US President Joe Biden speaks after signing a proclamation designating November 17 as International … [+]
AFP via Getty Images
A video supposedly showing current U.S. President Joe Biden wandering off into the rainforest just went viral and launched a whole new meme trend.
Biden’s visit is the first time a sitting U.S. President has visited Brazil’s Amazon rainforest and although he was there to talk about climate change, the thing that has captured the internet’s imagination were his actions after giving a speech, where he seemingly meandered into the woodland.
Check out the short video here:
This video spread like wildfire across the internet, birthing the Joe Biden rainforest memes. Yet, what’s shown in this trend isn’t the full story at all. Despite appearances, Biden’s actually following a path, rather than walking into the Amazon.
This event and the birth of the Joe Biden rainforest memes is especially interesting as it shows us the impact online jokes can have on society and the very notion of truth. First though…
What Happened With The Joe Biden Rainforest Memes?
At the end of a speech in Brazil, Joe Biden turns away from the pulpit and, for all intents and purposes, appears to wander off into the woodland. This bizarre and strange action led to the creation the Joe Biden rainforest memes.
Currently, this trend has tens of millions of views and interactions across social media platforms like Twitter/X and TikTok. While there are a large array of posts, there are some shared themes across many, some of which we’ll look at now.
Among the first Joe Biden rainforest memes to take off were ones commentating directly on the action of the U.S. President, such as this:
The next step in the Joe Biden rainforest memes was tying more current affairs into the meme. This post, for example, combines him stepping down as the Democrat presidential nominee with a surreal image of him returning to nature:
Other trends within the Joe Biden rainforest memes involved references to pop culture. This would either be comparing him to a specific event in a TV show or movie, or tying his actions in a broader sense to the entertainment world. Like this:
The final big trend in the Joe Biden rainforest memes are what we’d refer to as “relatable” content. This is when the post creates a direct comparison between the video we’re watching and something that might occur in our actual lives:
What Do The Joe Biden Rainforest Memes Mean?
To begin with, we need to return to the important truth at the heart of the Joe Biden rainforest memes: they’re perpetuating an untruth.
Despite it looking like the sitting U.S. President is meandering off into the Amazon and ignoring a path, fact-checkers at Snopes pointed out that other videos from the broadcast showed Biden and other people using the same route.
In other words, the Joe Biden rainforest memes are a misunderstanding based on the camera angle. The path Biden uses is merely hidden from our perspective.
Yet this trend has reached a wide audience. The first video shared in this piece, which was posted by Pop Base, has over 61 million views at the time of writing. Many of the other posts about the Joe Biden rainforest memes also have views in the millions.
The memes, then, are playing a huge rule in spreading misinformation — and this is important to consider.
When many people think of “fake news” or misinformation, the first thing that comes to mind is biased reporting. In other words, the idea of publications writing articles that obscure what actually happened for political gain.
Memes feel different though. Because they’re inherently silly and made to provoke a laugh, many people don’t put the same level of scepticism into things like the Joe Biden rainforest memes as they do an article from The New York Times, as an example.
Instead, they see a funny video, assume its validity doesn’t really matter, and then subconsciously take onboard the message. In this case, the view of Biden as clueless and disengaged.
The sitting U.S. President has many well-reported instances of strange behavior, such as getting other politicians’ names wrong or standing on stage in silence, that something like the Joe Biden rainforest meme seems completely believable in that context.
This is where the format can become dangerous.
In a world where 20% of Americans get their news from social media influencers, memes have a huge impact on how people view current events, whether they realize it or not.
While the Joe Biden rainforest memes are now broadly harmless as the U.S. election has come to a close, it serves as an example of how millions of people can be exposed to something that alters their perception of an event or individual — even if that turns out to be untrue.
The issue is that memes are here to stay. As long as people have access to the internet, they’ll be absorbing the format. The key is convincing people that trends like the Joe Biden rainforest memes are as influential as news articles when it comes to forming opinions.
On the surface, the video of the sitting U.S. President seemingly meandering into the Amazon is funny, but such things can have a far deeper impact than we may realize. Yes, memes are amusing, but they’re so much more.
