Hillary Lost Again Meme Hillary Won the Popular Vote Meme
I've seen the face of the loser.
I've seen the face of dejected Hillary Clinton supporters everywhere.
I've seen the expect of utter horror at the prospect of living at least 4 years under the presidency of Donald Trump.
That face has a proper name: Janna DeVylder.
Yes, DeVylder, 42, who grew up in Quango Bluffs and now lives and works on the other side of the globe in Sydney, Australia, has get the international symbol of the inconsolable popular-vote winners of our presidential ballot. (Online she was zinged as the "affiche child for the mentally insane Hillary snowflakes.")
In other words, she has spent the last ii months as i of the world's near popular political memes.
She's the face of blue-Democrat America that saw what seemed similar a sure claim to the White House slip away in the deep-red rural counties and the Electoral College.
DeVylder has lived a surreal, virtual double life every bit her meme of infinite varieties has spread far and wide beyond the internet.
I tried to get Reuters, the photo's owner, to allow us publish the photograph in impress, to no avail. But simply Google "crying liberals" and you'll see it. DeVylder'south confront pops upwards probably equally the very first image: She'due south wearing cobalt bluish eyeglasses, pearl earrings and a matching necklace and a homemade Hillary pin. She even purchased a secondhand gray pinstripe pantsuit merely for the occasion. Oh, and you can't miss her festive carmine, white and blue top hat.
Only the first affair you lot observe is her convulsed posture and anguished expression. Her shoulders droop frontward, while her head is flung back. Her eyes are scrunched close. Her rima oris hangs open up in a frown, and y'all can't help but imagine hearing her pitiful moan.
The photo was snapped on Nov., 8, Ballot Mean solar day (although because of the time divergence technically it already was the next mean solar day in Australia). DeVylder, as if y'all couldn't tell from her getup, had voted absentee for Clinton. She holds dual citizenship.
She and some friends attended an election viewing party at the Academy of Sydney. DeVylder was then excited that she took the day off work — made easier past the fact that she's her own boss. She and her husband run their own design house with a third business concern partner.
DeVylder expected a depression-central issue. What she got was a teeming throng of hundreds of American expats and curious Aussies packed into a room with a giant video screen, CNN sponsorship and Trump supporters chanting, "Lock her upwards!" So she did the only sensible thing: She grabbed the gratis plastic lid offered at the door and pigeon headlong into the fray.
DeVylder's pantsuit and general look made her a magnet for multiple Tv set and radio interviews. But initially she didn't notice all the photographers who had staked out the crowd, including Jason Reed of Reuters.
His was the perceptive eye that captured DeVylder'southward reaction — non to the final consequence but but to Trump'due south win of an early on state. And like a dutiful news photographer, he quickly filed it for his editors.
Non more than 90 minutes later, equally DeVylder still sat in the very same seat in Sydney, she received a message from her friend Matt back in Davenport, Ia.: I recollect I just saw your face come up upwardly on Yahoo News, he told her.
In a relative eye blink she had been zapped around the earth. And little did she know that that was but the offset.
To be fair, Reed's original caption was rather innocuous, and didn't include DeVylder's name: "Supporters of U.Due south Autonomous Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton react equally a state is called in favour of her opponent, Republican candidate Donald Trump, during a watch party for the U.S. Presidential ballot, at the Academy of Sydney in Australia, November ix, 2016."
Reed himself has shot photos in Iowa, simply never has he had a photograph reach then far, so fast.
"I was surprised to see the corporeality of interest in this paradigm because the sheer number of like pictures existence taken across the United States on that day," he wrote to me in an email.
When the photo seeped into social media and the political blogosphere, information technology took on a life of its ain. It seemed to reduce Trump's surprise victory to a single frame and face perfect for alluring schadenfreude.
Her "bourgeois friends in the Midwest," DeVylder said, "who visit different websites than I do, kept seeing information technology come up."
