whether our

democratic system was really working. His disastrous debate performance and

revelations about the Democratic Party's efforts to downplay his mental issues

only sowed more distress.

For most of 2024, it felt like we were a nation sleepwalking with no one at the

helm. When Trump was shot at a Pennsylvania rally in July of 2024,

blood wasn't even dry on his ear before it had become a meme. People bemoaned

the fact that he hadn't turned his head even slightly to the side, which would

have had deadly consequences.

The assassination attempt normalized discourse about Trump's death and fed

these overall nihilistic sentiments.

Later that summer, throughout Kamala Harris's campaign, the Democratic Party

further disenfranchised people by refusing to listen to voters' concerns

about Gaza, COVID, and more. In what became an infamous meme in August 2024,

Democratic delegates literally plugged their ears to drown out anti-genocide

protesters. It sent a clear message to the American public, we will not listen

to you and we do not care what you have to say.

People's growing disenfranchisement with the system extended to the electoral

process itself.

Polls at the time indicated that only 37% of Americans believed the 2024

elections would be both honest and open.

43% had serious doubts about our democracy.

These numbers reflect a significant decline in trust.

This skepticism was exacerbated by concerns over media transparency and the

manipulation of information.

By the end of 2024, a record number of people reported feeling powerless and

disillusioned. viewing our political system as irreparably broken and

unresponsive to their needs.

As the academic Jamie Cohen told me, quote, much like many authoritarian

countries, people realized America is a democracy in name only.

Then on December 4th, 2024, UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead in the

street. Within days, the police had apprehended Luigi Mangione as their

prime suspect.

Even before his arrest, the killing became a meme and millions rallied

behind Mangione's alleged actions.

The public and legal response to Mangione once again revealed the massive

disparity between how people in power treat different victims of violence.

Mangione currently faces federal and state charges, including murder and

terrorism. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the state would pursue

the death penalty.

Meanwhile, the week Mangione was arrested, Daniel Penny, a former white

Marine, was acquitted after choking Jordan Neely, a black homeless man

experiencing a mental health crisis on the subway, to death. As Cohen told me,

quote, it felt like there was no such thing as penalty any longer, unless

you're saying something that criticizes people in power or supports social

justice. Just a few months later, in February 2025, the US government

responded to the escalating Tesla takedown protests with severe

crackdowns, and officials began labeling acts of vandalism against Tesla cars as

domestic terrorism.

Trump warned that people who harmed Tesla cars could face up to 20 years in

prison, potentially serving sentences in El Salvador.

The FBI established a specialized task force to investigate incidents of Tesla

car attacks.

At the same time, innocent lawful residents of this country began getting

deported for thought crimes.

Chaotic tariff policies have plunged our economy into chaos. We have witnessed

the massive undue firing of federal workers and are experiencing

unprecedented crackdowns on speech.

All of these tensions reached a boiling point by March when the someone's got to

do it memes really started to become pervasive.

Post-endorsing political violence targeting Trump and to a lesser extent

Elon Musk have racked up tens of millions of likes.

These memes have become some of the most popular content online in recent months.

By early April, outlets the new york post were already bemoaning the rising

quote assassination culture on the left as if the right hasn't embraced the same

culture for years the network contagion research institute and rutgers

university's social perception lab recently issued a report about the rise

in pro-assassination content online the report found that 55 of left of center

internet users considered that of Trump somewhat justified, while 48% felt the

same about Elon Musk.

The report explained that these attitudes are not isolated and are part

of a broader political shift tied to feelings of powerlessness.

The researchers emphasized the need for proactive measures to counter this

trend. They begged institutions to reinforce norms and promote, quote,

constructive political dialogue.

But that ship has sailed. Asking the public to uphold norms while Trump

flouts due process on a near daily basis is a joke. But the one thing that I

actually do agree. with the NCRI on is that the spread of content promoting

political violence is a sign of a deeply, deeply unhealthy democratic

society. Don Caldwell, editor in chief of Know Your Meme, said that the reason

pro-assassination memes have become so popular is because they're cathartic,

especially when people feel powerless and there are events happening in the

world that are out of their control. People use these memes as a release.

Josh Cittarella, a researcher who studies extremism, told me that these

memes are exploding in popularity right now because, quote, the liberal project

has basically failed. People do not believe in a lawful and orderly society

anymore. The enormous accumulation of wealth and power by oligarchs

invalidates the rule of law.

