/abcu/ - American Broadcasting CommUnity

This may help

Let's talk about fonts.

The first important property of a font is that it MUST be readable. Not like regular text in a book or an email, but readable on a graphic, at thumbnail size, on a small-screen device. Readability requires

–limiting the number of words - I play with phrasing to minimize word count - meme text is like a headline on an article

–placing the text on a clean part of the graphic, or modifying the background until the graphic doesn't compete with the text

–size. I play around with text scale on almost every meme, not only to fit the text over an unbusy part of the graphic, but to make it as large as possible given the style of the meme. I'm ALWAYS thinking readability.

It has been said that mixed-case text is more readable than all caps. This is debatable. I think it depends on the font. 90% of the time my text is mixed-case.

A second property of fonts is what I call flavor. Each font conveys a certain psychological impression, does it not? Visit a site like https://www.dafont.com/ or https://typezebra.com/

Examine hundreds of fonts and you will certainly notice differences.

A font can be dignified, solemn, careless, silly, bookish, it can connote an historical era, it can be ponderous, scant, futuristic, personal, etc. etc.

Does the memer pick a font to match what the meme is trying to express? Or do they always select Impact Condensed all caps to get that "internet meme" look?

Anon asked for some sans-serif fonts.

I troll the free font download sites regularly. On Saturdays. Sometimes I just get tired of the same old fonts and pick new ones. I rotate my fonts. Rarely do I use a system font.

I prefer Open Type fonts if I can get them. True Type fonts are OK too. OTF permits font designers to use ligatures, which allows one to create a different custom look.

Pausing here to create some font graphics for next post.

Again, if the meme isn't readable (or at least a "grabber" phrase readable) on a small screen device, you failed. They won't click it, and the opportunity is lost. (Of course, some wonderful memes have no text at all; what I'm saying applies if text is present.)

>>333

1. Some sans serif font samples

2. Hashtag line on Chicken meme is URW Gothic.

3. That's Turnpike at the top of Admiral Lyons.

4. Digitalt on Cherish America.

An all-caps serif font

5. Alegreya on America is Working Again.

Here's an example I want to critique re: font usage.

1. The Impact Condensed font is readable, yes. But why did the memer use white text on a white background? As a result, they had to shadow the text. Looks really weird, and readability is poor. Think of the last glossy magazine ad you saw. Have you ever seen outlined white text with a black shadow on a white background? Almost never. I dare you to find an example of that in the print media, and if you do find one, there will be an obvious reason why the style was used.

2. I would have switched the font color and used black or dark text over the white background.

3. Or conversely, left the text white and darkened the background beneath it. Here I picked a predominant color from the background on the right, and flood-filled the white area on the left. The white text is in a superior layer and unaffected by the flood-fill. If you're using gimp (my preferred graphics program), that's the Bucket Fill tool.

1. Thought it would be fun to alter a cartoon by adding my own text in a handwritten font. Snooperman was on the original graphic and it pops out just fine. Is that sufficient to motivate a click, to make the tiny font readable?

Obamagate on the shirt turned out pretty good.

Unfortunately I tried to cram too much text into the space. ONE of those 3 bullet points would have been enough. It would have been better to make 3 separate memes, each with one phrase. There's a lot of wisdom in the axiom: Seven Words or Less

LESSON: Keep a couple of handwritten fonts on hand, but use sparingly.

2. Other handwritten fonts I've used in the past. These don't stay on the system for long, maybe use 1-2 times then discard.

3.

4.

5.

1. This is a fantastic meme concept.

The graphic is stark and attention-grabbing.

The color scheme is simple and direct.

The words are excellent.

BUT

The text is too small.

Since there's no room to make the text bigger without overlaying the graphic, let's improve it by enlarging the canvas and placing larger text on the white area.

A preferred shape for twitter is 2:1 (twice as wide as high).

2. Enlarged the canvas into a 2:1 horizontal landscape shape, leaving plenty of room for large text.

Bonus: It will look better on a twitter feed.

