Are we all mimics at heart? The 4 July vote is already being called the “TikTok election” as political memes flood people’s timelines. Some say they are inscribed in our brains.
Get involved: Make your own political meme
Jokes abound: This meme mocking Sunak’s election speech in the rain was liked 10,000 times on X. Glossary
Aristophanes - A comic playwright from ancient Athens.
Athenian - From either modern or ancient Athens in Greece.
Peloponnesian War - A long and bloody war fought between Sparta, Athens and the allies of each side. Sparta ultimately triumphed, but the war tipped the whole Greek world into decline, and both powers would soon succumb to Macedonia and then Rome.
Ed Davey - The leader of the UK party the Liberal Democrats since 2019.
Thorpe Park - A theme park near London.
Algorithm - Any set of rules followed by a computer. In the context of social media, “the algorithm” refers to the intelligent AI that learns the interests of the user and presents them with posts that it thinks will interest them.
Fidias Panayiotou - A Cypriot YouTuber, born in 2000, who was elected as a Member of the European Parliament in 2024.
Richard Dawkins - A British scientist who is associated with New Atheism, a position that is critical of religious belief.
Genes - Sections of DNA strands that act as a kind of instruction manual for a human being. There is still a great deal we do not understand about how they work.