Hillary Lost Again Meme Hillary Won the Popular Vote
I've seen the face of the loser.
I've seen the face of dejected Hillary Clinton supporters everywhere.
I've seen the expect of utter horror at the prospect of living at to the lowest degree four years nether the presidency of Donald Trump.
That face has a name: Janna DeVylder.
Yes, DeVylder, 42, who grew upward in Council Bluffs and now lives and works on the other side of the globe in Sydney, Australia, has become the international symbol of the inconsolable popular-vote winners of our presidential ballot. (Online she was zinged as the "poster kid for the mentally insane Hillary snowflakes.")
In other words, she has spent the concluding ii months as ane of the earth's most popular political memes.
She'due south the face of blue-Democrat America that saw what seemed similar a certain merits to the White Firm slip away in the deep-ruby-red rural counties and the Electoral College.
DeVylder has lived a surreal, virtual double life as her meme of infinite varieties has spread far and broad across the cyberspace.
I tried to get Reuters, the photo'south owner, to let us publish the photograph in print, to no avail. But just Google "crying liberals" and you'll see it. DeVylder's face pops up probably equally the very first image: She's wearing cobalt bluish eyeglasses, pearl earrings and a matching necklace and a homemade Hillary pivot. She fifty-fifty purchased a secondhand grey pinstripe pantsuit just for the occasion. Oh, and you can't miss her festive reddish, white and blueish elevation hat.
But the first thing yous notice is her convulsed posture and anguished expression. Her shoulders droop forwards, while her head is flung dorsum. Her eyes are scrunched close. Her oral fissure hangs open in a frown, and you can't help but imagine hearing her pitiful moan.
The photograph was snapped on Nov., 8, Election Twenty-four hour period (although because of the time difference technically it already was the adjacent day in Australia). DeVylder, as if you couldn't tell from her getup, had voted absentee for Clinton. She holds dual citizenship.
She and some friends attended an ballot viewing political party at the University of Sydney. DeVylder was and then excited that she took the day off piece of work — made easier by the fact that she's her own dominate. She and her married man run their own design business firm with a 3rd business partner.
DeVylder expected a low-cardinal event. What she got was a teeming throng of hundreds of American expats and curious Aussies packed into a room with a giant video screen, CNN sponsorship and Trump supporters chanting, "Lock her upwards!" So she did the but sensible thing: She grabbed the costless plastic hat offered at the door and dove headlong into the fray.
DeVylder'due south pantsuit and general wait made her a magnet for multiple Boob tube and radio interviews. Merely initially she didn't notice all the photographers who had staked out the crowd, including Jason Reed of Reuters.
His was the perceptive eye that captured DeVylder's reaction — non to the final result only merely to Trump's win of an early land. And like a dutiful news photographer, he quickly filed information technology for his editors.
Not more than xc minutes later, as DeVylder however sabbatum in the very same seat in Sydney, she received a message from her friend Matt back in Davenport, Ia.: I think I just saw your face come up on Yahoo News, he told her.
In a relative eye blink she had been zapped around the globe. And little did she know that that was only the first.
To be fair, Reed's original caption was rather innocuous, and didn't include DeVylder's proper name: "Supporters of U.South Autonomous Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton react as a land is chosen in favour of her opponent, Republican candidate Donald Trump, during a watch party for the U.S. Presidential election, at the University of Sydney in Commonwealth of australia, Nov ix, 2016."
Reed himself has shot photos in Iowa, but never has he had a photo accomplish then far, so fast.
"I was surprised to run across the amount of interest in this paradigm considering the sheer number of like pictures being taken across the U.s. on that day," he wrote to me in an email.
When the photograph seeped into social media and the political blogosphere, information technology took on a life of its ain. Information technology seemed to reduce Trump's surprise victory to a unmarried frame and confront perfect for attracting schadenfreude.
Her "conservative friends in the Midwest," DeVylder said, "who visit unlike websites than I do, kept seeing it come."
