The Empathetic Meme: Situating Chris Crocker Within the Media History of LGBT Equality Struggles

Abstract

This essay argues for the historical significance of a viral video and its memes within mediated struggles for Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender equality. Informed by affect, sound, and media studies, I argue that Chris Crocker’s “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!” helped form empathy for these populations. Through a close reading of the video, historical contextualization, and examining responses, I describe how his user-generated video, spread widely across various media, can be appreciated as one component in changing social attitudes. To accomplish this, I viewed and transcribed LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!, examined comments, parodies, and other reactions, reviewed media coverage of Crocker at the time and since, and consulted historiographies, trend analyses, and other material on Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender equality struggles in the 21st century.

Religious Memetics

“…The study of memes has quickly become a source of much academic research and debate (Gal, Shifman, & Kampf, 2015;Milner, 2013;Phillips, 2012a;Shifman, 2013Shifman, , 2014Wiggins & Bowers, 2014). As memes continue to increase in circulation and visibility, memes also are influencing particular areas of popular culture and social practice (Phillips, 2012b), such as sports, politics (Burroughs, 2013a;Scott, 2014), and even religion (Burroughs, 2013b;Cheong, 2012). Knobel and Lankshear (2007) offer a definition of the uptake of the term meme within popular culture defined as "a popular term for describing the rapid uptake and spread of a particular idea presented as a written text, image, language 'move,' or some other unit of cultural 'stuff'" (p. 202).…”