Memes and social satire -- future GCSE-History sources?

2022 was named the ‘year of the nepo baby’ following New York Magazine’s 19th December edition with the cover article ‘She has her mother’s eyes. And Agent’ by Nate Jones. It was complete with an ‘An exhaustive taxonomy of the nepo baby–verse’ which used family tree-style diagrams to create analytical portraits of the industry families and their lovely industry babies. As it turns out, your mother's agent is just as inheritable as her eyes – and as advantageous. Likeness to their parents was one of the many currencies that bought nepo and industry babies their spots on red carpets and covers. The modern currency of social media followers, coming with the territory of certain surnames, also purchases brand deals and modelling contracts. There is also the unavoidable fact that including a celebrity’s child in a project ties the celebrity and their credentials to the project too “Someone once said to me, ‘We should hire so-and-so because their parents will come to the opening night,’” – a veteran casting director is quoted. In the month surrounding the issue's release, the phrase dominated social media, pop culture, and interview questions.

The phrase was popular in discourse throughout the year; from TikTok and Twitter, there was a continual stream of exposés of family lineage and revelations found through well-timed internet searches. New talents and it-boys and girls of the year had parents with Wikipedia pages? – suddenly people were less fond of them, and their social media presence and personalities were less relatable. Perhaps the pinnacle of these revelations was Meriem Derradji’s “Wait I just found out that the actress that plays Lexi is a nepotism baby omg 😭 her mom is Leslie Mann and her dad is a movie director lol.”

Many stars took to interviews and social media to either agree with or deny the accusations of the discourse, did they deserve to be in this position? Is there talent diluted by their lack of work to get to where they are? Is there a lack of work? How much can be attributed to a ‘leg up?’ The debate went on.

As the debate went on, social media and Twitter in particular eventually took a light-hearted, sarcastic approach to the discourse. Satire in the form of nepo-baby-memes emerged. The phrase started to be used ironically as a synonym for something advantageous about your childhood. Your dad owns an aquarium and you got to go and see the fish? Nepo baby. @Cassiesmyth confessed, “I am ready to very bravely publicly acknowledge my privilege as a nepo baby (my mum was my dinner lady so I knew when there was a snow day before any of the other kids)”. But other memes became more nuanced.

An old viral Facebook status “Jobs be forgetting who is in control, b**** I’ll quit right now’ was photoshopped onto the cover of ‘Karl Marx, Capital Vol 1’ (lol). Under the guise of meme-humour the words ‘Nobody wants to work anymore’ of Kim Kardashian were used on Twitter and TikTok in jokes that highlighted inequality and privilege. Outrage at Molly-Mae’s ‘24 hours in a day’ comment was also discussed through the grimaces of memes. Both quotes bought discussions of the labour market, economy, and inequality to the foreground, but through memes and satire. Is it an ‘if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry’ attitude of Gen-Z? Everything is humour, even discussions around socioeconomics and class. Can memes result in and create a dialogue of class consciousness? Are 17-year-olds of the future going to be given them as sources to analyse in their exams about the state of the 2020s?

Nepo-baby memes have bought the reality of generational wealth and privilege into popular consciousness. It has viral-ifyed discussions and the realities of generational wealth. For the memed nepo-babies, it's who their parents and family are, for middle and upper classes, it’s what their parents and family have. Capital and culture capital. How much can memes say about socioeconomic discourse, social politics, and social awareness? The answer could be a lot.

Privileges like being bought your first car by your parents, having rent paid for you, or even buying books from the scholastic book fair are humorously being stated as badges of nepo-babyism. Some serious and some complete satire, the ironic (but many a true word spoken in jest?) The Twitter trend is acknowledging the factors at play in privilege, culture capital, capital, and generational wealth.

Originating from the Greek word for ‘imitation’, memes are ‘cultural genes’ that symbolises the passing of information. A meme ‘acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas’; Dawkins used it when he needed a noun to describe the concept of transmission of an idea. So, they are the perfect vehicle for analysing what is in the spotlight of social and cultural awareness.

When the article and debate were still rife, Lilly Allen took to Twitter to say “The nepo babies y’all should be worrying about are the ones working for legal firms, the ones working for banks, and the ones working in politics”, and she’s…right? (She discredits her point by adding that only this version is ‘robbing people of opportunity’, forgetting actresses and actors are people searching for opportunities, but her first point is spot on).

Lucy Fisher’s article titled ‘UK politics is filled with ‘nepo babies’ from Hilary Benn to Andrew Mitchell’ sheds light on this and we’re confronted with the age-old ‘jobs for the boys’ tone of criticism of the parliamentary organisation. Even if it's not quite nepotism, 20 of our Prime Ministers went to Eaton, and 43 (out of 56) went to Oxbridge for University. Leading our country shouldn’t run similarly to Hollywood. It's light-hearted when it’s the entertainment industry, less so when it’s the people passing laws.

She writes that ‘the number of sitting MPs whose parents were MPs before them is extraordinary’. ‘Cast the net a little wider to include other relatives, forbearers, and spouses, and by my count at least 52 sitting members of the Commons have familial links to other MPs’. (December 2022). The pandemic revealed more nepotism at play in parliament: awarding millions of pounds worth of PPE contracts to your mate, or, in recent news Sunak preparing legislation to introduce digital ID with the rumoured provider being his wife’s family’s company InfoSys.

Lily Allen was also right about nepotism in ‘Legal firms’ and ‘banks.’ Requiring a university degree at least, these industries incubate nepotism. Figures from the Department for Education show that white males from low-income families are the "least likely" group to be going to University, therefore income diversity in such sectors is almost impossible. ‘It’s not what you know it’s who you know’ is the anthem of nepotism for a reason. Finding out that Billie Eilish’s mum is a voice actor is a satirisable metaphor for realising they got an internship at a top law firm because their dad’s Uni mate’s a partner there. Or seeing a picture of someone’s parents’ living room on Instagram over Christmas and thinking, oh THAT’S how they can afford to live in London whilst they’re ‘figuring it out’.

Memes are the new political cartoons that we were given in GCSE history.