The political meme has found fresh life thanks to TikTok, which is sardonic, absurd, and occasionally plain unpleasant. However, to what extent is it genuinely impacting the general election?

With almost eight million views on a five-second video of him mouthing the lyrics to an Eminem song, “guess who’s back?”, Nigel Farage is the unexpected breakout star of TikTok this election.

The 60-year-old Reform UK leader’s passion of hip-hop was not previously well-known; his inexperienced social media team created the video.

However, other content bearing the Farage brand consistently outperforms anything created by his political competitors, and the number of followers on his personal account exceeds that of Labour, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats put together.

Even while Reform UK has 197,000 followers and fewer footage of Mr. Farage posing for the cameras, it is still more popular than the Tory account.

The first video that the Tories created, headlined “this will change lives,” had Rishi Sunak enthusiastically endorsing his national service idea for fifty seconds. It was the best-performing of the bunch. Remarkably, 4.2 million people viewed this.

5.1 million people saw Labour’s 11-second takedown of it, nevertheless.

The caption read, “Rishi Sunak turning up on your 18th birthday to send you to war,” and the old clip of showbiz icon Cilla Black belting out “Surprise, Surprise” was included. The lowercase S in Sunak perhaps contributed to the gritty, real tone of the video.

It was a parody of an already-existing TikTok meme, which is something Labour has a lot of experience with, according to Sam Jeffers of Who Targets Me, a website that monitors political advertising.

It is obvious that labour has individuals who are really tuned on because of the way they communicate and structure films. Their workforce is saturated with internet culture.

Less pleased was Vic Banham, CEO of Antler Social, a TikTok advertising business.

She acknowledges that “they are all as bad as each other,” but she says of Labour’s attempts, “It makes me question their sincerity and what they are going to be like in government.”

“It feels like your dad getting on TikTok to get down with the kids. It feels like a strategy that is not authentic.”

Without a question, bold, eye-catching videos work, but Ms. Banham continues, “There is a way to reach that younger audience on TikTok without bringing that childish, playground bullying energy.”

She states that “people who look and feel like the people they are trying to reach” should be the ones explaining manifesto policies in plain language.

Though the Lib Dems have mocked the Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants to target the Tories, the Lib Dems and Greens have been more straightforward than the main two on TikTok.

However, much like their more established competitors, they have mostly depended on party leaders to convey their primary points.

Although the Tories used “ordinary people” to remark on the national service proposal, there were unwarranted accusations in the comments that they were actors due to the reviews in the tape being overwhelmingly positive.

TikTok is an inexpensive approach to reach a huge, young audience because it does not accept paid political advertising.

But in terms of audience reach, Facebook and YouTube are far larger than it is.

Compared to 48% for TikTok, over 90% of internet adults in the UK use Facebook and YouTube, according to Ofcom.

Sam Jeffers thinks the buzz around this being the first TikTok election is greatly exaggerated for these and other reasons.

“’The TikTok battle’ is a narrative in this campaign that simply won’t die,” he says.

“It’s filling space because the ‘AI election’ never showed up.”

How young people unintentionally become electoral influencers because to social media

He contends that as the campaign nears its finish, the true struggle is being fought on Facebook and YouTube, where the major parties are increasing their expenditure.

The majority of the Conservatives’ cash is being allocated to Facebook, where they can target older, core voters in the UK with their message thanks to targeting capabilities.

Labour spends a lot of money on Facebook as well, but unlike the Tories, they also heavily fund YouTube and Google advertisements that are targeted at certain cities and towns.

X, the old name for Twitter, is one of the platforms that does not release expenditure statistics, making it challenging to obtain the whole picture.

However, £4.2 million has been spent on election advertisements on Meta, which includes Facebook and Instagram, in the first month of the campaign, according to Who Targets Me’s research of the social media ad libraries that are now accessible.

Between June 16 and June 22, meta ad expenditure increased, mostly because of a substantial rise in Tory spending, albeit they are still somewhat behind Labour.

Reform has also increased its Meta expenditures over the last week and begun funding Facebook advertisements using Nigel Farage’s name.

Reform, like the Green Party, is focusing its energies on a far smaller number of seats than the other parties.

The Greens have spent almost £39,000 on Meta advertisements for their co-leader Carla Denyer in Bristol Central since the election was declared; however, the advertisements all aired prior to the 30 May deadline for controlled election expenditures.

In comparison, over the same period, Adam Ramsay, her co-leader, spent £932 on Meta advertisements.

In Scotland, Scottish Labour is outspending the SNP on Meta and the SNP has mostly shunned TikTok.

Still, the political environment is drastically different. “Rejoin the EU” is a central theme of the SNP, a sentiment that is unheard of from any party south of the border.

The Scottish Conservatives’ advertising has made a point of showcasing seats in which they believe they are the only party capable of defeating the SNP.

From the beginning of the campaign, Labour has invested nearly the same amount of money on Wales’ Future brand advertisements on Meta platforms (more than £74,000) as Welsh Labour has (more than £80,000).

These amounts are far higher than those of their competitors – neither Welsh Conservatives nor Plaid Cymru have ever spent more than £5,000 on their primary accounts. Plaid hasn’t advertised more than £1,000 for a single candidate on Meta platforms yet.

The legendary 1979 Tory election poster is almost surely a meme in the modern day.

All of this money used to be used to purchase large poster spots in marginal constituencies.

Posters are now released to the media and, if the parties bother with them at all, driven around central London on the side of a truck for a few hours.

Memes have replaced the sharp, cutting attack lines and questionable assertions about the policies of opposing parties that, depending on your perspective, became certain election posters famous or memorable.

“It’s the billboard of today,” says seasoned PR specialist Mark Borkowski.

“You are playing with people’s feelings about it, not with facts and figures.”

He asserts that there is “a lot fakery” going on and expresses concern about the “amount of bots being used” to disseminate news, saying that “it was always going to be a dirty election.”

In a very competitive setting, he continues, “the person with the greatest memes wins.”

In the UK, political advertising is unregulated, and false statements cannot be brought before the Advertising Standards Authority. As fact checkers did this week with a Tory Facebook ad on Labour’s pension plans, it is up to opposing parties to refute them as best they can.

If social media has taught us anything, it’s that parties may at least take use of the space it provides for detailed reprisal. However, a five-second clip of Cilla Black would work better.

(Adapted from BBC.com)