The end result is that you can theoretically have executions in the

public square.

That's what we're going back to. People are advocating for these things on

social media because the rules don't matter anymore.

In a recent piece in The Nation titled The Age of the Assassination Meme is

Here, Alex Peter writes, quote, assassination discourse has become

ambient, not quite satire, not quite sedition, a feeling, a refusal to say

what you mean because meaning things can actually be dangerous.

And yet people do mean things.

The line between the person who's joking and the person who's serious has never

been thinner. At the heart of all of this is a kind of disassociation. It's

an inability to process the enormity of everything.

The climate is collapsing. Fascism is rising. Healthcare is a game show.

We're all screaming into the void.

Is it really so surprising that the language of internet memes and murder

has started to overlap?

Peter notes that the phrase, quote, when it happens has become both a threat and

a prayer. As Zitterella explained, COVID, Gaza and all the events over the

past few years have revealed just how many people's lives are truly

expendable. We see the government pushing the idea that poor,

immunocompromised, disabled and trans people are better off dead.

Tens of thousands of innocent children in Gaza are deemed expendable. These

memes are saying.

okay, if slaughtering people is deemed acceptable by the state, then why can't

we slaughter the people actually doing harm?

Citarella said, quote, I think there was an era of liberal society in which there

was a generally agreed upon value of the individual.

You would even grant your enemies certain imbued or alienable rights. As

much as people might have despised a certain person in power or whatever,

they would also kind of have this moral conviction that they would not root for

this person's bodily harm. The majority of people supported more discursive

political means. like voting and peaceful protests.

But I don't think that's the consensus anymore.

I think we're sitting on top of a pressure cooker.

Advocating for political assassinations is the most clear sign that millions of

people no longer have hope in our system. If there was any sort of legible

or coherent plan by people in power to improve things for average people and

hold those like Trump and Elon to account, the public would have faith

that someone, anyone, was steering the ship. But because there's no plan and no

one in power, especially, especially the Democrats, seem to want to save us,

people are seeking extreme solutions.

And I just want to point out once again that the right has long embraced this

style of extreme rhetoric.

They've openly supported violent vigilante justice for years by turning

figures like Kyle Rittenhouse and Derek Chauvin into right-wing heroes,

rewarding them with an endless stream of money and media opportunities.

And to give you a few more examples, in 2019, Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a

Facebook video accusing Nancy Pelosi of treason and saying that she had

committed crimes punishable by death. Greene has advocated for the execution

of prominent Democrats, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, as well as FBI

agents. Lauren Boebert and other Republican members of Congress flaunt

guns openly and call for violence against migrants.

In 2020, Donald Trump Jr.

posted a photo on Instagram holding an AR-15 rifle adorned with crusader

imagery and the phrase Do Vault, a slogan associated with the medieval

crusades that has been adopted by violent far-right extremist groups.

Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, the architect of

Project 2025, basically said that the United States is undergoing a second

American revolution that might not be bloodless.

Matt Shea, a former Republican Washington state representative,

distributed a manifesto that advocated for the killing of all non-Christian

males who refuse to follow biblical law.

Republicans frequently speak about executing migrants, undocumented

immigrants, disabled and trans people, and others who they feel are

undesirable. For instance, in 2024, Republican Congressman Mike Collins

tweeted about Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's practice of executing

political opponents by throwing them from helicopters.

He suggested killing a migrant arrested in New York by giving them, quote, a

free helicopter ride.

As the 2024 article in The Nation notes, quote, the state isn't anti-violence,

it's anti-unsanctioned violence.

Murder is only inappropriate if it happens in the wrong direction.

Hence the rise of assassination memes.

Jamie Cohen, the academic said, quote, Gen Z especially feels powerless in this

system and they're posting this content because it's their way of expressing

their emotions and feelings about not having power.

There's a collective nihilism online right now and these memes show people

aren't alone in those thoughts.

These memes may feel glib, but they exist within a framework of real

political breakdown.

They're a symptom of a profoundly sick society, but it's not sick in the way

that most people would think.

In my opinion, it's not sick that people want to unalive Trump and the

billionaires who are responsible for so much suffering.

It's sick that people in power have normalized such obscene levels of

systemic violence, especially against marginalized groups.

The someone's got to do it memes also show how inadequate traditional

political language is in describing what we're all going through right now. The

ways that people, especially young people, express themselves online by

being ambiguous, sarcastic, and kind of ironic are actually adaptive behaviors.

