The Fly With its Own Twitter Account

Memes have become an inevitable part of Presidential debates, Vice presidential debates, and politics entirely. Very recently, “the fly” that landed on Vice President Mike Pence’s head during the 2020 Vice Presidential debate caused a flood of memes across social media and eventually taking over mainstream media almost instantly. (1) Before the debate on October 7th, 2020, concluded, the fly that landed on Vice President Mike Pence’s head was trending on Twitter with more than 400,000 tweets writing about the now-famous fly. No, quite literally, the fly is famous; Twitter @MikePenceFly___ has over 120,000 followers and revived endless mainstream media coverage on channels including The New York Times, CNN, BBC, The Guardian, and more. So how did we get to a place where a fly landing on the Vice President’s head for two minutes is the highlight of the debate?

I claim this is due in part to the rise in internet memes and political memes. The term ‘meme’ comes from the book, The Selfish Gene, written in 1979 by Richard Dawkins. He acknowledges that substantially human behavior derives not from genes but society and culture. Coining the term ‘meme’ referring to any nongenetic action be labeled as a meme. While in 2020, we know the meme as “An Internet meme,” which “is defined as a piece of culture, typically a joke, which gains influence through online transmission”(2).

Internet memes or the fly, in this case, entirely incidentally re-shaped political discourse around the debate. Which as internet meme history would show, accidental situations unplanned by politicians are primarily the most vulnerable to meme culture. As Nathan Jurgenson wrote in his article Speaking in Memes, “campaigns can’t plan memes. Instead, the campaigns can merely react to them. (3)” When a politician or person in power such as a politician tries to create a meme, it doesn’t gain traction from most of the internet. For example, during the two 2020 Presidential debates and the 2020 Vice Presidential debate, the candidates try to capture strong ‘one-liners’ or use them to promote their campaign’s social media platforms later on. These ‘one-liners sometimes get posted by major news networks and some American citizens but never turned into a meme as we would define it.

For something to be a meme, it needs to be reproduced by many people and malleable. When defining a meme, it’s essential to understand the difference between a piece of media being altered by individuals (usually) for humor-like purposes and becoming a meme versus a viral story or virality of media. A classmate of mine mentioned an example of virality that may be somewhat gruesome but also valid would be; Logan Paul’s disturbing viral video posted vlogging his trip to Aokigahara, otherwise known as the suicide forest. Logan Paul, a famous YouTuber and internet social media star, recorded a video of humans who had committed suicide. This story went viral due to his use of human exploitation and didn’t get recreated or adapted further used as a comedic tool. Comparatively, the fly on Mike Pence’s Vice Presidential went viral as a meme because it was adapted numerous times with countless comedic takes on the situation that became a meme.

Political internet memes have become very popular following Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates leading up to the national election every four years. In 2020 there is a lot of mistrust and doubt from American citizens on the current election process and generally in politics and society. “This memeified election thus marks a clash between exemplars of the top-down and the bottom-up: a Presidential race filled with official campaign releases and big-media discourse vs. social media. (3)” Giving American citizens who feel discouraged by the voting system and political system to express themselves is something the memeified election throughout social media has done well. When people post a meme or interact with a political meme, it shows their thoughts and ideas on the given political situation, authentically originates, and does not originate from the news media, the source of most political opinions previous to the digital age of the internet.

Therefore, the fly that landed on Mike Pence’s head for two minutes that became the star of the show at the 2020 Vice-Presidential debate was an outlet for Americans to push their thoughts into political discourse in a nation where the average voter feels insignificant.

1. Williams, Michelle. “The fly trends on Twitter after landing on Vice President Mike Pence during debate.” Mass Live, October 7th, 2020, https://www.masslive.com/politics/2020/10/the-fly-trends-on-twitter-after-landing-on-vice-president-mike-pence-during-debate.html.

2. Mandiberg, Michael, editor. Social Media Reader. New York University Press, 2012.

3. Jurgenson, Nathan. “Speaking in Memes.” The New Inquiry, October 21st, 2012, https://thenewinquiry.com/speaking-in-memes/