Endless Thread - MEMES, Part 8: The Scream

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

If you typed “inauguration” into your web browser anytime between 2017 and 2020, you likely saw, near the top of your search results, an image of a person in a neon green jacket, black winter hat and glasses screaming “Nooooooooooo!” That person was Jess, who was in Washington D.C. on January 20, 2017 to protest the inauguration of President Donald Trump. This “Nooooooooooo!” flew out of Jess after the oath of office, during what seemed to be a deeply painful and private moment. But what Jess didn’t know at the time was that they were being filmed by a UK media outlet. Within hours, this became the scream heard ‘round the world, the meme seen ‘round the world, and a symbol of “liberal fragility” for Trump supporters. Fearing for their safety, Jess went into a sort of hiding – on social media, and in their personal life. Four years later, Jess tells their story for the very first time.

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It felt like, it felt like being on the Titanic and being like, I know the iceberg's coming, I know the iceberg's coming, and oh my God, one, two, three, and we're hitting it. We are talking to a person we're calling Jess outside on a spring day in March of 2021. But they're telling us about a different day.

Inauguration Day, January 20th, 2017. And it was like 5 a.m. or something crazy, which to me is just like, that's the ass crackadon. Nobody needs to get up that early. Jess and a friend had traveled hundreds of miles to Washington, D.C., specifically for this day. So we get to D.C., like nobody's around. The streets are empty. It's quiet. I have my camera with me because when I go to events, I love to take pictures. I think it's actually one way that as an introvert I can, like, show up somewhere.

that's what I've always done when I've gone to protest is taking pictures. There was a designated area just off Pennsylvania Avenue for protesters. And my friend was like, bundle the fuck up because we're going to be out there all day. And there's no place to go to warm up. So I had on things like two layer of coats and like all this stuff. And it was just bright green coat. And by bright green, Jess really means neon lime green, almost like a construction worker's uniform with those reflective stripes running along the arms.

When you put on a jacket in the morning, it's rare that you think this will probably be immortalized by the internet forever. Yeah, you really couldn't miss me. You couldn't miss me with that coat on. Turns out, that color will forever haunt me. It was approaching noon, and the street was packed with sign-toating Trump supporters,

protesters, and the sounds of pomp and circumstance. And they have these huge speakers all the way up and down the street. I mean, it felt like we were in freaking Nazi Germany or something. It was like, all of a sudden, it was just this sound of these voices coming over everything.

It was like, you will now listen to us because we're in control. I was like, oh, yeah. But as the actual inauguration proceedings began, something started brewing within Jess. I don't even remember, honestly, what it was, but it was somebody speaking. I was just like, we're so screwed.

But this is so bad. We're in so deep. Missouri Senator Roy Blunt kicked off the swearing-in ceremony. Everyone, please stand for the inauguration, blah, blah, blah. And I just, in my head, I was like, oh, hell no. I was like, if there's one thing I can do right now is not stand for this motherfucker, right?

So I sat down. I first noticed Jess just a few seconds before Donald Trump was about to take the oath of office. This is Martin Geisler. And I work for, as a presenter for the BBC, but back at the time of Donald Trump, Trump's inauguration, I was a foreign correspondent for ITV News, one of the main TV network news programs in the UK.

Martin and his cameraman had been traveling around the U.S. for three or four weeks straight in the lead-up to inauguration day, documenting people's hopes and fears for a Trump presidency. And now, the day and the moment were here, and the emotions for some were high. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I looked about five feet to my right, and there was somebody on their knees on the ground with their head and their hands. Bearing witness to this disastrous moment was, like, all I could do. So I just sat there with my eyes closed.

And it was pretty clear this person was going to give a reaction. So I tapped my cameraman on the shoulder and just pointed down and said, look, film them. The Constitution of the United States. So help me God. And as soon as the oath of office finished, the commentator said, Donald J. Trump is now president of the United States. And that was the moment. And I just, it just came out.

That was the moment just let loose this kind of primal scream. That was pretty much what happened was I screamed and they caught me. Shit. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Siebertson, and this is Endless Thread. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station, and right now we're talking about memes. Their cultural, historical, and personal impact.

I was like, just literally wanted to disappear. Today? The scream. March 25th, 2021. We meet Jess, who's telling their story for the first time to us about the scream that memed them four years ago. Jess shows up on this day in a Black Lives Matter hoodie. Their hot pink, streaked hair, quaffed up into one side.

