Poll memes, dubsmashes take social media by storm

With am aim to strike a chord with young voters, political parties, candidates and the public relations firms have gone into a frenzy, sharing memes and dubsmashes, including in regional languages, across social media platforms.

From Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "achche din" and "Mei Bhi Chawkidar" campaign and his reverse archery skills to Rahul Gandhi's "Aaloo Daalo Sona niklega" -- everything new and old is being refreshed, recycled and reused as memes and dubsmashes on social media in the election season.

For example, a dubsmash "jai Hind" explains how Prime Minister Narendra Modi has to keep going the right path despite people mocking his decisions.

Another hilarious pro-Congress video sells 'Bhakt ka Chashma," which shows development while there is none, covering issues such as unemployment, farmer distress, housing and health.

A pro-BJP video comes up with an answer to this, saying forget "Bhakth ka Chashma" video and give vote to the BJP and it has fulfilled all the promises made.

Since Game Of Thrones (GoT) Season 8 has been trending, the Congress party shared and circulated a creative replacing the villain "Night King" of the epic fantasy by Modi.

The Election Commission also used the millennial-favourite "Winter is coming" phrase from Game of Thrones to raise voter awareness on Twitter.

"Election Commission using various memes from popular series and movies is really creative and young voters must get up and vote," tweeted a user.

While political memes are comical or satirical representation of social issues, the app Dubsmash that was very popular in 2014-16 lets users choose audio recordings and record a video of themselves dubbing over that piece of audio.

Earlier this week, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) President and former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav shared an old 17-second Dubsmash video of himself mouthing Modi's catch phrase from his 2014 election campaign promising "achche din".

The dubsmash video is captioned: "Muft mein lelo 15 lakh, acche din aur jumla". The video gathered over 1,800 comments, 2,700 re-tweets as well as 14,000 likes on Twitter.

Yadav's clip surfaced old tweets with #Dubsmash on the micro-blogging site which trended for a while.

"What so you call when Rahul Gandhi make dubsmash video? Dumb-smash," read a tweet from a user.

After the trailer release of the "PM Narendra Modi" biopic, memes and clips surrounding Modi narrating "Ma mai sanyasi bab na chahta hu (mother, I want to become a monk)" became one of the most enacted monologue on social media.

Dubbed clippings of chunavi parodies and rap battles have also been doing the rounds on social media. Catch phrases and dialogues from popular TV series are also being reworked as fun and catchy election content for party campaigns and promotions.

The controversial Chinese app TikTok which has now been blocked in the country is full of memes and dubsmashes.

"TikTok is banned, not Rahul Gandhi; the show must go on, so also the entertainment. #TikTok," a tweet read.

--IANS

rp/na/prs