Memers sometimes distort faces. Usually that's not something I favor; we can usually find a truthful image of a person with a fleeting expression or gesture matching our meme concept.

1. But in this instance the face isn't distorted, it's simply rendered in a sepia color suitable for a WANTED handbill with a 19th century Wild West look. Beautiful work. It's a truthful portrayal that exposes reprehensible behavior (liberal Governors sending COVID-diagnosed patients to nursing homes where they may have exposed vulnerable elders to life-threatening illness.)

1. Mourning Joe

Fantastic concept

Graphical execution is a bit flawed - tilted wooden frame, text overlaid on people

Puns are awesome

You never know which meme will take off - this one might

2. SUPERB! Makes you think. Simple format. The IMPACT CONDENSED ALL CAPS works great in this situation. Looks very 'organic', 'grass-roots'. Really gets the point across.

1. Excellent info. Memes that impart facts are greatly appreciated.

That's a lot of text though.

What if seven versions of this meme were made?

Keep line 1.

Keep last line.

For the middle, use just ONE of the seven phrases.

Then the text can be larger.

You CANNOT impart more than about 4 ideas to the public in a 1-hour presentation. Public speakers know that. People trained to speak to the press know that.

A meme has less chance to influence someone than a one-hour presentation with a deck of slides. It registers on the viewer for a fraction of a second only. Maybe a couple of seconds if you're very lucky.

So why would we think we can impart 7+ ideas in a single image?

It's impossible.

LESSON: It's better to make a series of memes than cram too much info into one meme.

Brilliant meme. Irony to the max. Is irony what makes a meme go viral? Because truth.

You can't force irony. Some people seem to have a natural gift for it. I don't. But I can recognize and appreciate it.

LESSON: If you have the gift of IRONY, learn to meme! Or team up with a memefag.

How does a meme begin in the mind of a memefag?

You might start with text in mind (in this case, a specific Q drop) and then go looking for the right image.

I often work in reverse: find an image, and then seek the right text.

I probably collected the poster (1) during an image collecting expedition (we'll talk about those later). The colors evoked the American flag, and the patriot standing in the middle obviously evoked the word "stand". Rocky Balboa in the movie, a boxer. Fight fight fight! I probably searched a text file of Q's drops for "stand" or maybe "fight", and found that perfect crumb.

(2) Erased the original text and substituted the crumb.

(How to erase? Pick the background color, in this case white, set a brush to wide, and paint over it. Then add a text layer.)

>>349

Someone keeps telling me to read this.

Im not the meme guy really.

But maybe you guys might enjoy!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07P836KMJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o03?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Text about Book

Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), but who does one become when the thought is hijacked? We are no longer a society ruled by geographic lines in the sand laid by men who won and lost wars 50 years ago. Rather, we are a society governed by ideological variation, led by chieftains in a digital tribal society. This is the new world order and the precise opposite of what the self-proclaimed elites had planned. The United Nations is no more relevant than Facebook. The new covert is overt. WikiLeaks is more in the know than an intelligence analyst in the CIA, and Google’s dragnet surveillance censorship algorithm has become the new gatekeeper of critical information that could lead society into a new renaissance. The power shift has gone from a focus on kinetic controls to an all-out battle for the psychological core of the global population. Digitized influence operations have become the new norm for controlling the electoral process, public opinion, and narrative.The potency of the actors in this space is fierce. Both nation-states and special interest groups in every conceivable variation are battling for the pinnacle position in controlling the public narrative, and though there are many initiatives operating in this space, few understand the actual process for harnessing a consistent grip on the narrative in this digital age. While most actors attempt to use archaic relics, such as the mainstream media, nation-states and sophisticated special interests are gunning for the almighty meme. The meme is the embryo of the narrative, and there is a process to harnessing its potency. Ideas are the composition of memes. Belief systems are the composition of ideas. Belief systems and their reinforcement create the narrative. Control over the meme renders control of the narrative; thus, he who controls the meme controls the population. Therefore, the objective is not to focus on control of the narrative; rather, the hyper-focus has become the creation, mutation, expansion, and replication of the meme. The mind is the new war space, and the meme is both a subliminal hand grenade and the new nuclear weapon. Psychographic targeting renders the expedience of parasitically embedding the meme within the vast labyrinth of the mind. Psychographic targeting is made easy via big data analytics, the treasure troves of readily available metadata curated by dragnet surveillance capitalists, and a legislative body that lacks the understanding of the dangers of its weaponization. Metadata layered with the weaponization of other digital vectors, such as search engine results, social media, banner placement, blogs, and bots infused with machine learning and artificial intelligence, can introduce, mutate, and expand memes and conversations out of thin air that can instantaneously become part of the mainstream narrative.Forums, blog comments, hashtags, and YouTube videos have replaced the mainstream media, and the mainstream media has submitted to its position as the automaton regurgitators of the narrative that was introduced by the meme. The meme is the central character in digital influence operations (DIO), and DIO is the ingredient that fuels the new war space as well as the common thread of potency in political warfare, propaganda, and information warfare. The formula is quite simple: Control the meme; control the narrative; and control who is elected to office, how the public perceives current events, and the introduction of a new military offensive. Combined with cyber vectors for distribution, the meme renders an infinite number of variations for an attack. This new frontier harnesses the bleeding-edge technologies and strategies of machine learning, deep learning, socionics, artificial intelligence, cognitive biases, spam bots, memetics, and the psychographic zeroing in on population sub-groups using metadata with the further targeting capabilities that define national and population subgroups’ evolution stage.