They're in their 40s, but they have a kind of punk rock vibe and youthful energy. They seem comfortable, but the nerves are definitely there. Do you have, like, sort of a plan of, like, starting with questions and, like, kind of leading the conversation? Yes. Okay. Yes, we do. Whether we stick to them or not is another story. Where we meet is the furthest thing from Pennsylvania Avenue on inauguration day.

We're in a woodsy remote spot, not far from where Jess lives. Jess is an artist living in the Northeast, and there's a reason we're being vague about their actual name and personal details. Jess has basically been in hiding since 2017, in that moment at President Donald Trump's inauguration that led to their screaming face, being plastered across the internet. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Jess is not a big fan of memes. Surprisingly, it's not just because they became one. Because I didn't grow up with TV and stuff, I always missed the references. And actually, so that's been a big thing with me with memes, is like, I don't get it.

But even when Jess doesn't get the joke of a particular meme, which, Jess, I feel you, they get what's fundamentally happening. So as an artist, I can appreciate taking imagery and showing. sharing it and changing it and playing off of each other, having the images play off each other. Which is how content gets memeified. Remember our group of meme experts who were calling our meme chorus? They talked a good bit about this. They take off in a way that becomes replicable.

So we're not talking about the same image that's shared over and over. Great memes invite you to remix them. Then somebody can go and say, oh, I can make my own version. I know how to actually participate in this meme. I guess that a lot of them feel really lowbrow, and I don't kind of appreciate the crudeness of the quality. Being in on the joke is one thing. Being the joke is another.

A particular feeling, particular meme subjects know all about. And Jess was about to learn too. But first, they were mulling the rise of Donald Trump and what to do about it. As a queer person, as a person in a female body, as a person in white skin, As an artist, I have wondered and struggled with, like, how do I join in? How do I make a difference? Because I grew up with a lot of, like, political activism around me. And I really thought for a long time that I needed to do some kind of, like, soapbox. Like, and now I think, you know, don't you realize? Like, that kind of energy of like, don't you realize. And I was like, you know what? It's just not me. I just don't like that. It just feels icky. It feels preachy.

So when a friend of Jess is asked if they wanted to go to D.C. to protest on inauguration day. And I was like, no. Let me think about that for a second. No. But then they thought about why they would go. There are so many things wrong right now. Black people being shot. That I'll go for. Like, misogyny, climate change.

Like, just like all these things that were like, okay, you know what? I don't really want to, but if I don't bring my... voice and stand up for what I believe in. Like, that is the ultimate, like, lazy white privilege. So back to that moment on inauguration day. There's a sea of people standing in the protest area. Listening to Donald Trump gets sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. But Jess is sitting, cross-legged on the cold, hard pavement in their neon green jacket.

Like, if I can do something right now, it's not stand. And so I just sat down. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear. I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear. And so just sitting there, it just came from that void, that wellspring of agony of the millennia of people being wronged and nobody being there to say no.

Or them saying no and nobody listening, right? I'm like, here's this guy that's literally like, grab him by the pussy. And they say no, and he laughs. Like, that's who? Preserve, protect, and defend. Preserve, protect, and defend. The Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution of the United States. So help me God. So help me God. Congratulations, Mr. President. No. No, no, no, no, no, no. But in this very moment on inauguration day 2017, this no that was bubbling up with

in Jess, came out differently. And then, it came out again. And again. It felt like the Earth opened up and sent this no through me that was just like, this needs to be heard at this point on this planet. People told me later that it was like 12 of them, I think, in a row. By the third no that came pouring out of Jess, they had their arms straight out to their sides.

Finger spread as if they were giving a command. I felt like it was some kind of spell that I was casting. It was like, I am going to just like push out this energy of no and be like, you don't get to do this anymore. But it was just the beginning of Trump's presidency and of something else that Jess never saw coming. So what happened was I opened my eyes and there was what I experienced as a sea of video cameras.

What happened next would have just going into hiding in a way for the next four years. More in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics. Country music. Hockey. sex of bugs.

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we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR dot org slash creative studio. ITV news reporter Martin Geisler was among the scrum of cameras capturing Jess and their scream.

He had been watching in awe. It was a really profound moment because it wasn't manufactured. It came from somewhere right within this person's soul. And when you see something like that happen, you kind of take a step back and let it sink in. But not too far of a step back. Because Martin and his cameraman were rolling on the whole thing. Jess on the ground, shaking their head, face red, mouth fully agape as they push out these nose through tears. It is arresting.

And if it weren't so out loud and in a crowd, you'd think you were watching the most private moment of someone's life. And right after that arresting moment happened, Martin and his producer interviewed Jess. Briefly, here's what came out. I'm so sorry to my world. I am so sorry to my world. This is not what we want. There's so much potential. For beauty and for devastation.