Some of the captions and headlines paired with DeVylder's confront:
"When everyone gets a bays ... you lot don't know how to lose."
"Best pics of distraught Hillary voters from last night as they sob and lay in fetal positions. Run to your safe spaces!!! Trump is president!"
"Classes canceled to allow higher students to 'cope' with daze of Trump's win" (DeVylder, a mom to ii sons and two stepdaughters, is happy to pass for an undergrad.)
Conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham tweeted DeVylder's photo with the quip, "To think we had 18 twelvemonth olds taking Omaha Beach, at Battle of Chosin, Ardennes ...."
DeVylder, who was lured to Commonwealth of australia by a job and made a life in that location, may fifty-fifty terminate upwards on T-shirts and coffee mugs in Texas.
This is made all the funnier because she wasn't crying in the photograph. As she put information technology, she was only "a bit expressive."
But that doesn't matter because the paradigm managed to unwittingly capture DeVylder's general feelings about the election. And she likes it. She told Reed equally much via email.
DeVylder probably was one of the perfect people to fall victim to this meme: She'southward a practical, thoughtful and somewhat bemused Iowan with a psychology caste from the University of Iowa who finds all this utterly fascinating.
Not just has she taken it in stride, she has blogged virtually it.
She considers it a teachable moment.
"You lot realize how easy it is to accept your eye off the ball," she said of how complacent she had gotten about her politics, "and you expect that other people are doing things that will keep the status quo that yous appreciate, and that the progressive crusade is a cause that volition only continue going."
In retrospect DeVylder said that she attended the party feeling a little self, expecting to toast a win.
"Even when you retrieve things are skilful from your indicate of view that doesn't hateful y'all tin can stop working at it," she said. "That'south a life lesson, right?"
Instead of getting mad, she retaliated by posting her own versions of her meme:
"I'thou not crying because nosotros lost. I'k not crying because in that location's no bays. I'm crying because we are losing our collective humanity."
"Crying, for the lessons of history accept yet to be learned."
"Realizing that this election has brought out the worst in u.s.a.."
"The moment she realized we don't fifty-fifty try to understand each other anymore."
Just when DeVylder thought her confront had been plastered in every corner of the web, information technology erupted once more when Sean Hannity shared it on Facebook at the finish of the year, with the timely message: "The Electoral College electing Trump is unfair … says the party that used 'super delegates' to elect Hillary."
"I would be embarrassed if a flick of me having a psychotic pause posted a one thousand thousand times all (over) the web!" one adult female wrote in response. "Get a inkling and check yourself in to a mental facility."
Here again, DeVylder tends to become analytical, not defensive. Her meme life has left her feeling that conservatives and liberals alike can be hypocrites. Everybody has confirmation bias. We all honey to experience smug in victory.
"Nosotros fight in some instances for inclusion and open arms," she said of her half of the political spectrum, "and all the same we depict lines when it comes to people who may exist conservative."
Simply even for the nicest of Iowans, at some point introspection becomes annoyance. DeVylder would like to think that her digital doppelganger has expired, but she expects to endure at least i more round.
"I'm anticipating that it will be used once again for the inauguration," she sighed. "You lot just know it will."
That's a safe bet for January. twenty. At the very least, DeVylder seems to have rekindled her political fire. In blogging about the incident, she publicly committed herself to a laundry listing of next steps, including:
"I will not notice joy and boast in other people's sorrows."
"I will model for my children the way I would hope they would conduct themselves."
"I volition not fight detest with hate."
"I will work to ensure more young people appoint and vote."
And she concluded with a question:
"What will you do?"
Who said no good could come from a hateful-spirited meme?
Kyle Munson can exist reached at 515-284-8124 or kmunson@dmreg.com. See more of his columns and video at DesMoinesRegister.com/Munson. Connect with him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (@KyleMunson) and on Snapchat (@kylemunsoniowa).
Source: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/local/columnists/kyle-munson/2017/01/11/how-crying-liberal-iowan-became-worldwide-meme-gloating-over-trumps-win/96252908/
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