Why Do Government Agencies Tweet About Viral Fads Like 'Yanny'/'Laurel'?
A tweet from the official Twitter account of the US Air Force went slightly viral this morning, and not in a good way. Apparently deciding that the "Yanny"/"Laurel" aural illusion was too good an opportunity to pass up, the Air Force's social media manager sent out a lighthearted message about… uh, strafing the Taliban.
The striking thing about this tone-deaf, ill-advised tweet — which the Air Force later removed — is that the Air Force could easily have just not sent it. No matter how many brands desperately attempt to win our affection and loyalty by tweeting about viral memes, there is no rule that organizations' Twitter accounts must capitalize on every trending hashtag or else perish. This goes double for government agencies, who aren't even technically trying to sell anything.
So why do government agencies and officials tweet about viral memes? Let's take a closer look at a few recent "Yanny"/"Laurel" tweets from other blue-checkmarked government accounts to find out.
The worst kind of governmental viral-trend tweet is the public equivalent of Coca-Cola's account pretending to be a person rather than a corporation. Take, for instance, the Ames Police's "Yanny"/"Laurel" tweet:
Hahaha, yes, the Ames Police Department is just a laid-back, doughnut- and TV-loving crew of nice guys who hate wrongdoing! They would never do anything like fatally shoot a theft suspect or jail innocent black men for weeks without charging them.
But not all government agencies and officials are just transparently trying to curry favor with the public when they jump on viral-trend bandwagons. Some of them are trying to spread a message. And they will shoehorn that message into the meme, or the meme into the message, by any means necessary.
Come on, Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN). We don't believe that's what you really heard when you played the video.
Sometimes the connection between meme and message is so tenuous that you get the sense that whoever wrote the tweet didn't really have their heart in it:
There's another possibility, too, which is that the social-media managers behind these accounts are perhaps having a little fun with us?
You can imagine an out-of-touch boss asking the New York City Office of Emergency Management's social media manager, "What are we going to do about this 'Yanny'/'Laurel' meme?" and the social media manager deciding to come up with a hilariously dark answer to that question. The segue from "Whoa, haha, people are hearing this recording in different ways" to "Be prepared to have to abandon your home with means of communication during the next natural disaster" in this tweet is so abrupt that we want to believe it's the work of a Weird Twitter genius.
In any case, this is how a government agency should do a viral-meme tweet, if it must do a viral-meme tweet. Don't brag about your accomplishments or try too hard to be human or likable. Just pour that cheesy meme sauce on top of the steamed broccoli policy you'd be serving us anyway.