Anons trying to counteract 4am talking point emerging all over the MSM that "Trump is glorying violence" when he tweeted "When the looting starts, the shooting starts" (a true statement).

Diggers learned that the phrase originated from Miami police chief, Walter Headley, in 1967. Admonishing rioters

to stand down.

Because it is certainly a law enforcement duty to protect life and property.

First memefag came up with (1). But it isn't readable, and won't look good on Twitter, and doesn't prove (with verifiable facts) the source or purpose of the quote.

(2) is a different memefag's attempt to remake the meme, using same source image, same text, and adding a bit of clarification in smaller text that might not be readable unless the meme is clicked.

Is this the way to do info warfare?

Will this meme work?

Does it need a hashtag to increase its penetration and spread?

Meme team seeks feedback from psyop experts.

Other comments to help us learn?

Posting this meme as a example.

It is OBVIOUSLY effective and very disturbing.

The WORDS speak of PEACEFUL PROTEST

but the imagery speaks the exact opposite.

Portrays a black man being strangled by the American flag.

Notice the little white 'lightning bolts' above his neck indicating pain, distress, oppression, physical harm to the man.

He is portrayed as a victim, but one with a powerful body (i.e. able to 'rise up' against the 'oppression').

How many people would respond to this kind of imagery? How would they respond? Does this image divide the people and imply that the America is bad for black people unless they protest? Unless they get violent?

Would people of all races respond to this imagery in the same way?

This is obviously professional produced by an expert.

What can we learn from a powerful image like this?

How can we neutralize or counteract this kind of propaganda?

Although quite rude, the pun supported by the visual is very strong. This type of image is R RATED, not suitable for families or normies, but there are many who would chuckle and forward it to folks they trust, family or close buddies, for the laugh.

What can we learn about puns?

Plays on words?

What is the LESSON here?

How do we make our memes GO VIRAL?

>>370

Yes, But the media already has a spin saying it is racist.

>>370

>>371

>>373

>Is this the way to do info warfare?

Yes, Catch the Facts and let them know before the media can put their hooks in

>Will this meme work?

Second one will.

>Does it need a hashtag to increase its penetration and spread?

I would leave without as the # is not trendable no matter how hard we try.

#ShootAndLoot ?

If one comes ride it…

>Meme team seeks feedback from psyop experts.

You are pros at memes. DJT thinks you are better than the people he pays for his campaign

>Other comments to help us learn?

Did you check out?

>>220

Lots of great clues for you guys.

>>377

>Did you check out?

>>220

>Lots of great clues for you guys.

Read it a couple of years ago.