In this one moment, it's almost incomprehensible that they can exist right now. So. And we are grateful. So close. Imagine having a moment like this. Raw, unfiltered, messy emotion pouring out of you to the extent that you're not sure you're even stringing sentences together. We've all had these moments.

And if we're lucky, they happen in the arms of a loved one, or alone in the shell. or basically anywhere other than in public and on camera at arguably the biggest event in the world that day. When video producers are in the field, they often get permission from their subjects to use the footage. And by the time Martin's producer approached to ask if they could use the footage, Jess was drained and dazed and didn't think much of it. They didn't know what ITV was anyway. So I just was like, sure, whatever, use it. Really not thinking that through, like what that might mean.

What it meant in this case is that Jess's scream was going up online for anyone to find. I can't remember whether I tweeted it. I think I probably did. And almost immediately, people found it. We went back to the office and started the edit to put the film together for that night's news. And I think the producer came up at some point during that and said, look, have you seen this? It's going crazy. I get this text from somebody that I didn't know super well, you know, an acquaintance.

Oh, were you in Washington at the protest? Were you wearing a green coat? And I was thinking, oh man, no way, he's here. He saw me. I wrote back, yeah, yeah, were you here? And he didn't write back. And I was just kind of like, okay, whatever. And then somebody else, again, that I don't know super well, but that I know,

texted me. This was even later that same night. And it was like, do you know that like you're like online? And I was like, what are you talking about? And she's like, yeah, like your video, the video of you. And I was like, and it just, it just made me feel sick. It was pretty late at this point. Jess was staying at their friend's house in D.C.

And their friend was already asleep. But Jess was starting to panic. So they went downstairs to where their friend's mom was watching TV. And I walk in and I. I'm like, I need, like, can I talk to you? And, you know, she's somebody that had done plenty of protests in her day and whatever. And she was like, well, you know, it's not like it's going to be on the Washington Post. You don't need to worry.

That is some quaint consolation right there. Although the friend's mom was right, it wasn't the Washington Post just needed to worry about. It was the World Wide Web. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, real news sites, fake news sites. The scream was spreading. The next day, Jess, was at the, women's march, their green jacket back on among a mess of pink hats when they heard from another friend. And she's like, already over five million people have viewed it. And my brain is just like,

like I can't comprehend that number. What does that even mean? Five million people have already viewed it. And what have they viewed? Just described the feeling of being in a coma when they screamed no. So recollection that it happened maybe, but they certainly hadn't seen it. But by then, millions of other people had. It was the moment of the day, of a massive day, and it summed up for me what a huge chunk of America was feeling that day. So I'm not surprised it went viral. From virality, it jumped into full-blown memehood.

People made it their own, adding fake captions for the scream in the comments section, things like vegans when they find out they are made of meat. And when people from Britain realize that websites use cookies instead of biscuits. And lactose intolerant people when they realize they live in the milky way. A lot of this stuff is, you have to admit, kind of funny. But when your particular meme is political, people use you for their own ridicule, which can feel different from the other kinds of meme jokes. Some Trump supporters were quick to chalk Jess's reaction up to, quote,

liberal fragility, including this YouTuber who added some. some jazzy piano and wintry clip art to the original video. Cheer up, Snowflake. Everything's going to be all right. Brought to you by people who are tired of your bullshit. Traveling even further and faster, perhaps, were the gifts and the screenshots. Screamshots of the epic no.

You would look up inauguration and you'd see pictures of Trump and you'd see me screaming. Like, that would be what would be. would come up, and that blew my mind. People made drawings of Jess's face. They photoshopped a MAGA hat on their head. Others showed Trump embracing Jess, or worse, from behind. There are endless iterations.

Many of them messed up. Cruel. Jess says they had the classic car crash reaction to the onslaught of online response. You want to look away. You should look away. But I couldn't stop looking. It was like, oh my God, there's another meme. And I'd read all the comments.

and it would just be like this vibe. I mean, some of the stuff I literally won't even repeat. It's so triggering. And I was like, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Like, there you go. You just proved why I said all that. Just didn't say much more about this feeling of being glued to watching how something they did

was being twisted, weaponized, ridiculed exponentially as it flew around the internet. Except they said, it's really awful what people will say when making you into a meme. There is one iteration, though, that Jess has actually come to appreciate. And fortunately, it's the one that rose to the top to give the meme its official name in the online memecyclopedia. Know Your meme.

