Zahra Gor­don

A mere three hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney had been sacked on Thurs­day night, In­ter­net memes about the sack­ing sur­faced on so­cial net­work­ing sites such as Face­book, YouTube and Twit­ter. An in­ter­net meme is usu­al­ly an im­age, video, phrase or sim­ply an idea that spreads from one per­son to an­oth­er seem­ing­ly for no log­i­cal rea­son at all. The video Fired Kam­la Style, for ex­am­ple, a play on the vi­ral Gangam Style song by South Ko­re­an rap­per PSY, quick­ly gar­nered a few hun­dred views. Trinida­di­ans are no strangers to Face­book (or memes); an­thro­pol­o­gist Daniel Miller wrote an en­tire book about the many unique ways the Web site is used in Trinidad main­ly as "Fass­book." He cit­ed some stud­ies that sug­gest­ed Trinidad was sec­ond in the world af­ter Pana­ma in pro­por­tion of Face­book users to per­sons with In­ter­net ac­cess. On Face­book and Twit­ter, pho­tos of the PM danc­ing Gangam Style while T&T burns in the back­ground and Fall Out guy posters re­placed with Vol­ney's face gath­ered hun­dreds of likes and shares. These memes were not un­like those that ap­peared short­ly af­ter for­mer am­bas­sador Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis' con­tro­ver­sial speech in Gene­va. One of the most pop­u­lar of those was a lo­cal ver­sion of the Hitler dis­cov­ers video se­ries. Af­ter footage of a po­lice of­fi­cer slap­ping some­one at In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions, the Bat­man and Robin meme ap­peared (pic­tured here).

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and colum­nist Mark Lyn­der­say said al­though Trinida­di­ans go to Face­book first for every­thing, he doesn't be­lieve memes about lo­cal is­sues are any more cre­ative than those made in oth­er parts of the world. "Many of the more pop­u­lar ones make use of com­mon­ly avail­able ma­te­r­i­al, like the Hitler video and meme gen­er­a­tors and an­i­mat­ed ma­chin­i­ma that reads text files, a re­cent ad­di­tion to the process that huge­ly lu­bri­cates the dif­fi­cul­ty of mak­ing fun of ex­ec­u­tive and po­lit­i­cal stu­pid­i­ty," he said via e-mail. He ad­mits, how­ev­er, "it's un­de­ni­able that we put a par­tic­u­lar­ly Tri­ni spin on these things." He ex­plained that the shar­ing of in­for­ma­tion in a hu­mor­ous for­mat is noth­ing new. "Many of these jokes and wit­ti­cisms trav­elled via e-mail for years, but they tend to ap­pear on the pop­u­lar so­cial net­work first be­cause that's where the largest mass of lo­cals can be found quick­ly and the sys­tem is set up to share pop­u­lar ma­te­r­i­al quick­ly. Of late, Face­book's streams have tend­ed to favour im­ages over text if you want an idea shared quick­ly and we've been quick to pick up on that."

One of the most pop­u­lar lo­cal meme cre­ators is the Face­book page Wa Chub­ble is Dis? Cre­at­ed in march of last year the page has more than 116,000 fans and posts near­ly 15 im­ages or videos a day that deal with both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues. The page own­ers could not be reached for com­ment. How­ev­er, Lyn­der­say not­ed that while memes are in vogue, some of the com­men­tary is un­der­de­vel­oped. "I think that we're still com­ing to terms with what's pos­si­ble us­ing these tools. Most of the ma­te­r­i­al I see is pret­ty coarse and un­sub­tle, but there are some new­er things show­ing up that are re­al­ly fun­ny and point to a dif­fer­ent and dis­tinct­ly Tri­ni di­rec­tion for web memes. The more ab­surd the sit­u­a­tion, the more en­er­gised peo­ple are to com­ment on it with wit." One lo­cal meme cre­ator, who pre­ferred not to be named, said he does them for fun and as a form of ex­pres­sion. "You can ex­press your­self bet­ter on­line. It's a di­ary, a so­cial net­work­ing tool, a vent, an aid, a way to say what peo­ple can't say in per­son, in the home or else­where. Tech­nol­o­gy has changed the way peo­ple live, ex­press them­selves and re­late to oth­ers and Face­book has and is play­ing a ma­jor role in that. One post and every­one in your friends list can see and re­spond to what you're think­ing."