![]() “Sally and Bob could both sit down and actually talk about what the election meant to them beyond the superficial level thrown out as truth by the mainstream media and come to the understanding that both sides want the best for our country.”īut the basic belief underpinning Huth’s argument - that “it’s not you vs me, but We the People vs Elected Officials who are taking great advantage of the fear and hate in this country” - seems to be increasingly in question. In one such plea, self-declared Bernie Sanders supporter and urban fantasy writer Connie Huth used the Bob and Sally meme as a starting point in a 2017 Medium post. The age-old push to find a middle ground has been an ongoing theme throughout the Trump administration. ![]() For many on social media, “Bob” and “Sally” have become ironic symbols for denial, indifference, and privilege ![]() And it’s the Bob and Sally meme in particular that seems to have re-emerged as a conduit through which this conflict has played out. The backlash over social media pleas for agreement reflects as much. Some thoughts from ✊❤️ * * * post shared by on at 10:25pm PSTĪfter having lived through a tense and divisive four years, many people no longer see compromise and unity as a desirable outcome. But people with varying degrees of influence and visibility continue to post this type of compromise-peddling meme online, spawning heated reactions in response. One would think that, considering the potential for blowback, people would be discouraged from posting these pleas for compromise. Gap’s mistake: using the inanity of a hoodie to express such a complicated and polarizing idea, as well as attempting to commodify and capitalize upon election-related emotions. (The Gap later admitted that the hoodie design was not actually a real Gap product.) It’s probably a good thing The Gap never produced this hoodie for sale. FdnY圎qvrk- Ilovelampstill198 October 25, 2020Īmong the latest, most quickly notorious instances of failed middle-ground-seeking was a now-deleted Gap tweet that stressed, “The one thing we know, is that together, we can move forward.” Attached to the tweet was an image of a (really ugly) varsity-style hoodie, half-red and half-blue, emblazoned with the Gap logo, zipping both sides up together. After all, as many were quick to point out then, it’s easy to get along when you’re not directly impacted by the more dangerous aspects of Trump’s presidency - as many white people aren’t: It also spawned lots of mocking spinoffs and long, incensed Facebook and Twitter comment threads. The meme proclaimed that even though one had voted Democrat (for Hillary Clinton) and one had voted Republican (for Donald Trump, who won), “Bob and Sally are still friends, because Bob and Sally are both adults.”Īt the time, this meme received plenty of derision, mainly from leftist voters who believed it trivialized the many issues they had with a Trump presidency. The image, which showed stick figures of a man and a woman holding hands and wearing wide smiles, could be found in abundance on bipartisan Facebook feeds. Particularly memorable was the “Bob and Sally” meme, which originated in January 2017 and swiftly gained popularity alongside Trump’s inauguration the same month. Bountiful social media posts promoted the idea of being stronger together, urging those across the political divide to move past their minor (or major) disagreements. In the wake of the 2016 election, messages of unity proliferated on the internet.
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