The Memes Made Us Do It

About this episode

Cy and Virginia discuss internet culture and the evolution of memes with filmmaker Giorgio Angelini.

You’re listening to Omnishambles! A free weekly podcast just for you. Subscribe now! This week, Cy and Virginia talk with Giorgio Angelini , award-winning filmmaker and architectural designer whose documentaries have a way of making you feel like you’ve been staring into the abyss, and then somehow leaving you with a little hope anyway. Angelini is the director and producer of OWNED: A Tale of Two Americas , which traced how postwar housing policy divided the country along racial lines; producer of Feels Good Man , the Sundance-celebrated documentary about cartoonist Matt Fury and the slow-motion alt-right hijacking of his beloved Pepe the Frog; and co-director of The Anti-Social Network , his 2024 deep dive into the platform machinery that birthed QAnon, Pizzagate, and the January 6th insurrection. He also scored the video game Red Dead Redemption , which is both extremely cool and, as you’ll hear, kind of relevant. We discuss: * How Pepe the Frog went from a lovable indie comic character to a designated hate symbol, and what his trajectory tells us about how meaning gets made (and stolen) on the internet * The Epstein files and their surprising intersections with 4chan, hacker…

People in this episode

Hosts: Virginia Heffernan, Cy Canterel

Guest: Giorgio Angelini

Topics covered

• internet culture
• memes
• documentary filmmaking
• racial division
• hacker culture
• nihilism

Keywords

• Pepe the Frog
• meme magic
• 4chan
• QAnon
• Pizzagate
• Epstein files
• nihilism
• documentary

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Red Dead Redemption

Books & works: OWNED: A Tale of Two Americas, Feels Good Man, The Anti-Social Network

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