Sociolatte: Eastwooding Meme

Friday, August 31, 2012

Eastwooding Meme

Eastwodding is a Clint Eastwood inspired Meme that is fast gaining a lot of traction on the internet also know as Invisible Obama and Empty Chair . The meme has to do with users pointing to an empty chair and taking a photo. Which is then shared on Twitter and other social media sites like Reddit and Tumblr. There are also a couple of variations. Some users point to an empty chair while some other use the image of Clint speaking to an empty chair and adding their own images to the empty chair. This is an image macros and can be done with Photoshop.

How did the Eastwooding Meme begin.
It all began on the national stage of the GOP National Convention Thursday night, When Clint Eastwood spoke to an empty chair addressing it as 'President Obama'. The internet then responded to it, in the only way it know how - create a meme.

Here is the video of the empty chair speech

After the speech Eastwooding started trending on Twitter under the hashtag #Eastwooding - with users sharing photos of them pointing to empty chairs. Soon after the speech there was a Twitter account called @InvisibleObama which has already gained over 57,000 followers. There is also a Tumblr for Eastwooding and a Reddit subreddit called /r/eastwooding. BuzzFeed also picked up the trend and posted pics of it. There is also a Facebook page called Eastwooding. You can also follow all the images being shared for Eastwooding on Google+ by typing in eastwooding. There is a fantastic collection of pics on Google+.

How did President Obama respond to Eastwooding.
The president's camp saw the humor and responded by Tweeting a pic called 'This seat's taken', a picture of Obama sitting in his chair taken from behind with the caption on the chair reading - 'The President'.