I legitimately don’t understand all the hate for Senator Fatima Payman following her speech. I didn’t understand when Chloe Swarbrick was made fun of for the “OK Boomer” comment either.
Politicians try to win votes. They try to change attitudes and to do that, they need to get their message out there. Senator Payman did get her message out there, evidently, and it’s reached who she wanted it to reach. People may be laughing at her, but she’s making Australian youth aware of politics. She’s communicating through memes what would flounder and die in obscurity if communicated in formal terms, because who she’s trying to address aren’t going to respond to formal language.
She is doing Good Politics, and her becoming a meme is a result of that. It’s planned, it’s smart, and it is memorable.
I think people who are opposed to this method of expression are more caught up in everything being done a certain way than whether or not anything is being done at all.