But it really is a post-hoc rationalization for having lost the election.
Just like the racist version of the pepe frog meme, and all of its subsequent variants were a form of Streisand effect, for having claimed as much. There wasn't much in the way of attachment for those particular memes, until the bumbling claim was made that they were being deployed in earnest as weapons, which hadn't been the case until after the claim was made.
This process has been accelerating, with more absurdities and meaningless drivel being bastardized ironically, until intolerable, at which point the symbolism is galvanized, post-hoc, as a matador for emotional outrage. At which point it gets discarded, and new absurdities find frolic.
That is, until the lowest common denominator is clued in that absurdity has resumed somewhere on the internet, and efforts are organized to fabricate outrage at its use.
Just like the racist version of the pepe frog meme, and all of its subsequent variants were a form of Streisand effect, for having claimed as much. There wasn't much in the way of attachment for those particular memes, until the bumbling claim was made that they were being deployed in earnest as weapons, which hadn't been the case until after the claim was made.
This process has been accelerating, with more absurdities and meaningless drivel being bastardized ironically, until intolerable, at which point the symbolism is galvanized, post-hoc, as a matador for emotional outrage. At which point it gets discarded, and new absurdities find frolic.
That is, until the lowest common denominator is clued in that absurdity has resumed somewhere on the internet, and efforts are organized to fabricate outrage at its use.