Russia Used “The Simpsons” As Tool To Flood Christian/Anti-Democratic Rhetoric

 

And it worked.

There are a lot of fantastic Instagram accounts for The Simpsons like this one that just posted a Justin Bieber/Hailey Bieber post featuring the newlyweds in a new light inspired by the longest running prime-time animated series. Unfortunately, there are other Instagram accounts out there that like to use The Simpsons for bad reasons, and that’s exactly the case here.

A new report from the Oxford details that the Russian-backed Internet Research Agency had created an Instagram account called @army_of_jesus_ that had built up an impressive following by using memes and photos inspired by the likes of The Muppets and The Simpsons along with other popular American franchises, only to turn around and then spew a bunch of pro-Jesus/Trump and anti-Clinton/Satan rhetoric in an effort to help sway simple-minded folks about the Presidential election outcome. A false advertisement, if you will, of what could have been a friendly Insta-account only to get the switcheroo with perceived religious nuttery.

So, essentially what these faux Instagram accounts did was get popular using famous American franchises only to turn-around and get very political.

Our Take

First thing’s first, if anyone is following an account called @army_of_jesus thinking that anything positive is coming out of it, then we have a much bigger problem than whether or not that had any political ramifications. For starters, we’re not checking our sources as to where this account could have potentially come from. Next, nobody Christian enough to launch an account like this is THAT big of a fan of The Simpsons or The Muppets, and I can say this with full confidence having been raised Christian until the age of 18 when I grew up and realized that it was all horse shit. As a result, two things should come out of this.

  1. Better education in our schools. Clearly, there are people too fucking dumb to operate Instagram and as such need better education to understand how social media is a platform that can be used for good and evil just like other mediums and as such should be treated as such. The irony is the Facebook-owned Instagram has closed countless accounts from actual verified users for shittier reasons and this one was able to amass such a following that it can even be considered a threat to American democracy is un-friggin’ believable.
  2.  This should by far and wide confirm the wide spread use of hashtag tribes that get together with no other reasoning than in wanting to belong to a group instead of having unique insight and nuance to thinking. When someone subscribes to a tribe, it’s easier to market whatever the hell you want to that tribe, and as such that’s what exactly happened here. Just like how huge advertising firms use hashtags to market their products, organizations with evil intentions can do the same by doing research on which particular hashes are popular (in this case, The Simpsons) take a sliver of that following, then go to town on marketing pro-Christ nonsense and rhetoric that, judging from all evolutionary patterns over the last two thousand years, will eventually be extinct in the next 100 years.

Maybe it’s time for us to dump Instagram.