People are trying to articulate the outrage and desperation that they feel

at a time when too much directness will get you punished.

That's why all these memes allow for a certain level of plausible deniability.

This is also part of why attempts to suppress these types of memes, whether

from the left or the right, tend to backfire. Treating them like traditional

criminal threats rather than cultural signals misdiagnoses the root problem.

It escalates distrust and it reinforces the perception that the system doesn't

actually fear violence, it simply won't tolerate dissent. And I'd argue that the

more expressions like this are punished, the more they're validated in the eyes

of those who share the public's underlying frustrations.

But what I hope I've shown you in this video is that the someone needs to do it

meme is not just about venting frustration.

It's a cultural phenomenon shaped by years of policy failure, betrayal, and

institutional decay.

It represents a widespread recognition that no meaningful change is coming from

traditional political structures, especially the Democratic Party, and

that basic terms of our social contract have eroded beyond repair.

But if we want this energy to lead anywhere productive, we have to do more

than just analyze the meme's popularity.

We have to confront the larger question of what now?

What should we actually do if nothing's changing?

To answer that, we need to talk about the erosion of collective memory.

One of the most significant political projects of the last four years has been

the campaign to make us forget 2020.

Forget the mutual aid. Forget the federal eviction moratorium.

Forget the expanded unemployment benefits.

Forget the free child care. forget the brief glimpse we had of a government

responding to people's needs instead of corporate profits.

Forget the spontaneous uprisings. Forget the decentralized care networks.

Forget the sense that ordinary people were capable of extraordinary

coordination, compassion, and solidarity.

This revisionist erasure is essential to ushering in fascism, because if people

remembered what was possible, they might demand it again.

Instead, we've been fed a steady diet of manufactured moral panic controversies

false normalcy, and an intentional abandonment of public health and labor

protections. The goal was never just to end pandemic safety measures.

It was to obliterate the idea that a different kind of society had ever been

glimpsed. But not everyone forgot, and that's part of why we're seeing the

language of frustration grow sharper, darker, and harder to police.

These memes are vague and ironic, but the emotion behind them is grief mixed

with clarity.

People see that the institutions meant to protect won't. And the politicians

meant to represent us don't. I see these memes as collective outrage begging for

structure. This brings us to the ultimate challenge.

How do we transform this bubbling outrage into systems that can survive

and resist the slow collapse that we're all living through? This is not

something we can vote our way out of. Both political parties have shown their

willingness to align with fascism, ignore genocide, and abandon the

disabled to mass death.

No amount of messaging or getting out the vote will realign a system that

views basic survival as a partisan issue.

Instead, we have to rebuild what was briefly visible in 2020, community care,

mutual aid, and horizontally.

organized support systems that bypass state structures and center vulnerable

people. And while organizing things like a food drive or Venmoing a friend for

groceries is really, really great, what we need most is to design durable, long

-term frameworks for collective survival.

This means infrastructure, supply chains, legal defense networks, tenant

unions, recentering public health. And it means doing all of this while also

being honest about the scale of collapse that we're facing.

To do any of this, we have to undo the propaganda that told us that

individualism is the rational response to state collapse.

This means undoing years of propaganda claiming things like masking is a

personal choice and not collective care, that solidarity is weakness.

or that we need to sacrifice vulnerable groups so the rest of us can live in

normalcy. This means refusing to normalize mass death, whether it's here

or abroad.

And it means refusing to throw trans and other vulnerable people under the bus

just because a politician told you that that's the price of winning. We're

running out of time to do this stuff. If we don't want to wake up in a fully

authoritarian state, we have to stop waiting for top-down reform.

If we let these memes and moments pass by without building on them, I think

we're going to end up in a really bleak place.

We're going to witness... usually happens when authoritarianism and

oligarchs take power most people will accept a slow decline they'll retreat

further into individualism and focus on caring for their immediate family over

others and exit the political arena entirely authoritarianism rarely takes

control through force it's usually just through resignation but these memes show

how many people do still care They prove that there is a desire for change, even

if it hasn't yet found form. And as we build the structure and strategy, we

need to recognize that the most subversive thing we can do right now is

protect each other, because obviously no one in power will.

Someone does need to do it. Not the thing that the meme implies, but the

thing that no one wants to admit is necessary.

Building something new outside the system with each other.

Thanks for watching. Let me know what you think in the comments. And don't

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