This paper examines how South American historical symbols, specifically the death flights—extrajudicial executions carried out by military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s—have evolved into viral memes. In the last decade, death flight imagery has resurfaced in online spaces like 4chan, where it is used to promote alt-right ideology. This shift ruptures historical memory, as a symbol of state violence rooted in a specific context is appropriated and reshaped within digital spaces dominated by the Global North. While much research traces memetic trends on 4chan, few studies examine how symbols from the Global South are decontextualized and commodified through memes.

This paper addresses this gap by analyzing this memetic evolution using a mixed-methods approach, combining computational content analysis (natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and computer vision) with close readings. The study tracks its transformation from a symbol of historical trauma to one of far-right extremism, particularly in the U.S. and Europe. By examining millions of posts from 4chan's /pol/ board (2013–2023), the paper explores how the memes’ language, tone, and visuals have transformed, and how they have been globally commodified through merchandise, re-entering South America in products like t-shirts and board games.

This research contributes to understanding how violent historical symbols circulate globally, how digital culture commodifies traumatic memory, and how extremism intersects with consumerism. By tracing the evolution of these symbols into memes, the paper advocates for more interdisciplinary research to explore the role of digital culture in the spread of extremism and the reappropriation of cultural symbols.

Digital life has opened up space for resentment to be used as a repertoire of online engagement. A growing body of literature argues that resentment is one of the key explanations for the global resurgence of the far-right. This study aims to investigate how this strategy is present in memes circulated in far-right public discussion groups on WhatsApp in Brazil. An interpretive analysis was conducted after gathering 40 images from a non-probabilistic sample of groups of Bolsonaro supporters. The findings lead to four different dimensions of resentment: hostility, victimism, revisionism, and urgency.

This paper explores how anti-veg*nism humor memes on Instagram fuel hate speech and reinforce hegemonic masculinities. A critical visual analysis (Rose, 2016) of 28 memes from the profile @lagrimasdevegano (veganstears) reveals that disparagement humor (Ford, 2015) disguises prejudice as jokes, promoting intolerance and gender stereotypes. These memes link veganism to fragility and femininity, reinforcing conservative ideologies that glorify meat consumption as a marker of masculinity. The study underscores the difficulties digital platforms face in regulating such content, given humor’s ambiguity and a maximalist interpretation of free speech. It advocates for culturally sensitive moderation and media education to create a more inclusive digital space.

In this paper, I offer a conceptualization of platformed nostalgia. I examine how Tumblr has, by virtue of its age and obsolescence, discursively engaged with popular articulations of historical ‘social media nostalgia’ (Jungselius and Weilenmann 2023). My critical technocultural discourse analysis of Tumblr’s marketing and governance considers how Tumblr has, since its acquisition by Automattic in 2019, co-opted vernacular nostalgic discourses about an imagined ‘simpler’ past of social media prior to the ascendancy of Big Tech. I will ask: to what extent, and in what ways, has Tumblr platformed historical social media nostalgia? What wider sociocultural contexts and discourses have shaped Tumblr’s courting of historical social media nostalgia? What does this suggest about how the platform wishes to be understood and interpreted within the cultural imaginary?

I argue that this discursive positioning of Tumblr, initially by social media users and later by Tumblr itself, intensified following Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X) in late 2022. The platforming of Tumblr nostalgia has enabled Tumblr to discursively position itself within the cultural imaginary as the past in the present and as a foil to larger competitors like X, Instagram, and TikTok. Here, Tumblr reconfigures itself as a folk hero (rather than failure) amongst the giants; its obsolescence no longer evaded but celebrated. These discursive interventions allow us to elucidate what Tumblr views, or wants us to view, as its role and influence in social media history, even if this does not necessarily gel with the platform’s internal priorities and policies in practice.