Some of the captions and headlines paired with DeVylder's confront:
"When anybody gets a trophy ... you don't know how to lose."
"All-time pics of distraught Hillary voters from last night every bit they sob and lay in fetal positions. Run to your rubber spaces!!! Trump is president!"
"Classes canceled to allow college students to 'cope' with shock of Trump's win" (DeVylder, a mom to two sons and two stepdaughters, is happy to pass for an undergrad.)
Conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham tweeted DeVylder's photo with the quip, "To think we had 18 year olds taking Omaha Embankment, at Battle of Chosin, Ardennes ...."
DeVylder, who was lured to Commonwealth of australia by a task and made a life there, may even terminate up on T-shirts and coffee mugs in Texas.
This is made all the funnier because she wasn't crying in the photograph. As she put it, she was just "a bit expressive."
But that doesn't affair because the paradigm managed to unwittingly capture DeVylder's general feelings most the ballot. And she likes information technology. She told Reed every bit much via email.
DeVylder probably was one of the perfect people to autumn victim to this meme: She's a practical, thoughtful and somewhat bemused Iowan with a psychology degree from the University of Iowa who finds all this utterly fascinating.
Non only has she taken it in step, she has blogged near it.
She considers it a teachable moment.
"You realize how easy it is to accept your centre off the ball," she said of how complacent she had gotten about her politics, "and y'all await that other people are doing things that volition continue the status quo that you appreciate, and that the progressive crusade is a cause that will just keep going."
In retrospect DeVylder said that she attended the party feeling a little cocky, expecting to toast a win.
"Even when you recall things are good from your point of view that doesn't mean you tin end working at it," she said. "That'south a life lesson, right?"
Instead of getting mad, she retaliated past posting her own versions of her meme:
"I'm not crying because we lost. I'thousand not crying because there'due south no bays. I'yard crying because we are losing our commonage humanity."
"Crying, for the lessons of history have nonetheless to be learned."
"Realizing that this election has brought out the worst in us."
"The moment she realized we don't fifty-fifty try to understand each other anymore."
Just when DeVylder thought her face had been plastered in every corner of the web, information technology erupted again when Sean Hannity shared it on Facebook at the cease of the year, with the timely bulletin: "The Electoral Higher electing Trump is unfair … says the party that used 'super delegates' to elect Hillary."
"I would be embarrassed if a picture show of me having a psychotic intermission posted a 1000000 times all (over) the web!" one woman wrote in response. "Become a clue and check yourself in to a mental facility."
Here once again, DeVylder tends to get belittling, not defensive. Her meme life has left her feeling that conservatives and liberals alike tin can be hypocrites. Everybody has confirmation bias. Nosotros all dear to feel smug in victory.
"We fight in some instances for inclusion and open up arms," she said of her half of the political spectrum, "and still nosotros depict lines when it comes to people who may be conservative."
But fifty-fifty for the nicest of Iowans, at some indicate introspection becomes badgerer. DeVylder would like to think that her digital doppelganger has expired, but she expects to suffer at least 1 more round.
"I'm anticipating that it will be used again for the inauguration," she sighed. "You just know it volition."
That's a safe bet for Jan. 20. At the very least, DeVylder seems to have rekindled her political fire. In blogging about the incident, she publicly committed herself to a laundry list of next steps, including:
"I will not observe joy and boast in other people's sorrows."
"I will model for my children the way I would promise they would conduct themselves."
"I will not fight hate with hate."
"I volition work to ensure more immature people engage and vote."
And she ended with a question:
"What will you practise?"
Who said no good could come from a mean-spirited meme?
Kyle Munson can be reached at 515-284-8124 or kmunson@dmreg.com. See more of his columns and video at DesMoinesRegister.com/Munson. Connect with him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (@KyleMunson) and on Snapchat (@kylemunsoniowa).
Source: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/local/columnists/kyle-munson/2017/01/11/how-crying-liberal-iowan-became-worldwide-meme-gloating-over-trumps-win/96252908/
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