Here are the notes I made in February 2018. Thought I could motivate others to read it if I did a little abstract on its application to us.

Now I should re-read with the perspective of doing this for 2.5 years.

A memeAnon’s notes on

Memetics—A Growth Industry in US Military Operations by Major Michael B. Prosser, USMC. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Operational Studies, academic year 2005-2006 (dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a507172.pdf)

My notes are not inclusive. I’m focused mainly on my side of things – meme making – and how this paper applies to /Qresearch/. There is a second PDF I haven't studied yet.

Memeanon's Notes

→To attack an ideology, assault a transcendant or central idea, or group of ideas

→Memes are cultural bits of info, transmitted mind-to-mind (via whatever media are prevalent)

→How do you persuade/dissuade enemy combatants? Persuade/dissuade the undecided?

→Analyze cultural ideas, isolate their parts

→Also includes means of spreading the ideas/memes

→Clinical disease analogy to the spread of ideologies: adaptive response of both disease and host organism

→Intentionally persuade large audiences through subtle or overt contact

→Disciplines of sociology, anthropology, cognitive science, behavioral game theory

→Military killing of “infected” people to eradicate an ideology sometimes backfires, transitory effect or even opposite of intended effect (martyrs, hardens opposing position).

→Nonlinear problem

→Requires more than token efforts and resources

→Feedback loop between meme makers, observe effect on target population

→Understand target audience’s aims, mindsets, ways of achieving their strategic objectives

→Metaphysical battlespace fought over culture and ideals.

→“Enemies” are already highly organized and weaponized in the meme warfare space

→Ought to be formalized and resourced within U.S. military + allies, rather than ad hoc as now [circa 2007]

———————————————————–

Memeanon's further observations

→Similarity between memes and what the advertising industry has been practicing (weaponizing!) for >50 years

→Feedback loop is essential between meme-makers, those disseminating them, and those observing/analyzing changes in the target population: not only how well it’s spreading, best vectors of spread, recruitment of new spreaders, immediate reactions, but more broadly how to discern/measure actual changes in target pop’s ideology, and feed this data back to meme generation unit.

→Continuous adaptive improvement loop

→Ideas and concepts are subjective and hard to quantify

We could do more in the area of the feedback loop.

There is also a potential division of labor between - autists with deep cultural knowledge (movies, TV, games.)

- autists with psychological insight into target pop

- autists who know how to frame ideology-challenging ideas in a way that is funny, sardonic, ironic

- graphic artists who can convert these ideas into visual form

- meme distributors (droppers) who are in a position to observe immediate feedback and adoption of the ideas by target pop

- autists who can analyze changes in target pop's ideology

A pet peeve.

(1) Distorted aspect ratio is not a good look. It looks unprofessional. It look like crap.

How to fix:

When fitting a graphic into a shape,

ensure that aspect ratio is locked.

(2) If using gimp, Scale tool is how you resize a layer or image. Circled the "lock" widget. When locked, changing either X or Y dimension of the image automatically changes the other too, so the aspect ratio remains fixed and the proportions are not changed.

If you click the "lock" widget to unlock X and Y, then you can s-t-r-e-t-c-h the graphic either horizontally or vertically.

LESSON: Be aware of aspect ratio. Do not accidentally stretch a person's face or body vertically or horizontally. Learn to control your graphic editor's scale tool.

Here's a brutal meme.

Is it OK to meme somebody's trademark?

Is it?

Well if they don't like it, they will let us know, right?

It's brutal because there's a lot of truth and humor in it.

Has Nike earned criticism because of how they promote ridiculous footwear fashions that people kill one another for?

Has Nike earned criticism because of their alleged use of slave labor in communist countries? (China, cough cough)

I have no problem with a meme like this.

Let's say you have a specific text to put on a graphic, and a place to put it in.

Where do you put the line breaks?

Do you just let the text wrap?

Or do you manage the line breaks

so that each line is a phrase or clause?

Yep. It matters.

I am careful not to split infinitives, split 'the' from the following noun, split 'President' from 'Trump', etc.

