The Pepe the Frog meme rose to popularity in the 2000s, initially lifted from a webcomic and often used with a lighthearted caption saying, “feels good man.” By 2016, it had morphed to carry a starkly different connotation, better associated with the American alt-right movement and white nationalism.
The constantly evolving meme-dominated internet culture and tense political climate has beckoned new challenges for cartoonists and comics alike. At the 2025 International Symposium on Online Journalism on Thursday, March 27, journalists and satirists explored the landscape of political humor on the panel “Political Satire for the digital era: From animated cartoons to memes.”
“I’m all for humor for humor’s sake, but what’s really drawn me to (satire) is that (you’re) actually saying something,” said Mark Fiore, a visual journalist and JSK journalism fellow at Stanford University. “It’s more than just a silly joke.”
Alongside Ramon Ramirez, panel moderator and managing editor at “The Daily Dot,” which covers internet culture, Fiore began the discussion by reflecting on his career and the value of conveying serious messages through humor. He shared original cartoons and animations, which poked at political hot topics such as Israel-U.S. relations, wokeism and the current White House administration.
“Whether it's animating cartoons, traditional single panel cartoons, memes or written satire, one of the superpowers (of satire) is that it can help (take down) people’s walls,” Fiore said. “You have to be able to laugh and find the hypocrisy in some of these things.”
Sarah Pappalardo, co-founder of satirical women’s magazine Reductress, said she first realized meme culture was changing with the rise of the “Chad” meme, which portrays an alpha male and became popular within right-wing message boards. She said meme culture felt substantially liberal in the 2010s, but once the “Chad” became widely used, she noticed a shift.
“Memes can be quite dangerous in the way they come from a place with a very particular ideology and filter into the mainstream,” Pappalardo said.
However, Fiore made the distinction that memes don’t always equal satire.
“Satire for me is seeing that absurdity that exists in reality and pushing it a little farther,” Fiore said. “It’s almost like showing people what the future could be.”
Paul Alonso, a former journalist and an associate professor at Georgia Tech, has researched political satire in the Americas. He defined satire as “a humorous verbal attack on human folly,” especially during a time with heightened political tensions. However, he acknowledged the broad nature of satire, especially within changing contexts.
“One of the things I find in all my research is that the best satire has usually come after traumatic historical periods,” Alonso said. “Satire has been a thermometer of democracy.”
Fiore said the new administration has made the business side of content creation more difficult, in addition to changes to the Facebook algorithm, which shifted away from being politically centric. Due to these changing algorithms, Ramirez said “The Daily Dot” fell from 31 million Facebook clicks to a mere 100,000 in two years.
Addressing the current trend of white men dominating meme culture, Alonso noted the importance of the “punching up” quality of satire– a confrontation of power and the status quo. He said conservative public figures’ use of memes to support their ideologies leans more toward appropriation than satire.
Fiore chimed in with support, saying of right-wing meme culture and the current administration's use of humor to backpedal on controversial statements, “It’s not satire, it’s more of a wink.”
While she believes that right-wing memes rarely reflect reality, Pappalardo said she doesn’t see them as a threat.
“It’s important to show on the historical record what we disagreed with on a fundamental level,” Pappalardo said. “I don’t think right-wing memes, as long as we’re not including actual hate speech, are dangerous.”
Two out of three professional satirists didn’t feel too worried about the future of their profession in the face of a new administration and cultural climate. However, Ramirez took a much more pessimistic view. He said President Trump killed satire because instead of condemning it, he participates in it.
“It has become a lot more difficult to punch up,” Ramirez said, “because the right is so happy punching down.”
* Analise Pickerrell is a journalism student at the University of Texas at Austin minoring in studio art. She has worked as a reporter, editor and illustrator, using her passion for both written and visual communication to tell thoughtful and creative stories.
