I suppose this will be my introduction post. This is a recent meme I created with some background on how it was made.

Meme in final form

This is the end result. A commentary on media and the effect on society.

How it was made

Concept

Started with a concept idea. Which is just the statement "nearly all public discourse is debate over fiction from the propaganda machines". Next is the search for how to represent that concept.

There are 2 points I want to make through images.

1. The source of the propaganda and how it is consumed.
2. How that manifests in society.

Finding the assets

For #1, I searched for an image of a person watching TV. This is the image I selected.

For #2, I searched for an image of 2 individuals arguing. This is the image I selected.

Editing the images

I want the person and the TV to be the main focus, so I trimmed the image as below. Additionally, I removed color and the original text so that the replacement text will become the object of focus.
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For point #1, I want to show competing narratives side by side. Something like a left vs right view. So, I took the image above and mirrored it. This gives me the layout I'm looking to present.

​Next, present some competing narratives that both will be obviously false to make the point. So added the following text to the screens.

Next is to make some adjustments in the visual aesthetics to look more interesting and draw attention to the specific difference in each text.

For point #2, I want to show the individuals further apart. It will look better on the meme and give spacing for the dialog bubbles.
First step is removing the background of the image.

I separated the right individual and moved further to the right. However, I am now left with an outline of where the hand overlapped. I will have to repair that with some manual touch up of the arm.

I cleaned up the images and separated into distinct objects so I can place them independently. Also removed color from these images as well.

Next, I added a container for placement in our meme for the point #2 concept. This will be the bottom section of the meme and will bring into focus point #2. This is what I have so far.

Final placement and setting. I now add each individual into the bottom section. They are placed using a luminosity blend mode on the background so the color becomes that of the background.

Final step is adding the dialog bubbles and then setting a background color for the meme backdrop.

How well does the meme make its point? What do you think of the layout and visual aesthetics?

Please let me know if you are interested in seeing breakdowns of other memes or if you have any particular ideas you think would be interesting for me to cover related to memes.

Author - @Dakara (Creator of political/philosophical concept meme/art)
Social Media - MeWe - Gab - Minds - IG - Twitter