Luke Crywalker. If you have recently resurfaced from being under an actual rock since, say, 1980, boy, do we have a doozy of a Star Wars spoiler for you. There's the scene where Luke finds out that Darth Vader's his dad. And he screams, no. in this like way that's the way I screamed out search the feelings who know it to be true

so of course someone made a mash-up of the two I am your father and I was like that's just freaking brilliant I mean it's funny right because it's like totally like that is so Trump is like Darth Vader

like no I cannot be my dad Jess also delighted in a more subtle aspect of the Luke Crywalker moniker. They couldn't tell my gender, and I am genderqueer. Like, I'm non-binary. And so I loved that when people were like, that person, or just even like thinking they

were like being mean by being like, was it a girl? I don't know. It's like, ha-ha, yeah, you don't know, do you? A gender Jedi mind trick. But as any true Star Wars fan knows, Luke's weakness is fear. Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate.

Hate leads to suffering. I think one of the most painful things about how it affected me personally was I didn't feel safe putting my name out there anymore. It's hard to describe what it feels like to be the subject of a meme that blows up. People immediately start trying to figure out who you are. And where you are. So if anybody knows where that inauguration screamer is, please post it below. on their motivations, you might not want people to find you, but people were trying to find Jess, Docs Jess, maybe do worse than had already been done.

Friends were like, take yourself off social media, like, people are going to come find you and want to harass you and potentially hurt you. Like, that was the honest, like, response I was getting from people that knew me and knew this was happening. But beyond the fear of any physical harm, Jess was most worried about losing their sense of purpose. and even their sense of self. Part of the process for me was trying to wrap my head around the fact that it wasn't me. It was a person that was screaming no. Like it wasn't this personal identity of something about me specifically that was going viral.

And because for a long time it was like, oh, like, oh my God, this is so mean or these comments are so violent. It was like, I felt it all. and friends and family and my therapist and people kept being like, you need to separate yourself from that image. Jess wasn't sure how to do that. For a while, they were keeping a list of all the different scream memes they came across.

They thought maybe they could turn it into some sort of work of art. But even that felt insurmountable. Jess couldn't use it to their advantage. It was too much, which was obvious to the people around Jess. We spoke to a few of Jess's friends, and they all said some very, variation of the same thing. Just became more timid, more guarded, more selective in who they

spoke to and what they were willing to share. Just didn't reinvent themselves or stop making art or become a recluse off the grid. They went into a more emotional sort of hiding. And as a result, Jess's light just dimmed. Something that was pretty remarkable, actually, in the age of infinite connection of the internet, the people looking for for Jess, couldn't find them. But the thing is, what do we know about her? She seems to have completely disappeared from the face of the planet since that one day where she rode into fame.

This is a YouTuber still posting about Jess's image in 2020, almost three years after their scream became a meme. Why didn't she monetize herself? I mean, seriously, there's posters of her, there's memes of her, there's, there's There's all kinds of things. In fact, her face has become the laughable face of the feudal resistance to Trump. So I'm curious. Where did you go?

What happened? Just has felt some regret over shying away from public view after all this. But it has nothing to do with money. I did not feel like I had it in me. Like literally, I didn't have the life force, the energy in me to, like, go. head into head with anyone that wanted to come at me about this. I felt really bad about that, actually, for a long time. It was like, really?

Like, you basically were just given a platform. You could be like, hey, that was me, and here's what I mean, and I'm going to say this other thing, and I'm going to point to this thing, and I'm going to be like, rah, raw, raw, soapbox, right? 15 minutes. I got it, and I did nothing with it. Jess isn't exactly looking for a second shot of that 15 minutes. As we said, this interview with us, it is the first one they've done.

since talking to ITV news four years ago in the middle of Donald Trump's inauguration. And they've been asked before. It's a big deal for Jess and a big step, one that Jess feels ready to take in part because of an epiphany they've had recently about memes. I think that memes are interesting in that they're an opportunity for people to kind of project onto a shared surface, right?

