Memes, tweets and an entertaining UK General Election

6 May 2015

Who will win? Who cares? Throughout the campaigning, the debates, the slips of the tongue and the ridiculous Vines, we’ve seen the people targeting the UK’s most influential seat ripped to shreds across social media.

Who will win? Who cares? Throughout the campaigning, the debates, the slips of the tongue and the ridiculous Vines, we’ve seen the people targeting the UK’s most influential seat ripped to shreds across social media.

We’ve seen David Cameron make a weird look to camera, wiggle a little, and drop down somehow.

We’ve had Ed Miliband staring, longingly, at the camera, making an entire early-morning TV talk show seem like some bizarre comedy sketch gone terribly wrong.

Nigel Farage’s ability to anger pretty much everyone resulted in a wondrous ‘What Does Farage Look Like’ movement.

While poor old Nick Clegg just looks sad.

So here, readers, is some of the more entertaining fodder social media has thrown up in the lead up to this year’s UK General Election.

First up, we have a magnificent Tumblr. Magnificent, in internet terms, means truly trivial and abundantly ridiculous. Like a video of a puppy barking at its own hiccups.

Nick Clegg looking sad‘ does exactly what it says on the tin, posting images of the leader of the Liberal Democrats often staring downwards, with completely erroneous ‘facts’ included below.

Here are just a couple gems:

Nick Clegg's Game of Thrones concerns

Sad Nick Clegg messed up Diet Coke and Mentos trick

Then Vines became the pinnacle of satire, with the two most likely Prime Minister candidates offering stupendous tidbits to tease us with. First we have David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, looking like a mad man, in a nice, rhythmical way:

Of course before this, we had rival Ed Miliband, head of the challenging Labour Party, looking like an absolute weirdo as he tried to gaze calmly, ministerially, at the camera while on a popular daytime TV show. He failed once he decided to stare, look demented, and fidget:

Of course, Miliband wasn’t finished there, managing to both charm and anger users of social media with his awkwardness. There was his odd appearance with Russel Brand on his Trews YouTube show. Regardless of performance, this counts as a win for him, given Brand’s internet popularity.

By now his every move is suggested for some sort of meme:

Now we get to Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP and the man perhaps most reviled by non-followers of his party, as well as most of the media. For Farage, Twitter users came up with a fantastic game, whereby they suggested things that look like him.

Things like a tree:

Or one of the muppets:

 

Nigel Farage looks like Sam the Eagle

Poor Farage was even left all alone after one of the TV debates finished:

But cleary, the greatest thing to come out of this general election is Sky’s promotional video, which crossed over one of my favourite things – Boyz II Men – with one of my least favourite – politicians – to excellent effect.

UK picture, via Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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