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Memes that Brazilians are sharing about the Olympics

By Juliano Andrade Spyer, on 16 August 2016

One of the stars of the Olympic games in Rio has been the crowd itself. The liveliness of the crowd has attracted the attention of the foreign press (NYTimes, BBC), and particularly of athletes and their coaches. My personal favourite case has been how football fans yelled in chorus “zika” every time the US goalkeeper touched the ball during matches (learn why).

A lot could be said about Brazil and Brazilians based on these reactions so the point of the post is to show what low income Brazilians are sharing on social media in relation to the Olympics. This type of reaction can be considered as a form of long distance virtual cheering (or booing).

I will add the images below with translations and brief comments.

editado WhatsApp Image 2016-08-11 at 17.36.15

Sex is perhaps the subject I have written more often about in this blog so I guess it is not a coincidence that the image below is the meme I received more times from informants. The text at the bottom says: “Never complain again of when your sandals break.” (I added a patch to make it “decent” for all possible audiences, but I am sure the idea is clear.)

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Violence and crime are also dealt with through humour. Above the title says: “ornamental assault”.

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Above: “The violence is so great in Brazil that our first medal was on shooting.”

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There are some criticism about the idealization of the country. Above, the Brazilian replies: “You should come live here, then.”

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There is humour about Brazilians, as in the banner above made to persuade Brazilian players to give their best: “Play like we drink.” The slogan at the top says: “The best about Brazil are the Brazilians.”

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And at last but not at least, there is football. Some commentators say that the problem with the Brazilian crowd is that they behave as football fans in every sport modality. And I guess if Brazil only won a gold medal in (men’s) football, every other outcome would seem OK. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen, as the meme above shows, referring to star player Neymar: “Football lesson”.

Self-Deprication

By ucsanha, on 23 March 2015

sperm meme

I recently wrote about the ways that northern Chileans express normativity on social media, using Kermit the Frog and contrasts between “Expected” and “Reality” memes as examples. But perhaps what demonstrates a desire for normativity even further is the way many individuals in Alto Hospicio express self-deprecation.

Much like the contrasts between expectation and reality, self-deprecation memes work to set up a contrast between idealized subjects and normativity. They may present an example of ambition, success, or a luxury lifestyle, yet do so through a frame of exaggeration. They then place themselves as a representative of normality, which contrasts with the ridiculousness of the exaggeration. In doing so, the humorous context allows them to adhere to normativity in an active sense. Rather that it being an implicit contrast to ambition, normativity is actively cultivated as an important value.

The photo above is just one example of self-deprecation in which the sperm that fertilizes the egg somehow outruns those that could have produced exceptional offspring: a Nobel Prize winner, a president, a movie star. “Me” is contrasted with these exceptional possibilities and is thus assumed to represent the ultimate ordinary possibility.

Other forms of self-deprecation involve references to the imperfect body (“A man without a belly is like a sky without stars”), academic credentials (A cemetery headstone engraved with “Here lie my ambitions to study), or material possessions (A picture of a rusty broken down car overlaid with the words “What do you say if I try to seduce you in my car tonight?”). These examples present the person who posts them as representative of the ordinary person who doesn’t live up to ideals that are considered to be out of reach. Instead they frame these more ideal forms as ridiculous through distancing. Sometimes they even explicitly spell out the benefits of normativity. One popular meme reminds readers that “Being ugly and poor has its advantages, when someone falls in love with you, they do it from the heart.” Again the poster of the meme positions them as ugly and poor, yet expresses happiness because this verifies the authenticity of relationships. Being ordinary means one doesn’t have to worry about being liked only for superficial reasons.

Self-deprecating humor is especially important, because it allows divergent self-representations to surface in ways that may be more accessible (both to the person who expresses the sentiment as well as to their audience) than literal expressions of ambition. Self-deprecating humor allows for play without alienating the audience because that which is outside of normativity is presented in a nonthreatening way (Ritchie 2005:288). In the context of normativity in Alto Hospicio, joking is a safe, and obviously popular way for people to express things that might not be acceptable otherwise.

