Meme creators have a field day with TN election results

Meme creators have a field day with TN election results

Komal.Gautham@timesgroup.com

Chennai:04.05.2021

From the moment counting began on Sunday for the Tamil Nadu assembly elections, meme creators have been on fire. For them, the weekend’s events had given enough ammunition to release a salvo of shots against both the losing politicians as well as their favourite IPL team Chennai Super Kings who had just lost to the Mumbai Indians a day before the election results were announced.

Among the first in the line of fire was MNM leader Kamal Haasan, who featured in a meme showing a picture of Faf Du Plessis of the CSK, dropping MI batsman Pollard’s catch next to a photo of him, seated dejected at the counting centre, watching his votes slip away in Coimbatore south constituency, and a heartbreak symbol between the two. The meme though scored 40,000 likes within a few hours.

Gautham Govindaraman, Founder and CEO, Chennai Memes, says they kept their jokes ready a day earlier, taking into account all possible scenarios. “As the results for the Coimbatore South constituency were delayed, we created memes for both outcomes,” he says.

“When exit polls were declared, we had an idea about what the results were likely to be. We had our team working on them since then,” says Gautham.

Some of the most popular memes on election result day included ones on MK Stalin’s victory, Udhayanidhi Stalin winning Chepauk, Khusboo losing Thousand Lights constituency, and O Panneerselvam and Edappadi K Palaniswami’s (EPS) reactions to the results.

Among the trending memes of the day was a short clip from the movie ‘Annamalai’, in which Rajinikanth (MK Stalin) walks towards the conference meeting and Sarath Babu (EPS) gives way to him.

Another meme features a smiling EPS with the caption, “I have passed everyone (students), but you have failed me (in the election)”, referring to his announcement earlier this year declaring that all students were promoted to the next grade on account of the pandemic.

Actor Rajnikanth seemed to feature in several of the memes. One in particular showed him with his hands above his head and the tagline, ‘Thankfully I escaped’, referring to the superstar’s constant dithering about joining politics.

However, meme creators say one has to be careful not to offend while creating memes. “It is a very thin line and one cannot go overboard,” says a meme creator.

COMIC RELIEF: A meme of Rajinikanth says “Thank God, I escaped.” (Left) A meme in which Dhanush asks Seeman,“If testing times are rare, it's fine, but all the time?”