Featured Image Credit: Twitter/@Ukraine/Alamy
Topics: Ukraine
Jess Hardiman
Many social media users have been left feeling slightly baffled after the Ukrainian government tweeted a meme encouraging other countries to help arm the nation after being invaded by Russia, saying it was a 'weird' form of 'memeganda'.
The popular 'Trade Offer’ meme first originated on TikTok, and features a suited man standing beneath a pair of headlines that say ‘I receive’ and ‘You receive’.
According to KnowYourMeme.com, it gained popularity on the platform in March 2021, with a video by TikToker @bradeazy later becoming a ‘source material for memes in which an extremely unequal exchange is proposed’.
In Ukraine’s take on the format, under ‘I receive’ is a list that reads: ‘Heavy artillery’; ‘heavy armored vehicles’; ‘air defense systems’; and ‘combat aircraft’.
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Below ‘You receive’, meanwhile, it simply says: “Ukraine fights and defeats Russia so that you don’t have to fight later.”
Despite the fact Ukraine has posted a number of memes on its official channels in the lead-up to and during the Russian invasion, many people found the latest a particularly unexpected use of 'propaganda' - with one even using the portmanteau ‘memeganda’ to express their disbelief at the two unlikely worlds colliding.
One Twitter user wrote: “I refuse to believe that this is real life anymore.”
Another said: “The future is f**kin weird man.”
A third commented: “This is not the behavior of a serious country.”
A fourth said their kids will be ‘so confused once they see this in their textbooks’, while another added: “Call me conservative but I preferred the times where state disinformation and propaganda wasn’t presented in meme form.”
One also said in bewilderment: “Memes are literally war propaganda now what.”
But many others praised the ‘genius use of social media’, saying the approach was nothing but ‘awesome’ - with one joking it was the ‘best war meme page of all time’.
Someone also tried to summarise why they felt it worked so well, comparing it to a 1942 animated propaganda film starring Bugs Bunny.
“Some are surprised an official govt channel is posting a meme, but this is very much in line with Bugs Bunny selling war bonds, using new media methods to inform and sway public opinion,” they said, adding: “And I totally agree with them here.”
Quote-tweeting another meme the Ukrainian government tweeted last month, one other person wrote: "If nothing else, from an anthropological perspective it is absolutely fascinating to see how memes are used by states at war."
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