References:

David Ritchie “Frame-Shifting in Humor and Irony” Metaphor and Symbol 20 no. 4 (2005):275-294.

 

Englishness, the World Cup and the Glades

By Daniel Miller, on 27 June 2014

Football fandom in the Glades, images by Daniel Miller

Football fandom in the Glades. Images by Daniel Miller

Viewing the world cup from the perspective of  a relatively homogeneous English site, The Glades, a dual village with a total population of 24,000, North of London, seems to bring out the ‘Englishness’ of this site compared to others around the globe.

At the time of writing England are already out of the World Cup, and most of the overheard conversation is about failure. England is ranked below the two teams, Italy and Uruguay, that beat them. Most experts felt they played quite well. So the results are pretty much in accordance with expectations. But this is not how things are seen here. Social bonding seems most effective when everyone agrees that England are ‘rubbish’. The humour on social media is typically self-deprecating, for example, a picture of the tour bus on sale with signs such as ‘only used twice’.

On social media we looked at all posting on 30 Instagram, 40 Twitter and 65 Facebook accounts during one week. This provided very clear support for my earlier claim that Facebook is no longer a peer to peer media for youth but has migrated to older people. Of the forty teenage Facebook profiles only one person used it for extensive football comment and this was because all his Twitter posts were set to also show on Facebook. Two others made a single relevant posting, one posted twice and that was it. World Cup references are more common for older users of Facebook with two people posting 11 times and one six times.

Instagram is only used to post ones own photos so the World Cup was not relevant. The core to young peoples posting today is Twitter. Of forty teenage sites, of those who posted during this week there were 5 males who posted frequent comments throughout the week. 11 males made just a few comments often around 3 to 5 while only 1 male made no comments at all. Of the females none posted extensively, half posted a few and half posted no world cup related tweets. Males tend to post either exclamations at events, general comments such as: ‘Why were Uruguay and Italy so poor against Costa Rica?’ Also popular is humour or critical remarks, such as:

‘I don’t get all the people that say England are good, we are shit, you just don’t want to admit it… when was the last time we won anything?’

‘Any coincidence that nations who sing their anthems with pride and feeling put in spirited performances, rather than our pathetic effort?’

Humour, as well as being self-deprecating, is often sarcastic, such as:

‘”BREAKING – Steven Gerrard to retire from international football after the World Cup” what a shame.’

Females add a gendered perspective, with posting such as: ‘why are all the Uruguay player’s shirts so so so tight? lol’, or cute pictures of the Brazilian player Oscar. If they comment on the football itself it may be apologetically such as ‘Uhh ohhhhh!! trust it to be Suarez (like i actually know what i’m talking about)’. Only those who comment extensively tend to mention games other than those played by England, or if they have connections such as family in Portugal and therefore support that team.

As well as self-deprecation the English qualities of modesty and reticence are much in evidence. There is relatively little public display. Across the two villages only 3 shops had extensive world cup influenced windows (see photos), 3 more had minimal and around 80 had none. Apart from an electrician, it was either the most traditional English butcher and pub or ethnic minority restaurants (Indian or Chinese) that had displays. There was only one example of commercial exploitation, a supermarket that had a selection called ‘tastes of the world cup’ with Brazilian watermelon Ivory Coast cocoa etc. Less than 1% of homes or cars displayed flags.

Going to pubs during the games when England were not playing one rarely saw more than 3 or 4 people that looked like they might have come especially to watch that game. During the England game one pub was crowded with 140 people another less than half that. The atmosphere was subdued. Apart from the collective shouting and celebration when the English goal was scored, there were no instances of people making remarks loud enough for anyone to hear other than their own companions.

THE WORLD CUP ON SOCIAL MEDIA WORLDWIDE
This article is part of a special series of blog posts profiling how social media is affecting how ordinary people from communities across the planet experience the 2014 World Cup.