Like a shared image, a shared concept. like something about themselves. Something about themselves that, like, it says more about them than it says about me. And that was interesting to finally, like, register that. I think that speaks so strongly to the flaws in our culture. It's like anyone that stands up for the underdog, anyone that stands up for themselves,

anyone that, like, wants to speak out on something immoral, it's like, oh, let's shame them so that we don't look bad. And I think there's something at the root of all that that's just like people missing accents. to their own power? It's like if you don't have access to your own no or your own power and you try to take away other people's and their no or their yes, whatever it is, and their power, it's like that's dark. There's another side to this, though, because a few months before we sat down with Jess, almost exactly four years after they became a meme, ridiculed for the way

they accessed their no in protest of Donald Trump's inauguration, we saw a kind of mirror image, much more violent and distorted come into view. And breaking news tonight, the deadly siege on Congress as an angry pro-Trump mob storms the U.S. Capitol. We've seen shocking images of chaos. Pro-Trump protesters, many of them armed, some of them displaying the imagery of white supremacy, stormed the U.S. Capitol and looted the building, causing destruction of property, committing acts that are currently being prosecuted as assault and conspiracy. Testimony in court has revealed how rioters beat and maced police, officers and shouted death threats at those officers. Things like kill him with his own gun. Some are calling these acts of treason. Whatever you call it, it is a far cry from Jess's scream,

which was in some ways a scream of resignation, not a violent resistance to a new regime. Jess's scream didn't hurt anyone. But yet again, this intense political moment where one group became the in-group, and another group felt like it became the out-group and was not happy about that resulted in memes. Tonight, new video has been released in the case against the so-called QAnon Shaman as he faces charges for his role in the capital insurrection. And again, some of those memes inspired uninvited, all-out searches to find the subjects of them. In some cases, the meme images were used to arrest people,

prosecute then. So there are parallels here, even if it's hard to compare an armed attack on the capital to just screaming no. What is worth thinking about is how you can become a meme while trying to find some agency in the midst of a real or perceived attack on your personal freedom. And whoever you are, whatever you believe, when you become a meme, you become a little less human in the eyes of people seeing the meme, which only drives the wedge between differing political ideologies deeper. This conversation has made me think more about this story than I have done at any moment in the last five years. I mean, tell me about Jess.

You know, how is Jess after all this and what impact did it have on her? Because I've never had a chance to find out. Across the pond, Martin Geisler, the journalist who captured the scream, hasn't followed the meme in its many iterations. But he also hasn't lost sight of the fact that it might not exist at all without him. It's a great ethical and moral dilemma for our industry, isn't it? It is interesting to think about. What responsibility do the people who maybe don't make the memes,

but who make them possible have in their existence? Where Martin lands on this as a journalist is actually pretty simple. If you're asking me if I was in the same situation again tomorrow, would I do the same thing? Yeah, I would. I would hate it ever to be used as an opportunity to tell people to sanitize and to think carefully about, situations like that and perhaps hold back from including footage like that because the wickeder

elements online might change it, manipulate it, use it to their advantage, because down the end of that road is the end of our industry. It's not a good place to go. Martin was doing his job, offering a window into the inauguration, unfiltered, uncensored, unsanitized. Jess had brought their camera there that day to do the same thing. They just never saw themselves being in the spot. And neither Martin nor Jess could have imagined the consequences. But to answer Martin's question about how Jess is doing today... Honestly, it feels like I got in a bad accident and, like, my bones have healed. It's like, okay, so I might always have a slight limp around this issue.

But I don't want to not do things with my life because this happened. I'm really... I want to move on. The Internet is moving on. Don't believe us? Google me this. Inaguration meme. What do you get? You get a picture of Senator Bernie Sanders, face-masked, legs crossed, hands crossed at the wrist,

wearing a pair of comically oversized, handmade, adorable mittens. In Vermont, we dress warm. We know something about the cold. And we're not so concerned about good fashion. We want to keep warm. These are different times for Jess, too. They're in the process of launching a business related to their art, putting themselves out there in a big way. And they're revisiting the idea of making something out of the screen memes and the pictures they took on inauguration day. Jess might even dust off the old bright green jacket.

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Big thanks to our meme chorus, Sarah Laola, Joan Donovan, John Lucas Strangini, Amanda Brennan, Kenyada cheese, and Don Caldwell. Please go find their work and benefit from their meme genius. Our series and our show is made by producers Dean Russell, Norris Sacks, and Quincy Walters. We're co-hosted by us, Amory Severson. And Ted McTetterson. And Ben Brock Johnson. This episode was edited by Mauree McMurray. Mix and sound design by Paul Vicus.

Original music in this episode also by Paul Vycis. Special thanks and additional production work from Josh Crane, Frank Hernandez, Kristen Torres, Sophie Codner, and Rachel Carlson. Endless thread is a show about the Blossack. Lurred lines between digital communities and a sandbox for adults enjoying libation and moderation. That might be your best one yet, then. I got to say. If you've got an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or a wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up.

Or if you have a sandbox for adults enjoying libation and moderation, please also hit us up. Email endless thread at WBU.R. are.org. Stay cool forever.