"Meme Magic" is a slang term used to describe the hypothetical power of sorcery supposedly derived from certain internet memes that can transcend the realm of cyberspace and result in real life consequences. Some have compared it to the occult concept of the egregore, an autonomous psychic entity which influences the thoughts of a group of people. 

 What is a Meme?

An Internet Meme is an activity, concept, catchphrase or piece of media that gains popularity and spreads rapidly via the Internet. The meme is often helped along by social networking sites and blogs that post and repost popular memes and, in doing so, reinforce the popularity and power of the memes.

The majority of modern memes are captioned photos that are intended to be funny, often as a way to publicly ridicule human behavior. Other memes can be videos and verbal expressions. Some memes have heavier and more philosophical content, while others are designed to incite disharmony and distrust. The world of memes is a worldwide social phenomenon and memes behave like a plague of anger and hate traveling from person to person quickly through social media, regardless of their veracity.

 "Not even the most heavily-armed police state can exert brute force to all of its citizens all of the time. Meme management is so much subtler; the rose-tinted refraction of perceived reality, the contagious fear of threatening alternatives."

 Peter Watts

 The Meme As Propaganda

Memes are a modern type of information warfare and psychological warfare involving the propagation of memes on social media through Platform Weaponization.

Disinformation campaigns existed before the age of the internet. As early as 1923, Russia had an office dedicated to the spread of “disinformation,” a term coined by Joseph Stalin to describe false information carefully constructed with the intention to deceive. Disinformation is a powerful political tool that has been used offline and online to impact discourse surrounding major societal issues.  

But the concept of the meme has transcended the initial conception and entered the virtual realm, where memes know no bounds. Internet memes are permutations of text, images and video that can proliferate rapidly online. 

Meme wars seem to favor insurgencies because, by their nature, they weaken monopolies on narrative and empower challenges to centralized authority. A government could use memes to increase disorder within a system, but if the goal is to increase stability, it's the wrong tool for the job. 

"“They called themselves the Meme Squad,
which was so cringeworthy that I wished I hadn’t heard it;
their motto was ‘ignorance is strength’.”

 Alexander Wales, Worth the Candle 

Meme propaganda is different from propaganda used in the past. Historically, propaganda was used as a way to change people’s way of thinking. Memes don’t necessarily do the same. They tend to shift the focus of public discussion, They tend to change how we process information, and they tend to change our behavior even if they don't change what we actually think.”

Memes appear to function like the IEDs of information warfare. They are natural tools of an insurgency; great for blowing things up, but likely to sabotage the desired effects when handled by the larger actor in an asymmetric conflict. The fact that a widely shared meme has deliberate falsehoods is hardly surprising. Memes, especially ones with a political or social justice agenda, are often shared precisely because the falsehood is designed to generate outrage and often violence. 

Many Facebook users seem to make it their life’s work to circulate political memes in hopes of influencing how you see the world.  They are agents of chaos, champions of nothing in particular. And through the power of mass disemination, even their most twisted ideas may gain an audience. By typing some text on an image and sharing it online, they too have the power to generate chaos and incite mayhem.