Sometimes (if it works) out I also like to shape the text into a taper or make it parallel part of a graphic.

Here is a pretty good example illustrating line breaks in logical places and text with a pleasing contour.

Some would say aesthetics matter.

To Watermark? Or Not to Watermark?

Watermarks are not in the spirit of anon. I'm not here to argue copyright law, but if an image is significantly modified - say by overlaying some text - then a reasonable argument can be made that it's a different image not covered by the original copyright. Some organizations aggressively protect their copyrights and I'm not interested in pissing them off so I will stay away from their images (example: Disney cartoons, Dr. Seuss).

If somebody contributes a great meme, I have been known to remove the watermark because it's not cool to give free advertising to someone we may or may not agree with. Or you find a base image for a meme that is marked with a signature or website name.

So how do you wipe off the watermark?

Here's how I do it using the open-source free graphic editor gimp.

- Select the clone tool.

- Select a brush with soft edges.

- Enlarge the brush to a size that will cover the area you want to fix

- Select a nearby area with the graphic content you want to use, by CTRL-click

- Place your large soft clone brush over the logo or watermark, and drag left or right. The clone tool copies from the selected area, onto the location where you click & drag (i.e. the text you want to replace).

Some images are very amenable to this technique and some others are not.

1. Original image. I'm going to remove the text across the top line.

2. Identifies the Clone Tool, Soft Brush, Brush size set to 58 px. 58 px establishes the diameter of the dotted circle up top that I will copy from. Select the area to clone from by CTRL-click. (I clicked on the dotted circle.)

3. Place the cursor over the left side of the text. Click and drag right, copying from the clone source to the clone destination.

Look pretty good already.

4. Touch-up needed? Switch to the Smudge tool and enlarge the brush if needed. Drag the Smudge tool around a bit to soften the cloned area. Now you can insert new text. I picked a color from the light green text below. Done.

Now that was easy, wasn't it?

LESSON: Use the Clone Tool to remove unwanted watermarks or text from an image.

If making images for Twitter, shape matters.

The square ones get truncated and Twitter will show only the BOTTOM PORTION in the Timeline View. This limits the value of square memes.

The solution is to make them landscape shaped, 2x1 – twice as wide as they are high. Sometimes that requires putting the image on a 1024 x 512 pixel canvas. 1066 x 600 and 1200 x 675 are also suitable.

Example 1, how we hope a square meme will look.

Example 2, how a square image REALLY looks in timeline view (as seen by most people).

Example 3, how to fix it. The memefag put it on a rectangular canvas. Now it looks great in timeline view.

LESSON: For maximum impact, ensure that images for Twitter are 2x1 shape.

Here's a meme filled with a TON of GREAT INFO.

But unfortunately that's simply too much text for a single meme.

Such a great concept though.

A meme is a sound-bite, no more.

You have under a second to present your idea via meme.

How to fix:

Break it down into a series of memes, each with a subset of the text. Bonus: Less text means more space for impactful graphics.

LESSON: Too much text is bad.

Better to make a series of memes with shorter text.

>>861

Confirmed, jpeg hover works now.

All memefags have experienced a bad crop.

The edges of the meme are not trimmed properly. See the white around the upper and left borders?

A bad crop looks careless.

Sometimes you just can't see it, then it bites you later when the image is posted in a different context.

So open the image in a different app (e.g. image viewer instead of image editor) or place a temporary background layer under the image.

LESSON: Double check after cropping.

Sometimes an image found on twitter is a great meme. Just needs a little help to be moar readable.

1. An anon captured the entire tweet. We just want the picture. And we want it readable.

2. Crop out the image portion. Select the outline of the poster. This is what we'll try to improve readability of. We don't want to accidentally darken the background where the lady is already underexposed. See the faint dotted line indicating the selected portion?

3. I have found gimp's Dodge/Burn tool especially effective for this kind of task. It will operate only on the selected portion. No need to create additional layers here. Make the brush very large, select Dodge/Burn tool, select Burn, select Shadows (target of Burn operation), and start moving the brush over the selected area. Each time you release the cursor and start again, another burn operation commences. If you don't release the cursor, the burn only operates on areas that haven't been burned during the current pass. So if done carefully, you will not get any overlapping burn areas. Seamless.

