Inflatable Snakes and Politics

By: Sallie Hardy

As I’ve previously stated, the other students who are with me on this trip are journalists and political scientists while I’m a media analyst. This doesn’t mean that I’m carefully analyzing everything being written for correctness and conciseness. That isn’t the media I study. What it does mean is that movements and trends on Twitter catch my eye. After attending the Democratic Debate on Tuesday, many students and I saw a contentious exchange between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders (with Tom Steyer lurking in the background). This exchange has become popular in news coverage and debate analysis as trends and movements on Twitter and other social media platforms have surged. These patterns are exactly what media analysts search for. 

This new trending movement on Twitter includes hashtags like #warrenisasnake, #warrenlies, and #neverwarren. The hashtags began appearing after the debate on Tuesday when Warren maintained her stance that Sanders had indeed said a woman could not win the presidency. Whether this is true or not, the hashtags are trending, and both sides are using them. After the Sanders’ fans used them to slander Warren and hurt her name, Warren’s followers began using them to stand up to the other side even though being called a snake is not something you’d think anyone would accept. I mean, snakes are thought of as slimy and devious.

A similar trend appeared a few years ago in the pop-culture world in between celebrities Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift… and Swift decided to claim the title and use it to her benefit. A snake was featured on Swift’s album cover after the issue, and she would regularly bring an inflatable snake to concerts to prove a point. It looks like the snake emoji is making its debut in the political world in a similar way. 

I can’t predict the future and say that Warren will bring an inflatable snake with her to rallies from here on out, but I do think this speaks volumes as to where we are as a society. Presidential candidates are no longer politicians to a younger generation: they are celebrities. Candidates have communities following them similar to those of a rockstar with groupies, trolls, and hoards of social media fans. What this will mean in November? I can only hope people will be able to put their political fandoms aside and seek truth instead of blindly jumping onto whatever is trending at the moment. I’ll be there analyzing it.