Good intentions, poor execution: Meme campaign analysis

Posted on by Haley Robertson

Background

This meme references the Nintendo Switch game Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which was released earlier this month. My meme is a tweet with two screenshots from my Animal Crossing gameplay. In the game, it’s possible for your character to get stung by wasps when you try to shake the trees for branches and fruit. But then you can turn around and sell the wasps nest, so this meme is about the nuances of capitalism – the game is rooted in the ability to sell stuff to pay off your debt.

The internet has seen an influx of Animal Crossing memes since social distancing began across the globe. I believe this meme will go viral because it pokes fun at how capitalism drives the narrative of a seemingly wholesome video game. This is also timely because capitalism is negatively affecting how the world is handling COVID-19 crisis.

Original objective

I want this meme to see at least 100,000 impressions on Imgur and Reddit combined.

today’s lesson in capitalism: fight with nature to pay off debt

My meme kind of flopped on imgur because I didn’t format the images right. On Twitter, I could easily have the two images side by side. Looking back, I should have just posted the screenshot of my Twitter post and put that on imgur. I also realized, after playing Animal Crossings for additional hours, that this meme isn’t really that funny.

My meme got 421 views, 2 comments and 4 up votes on imgur. While I didn’t go viral with this post, I did keep practicing my Animal Crossing meme creation through Twitter in the following weeks.

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