When finished, Select None, Flatten or Save the image, and post. Viola!

A meme like this would probably get your social media account suspended instantly. Why? Because many would consider it offensive.

Don't do it.

A meme should present information in a way that does not repel the very viewer it’s targeted at. (Corollary: Know what demographic the meme is targeted at; there’s no such thing as a generic meme that’s ideal for every audience.) It should not harass, mock, denigrate, attack, etc. that viewer or their beliefs. Instead, it should present info from their point of view, the way advertisers do. Or it can be purely factual and ask questions. You want the viewer to (1) click the meme and be influenced by it, and (2) ideally forward the meme to others. It’s fine if it’s funny, but I personally have no use for the caricatures that depict people in situations they were not really in, or change the appearance of their face. To me, fake memes are like fake news: bad. It’s a fine gray line between memes that are totally true and those that poke fun through exaggeration or caricature, and each of us has to decide our relationship to that gray line.

It should not contain anything that will get the poster’s social media account banned. For that reason, Nazi symbols and similar things are out. Swear words are generally unacceptable on social media. Even something as innocuous as the “middle finger salute” is considered offensive by many normies. Even our beloved Pepe is considered a 'white supremacy symbol' by normies, even though to us it symbolizes no such thing.

You’re trying to reach normies, so you have to be cognizant of THEIR sensibilities, THEIR symbols, and THEIR ways of expressing themselves.

Just because a meme appears on 8kun does NOT mean it would be acceptable on social media. Each keyboard warrior has to evaluate every meme before tweeting, to select memes that will be effective for YOUR target audience, within a specific context, and not get themself banned.

Repeating from the header of this thread,

I ask all meme makers to think about this: Do you confront and punish, or get inside the viewer's head to tease, delight, or inspire? Does it present an idea from viewer's point of view like marketers do? Does it get deleted and not forwarded because it insults the viewer? What about foul language? There's a time and a place for it…and it's a turnoff for some viewer segments. Will it go viral? Is it funny? Wry? Sarcastic? Surprising? Emotional? Beautiful? Elevating? Memorable? Insulting? Provocative? Boring? What target audience do you have in mind?

>>340

kek, i made that too small text example

great feedback and i agree, and agreed at the time!

my current challenge is using affinity designer or photo and getting the crop

had to move to that program when i broke my ipad and moved to my macbook, and believe me i suck at it

a few memes later i did pic related

i prefer hyooge text whenever possible personally

fuck it, gonna get a new ipad soon!

Would pic related get around Twitter's new ban on QAnon?

Worth a try.

We should do a post on disguising text in memes.

Here's a Twitter thread

that my fren made called

The Power of Memes!

https://twitter.com/We_R_an0nym0us/status/1287015451030167552

Videos, examples, suggestions, critiques, ideas, history of memes, memes as art, memes as a cultural art form for the internet age…

Check it out!

Usually, it is recommended to limit the number of fonts in a meme. There's so little text anyway (usually).

There are exceptions.

1. One exception is decorative text. Positioning each word as a graphical element can be powerful.

2, 3. Another exception is using two fonts that are selected to complement one another.

4. Or it can be overdone.

Memes should be

VISUALLY DISTINCTIVE

and these sure are!

Each one entirely different from the others, distinguishable at a glance, unique.

You know that dank quality when you see it. Irony.

A long list of companies gave large donations to "Black Lives Matter" (BLM) which has then engaged in riots and looting.

So these memes are associating some of those companies with the results of their sponsorship.

>>3163

boy did this become a big deal lately

your post was ahead of its time

Q on 9/10:

FB-TWIT using DARPA provided software to censor and restrict picture content using 'matching' [think reverse image] _upload one to find/locate all [cycling 5s].

>>

Adapt & overcome.

Q

been having fun with camo as it became a big topic in the bread this week

where is the meme site?