#BoomerRemover: COVID-19 and the intertextual politics of internet memes

Abstract

This article analyzes ‘Boomer Remover’ the controversial term for COVID-19 popularized on social media in early 2020. It mobilizes digital media theory and discourse analysis to ask what makes Boomer Remover acceptable for its users. It conceptualizes Boomer Remover as an internet meme and argues that memes use intertextuality (the way new texts build upon older texts) as a core mechanism of meaning making. This allows the meme form to communicate a high-level of complexity and depth in an easily consumed format, however, it also bifurcates audiences as a meme is understood differently depending on the audience member’s familiarity with reference points. This article analyzes these divergent understandings through a framework of ‘discourse communities’. It unpacks how for a discourse community familiar with internet memes the term has come to be connected with progressive politics, and contrasts this with readings of Boomer Remover as ageist attack for those unfamiliar with the memetic contexts. Rather than privilege one reading of the Boomer Remover meme as correct, this article shows that in order to understand the social impact of memes, we must recognize their inherent polysemic nature.