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UC Berkeley’s Golden Bears are embracing the “woke” label as a rallying cry this soccer season, turning what was meant to be an insult from some Southeast rivals right into a meme.
The historically middling school soccer program joined the Atlantic Coast Convention this 12 months, that means its staff will play video games in components of the nation that it not often visited in years previous.
Or in different phrases, the Bears are visiting locales that don’t fairly resemble their habitat within the onetime hippie hotbed and free speech capital of Berkeley, California.
Some followers at rival colleges have welcomed the Bears by mocking them as far-left radicals on-line, bringing the tradition wars to the already scorched-earth digital battlefield of school soccer memes.
A catalyst of the marketing campaign seems to be a meme, “You simply misplaced to the woke agenda,” which was posted by an X person shortly after Cal’s upset win at Auburn two weeks ago. The submit has drawn greater than 5 million views on X as of Friday afternoon.
The meme’s creator, 24-year-old grad scholar Miles Goodman, stated he’d been considering for months about how he wished to reply conservative mockery of his faculty.
“It was very impulsive (posting that meme) however on the similar time, it additionally wasn’t,” Goodman informed NBC Information on Friday night time.
“By taking it on from a satirical lens, I feel it let lots of Cal followers take possession of that label and permit us to embrace it on our personal phrases. And concurrently, it pokes enjoyable at how different followers throughout the nation have traditionally perceived the college.”
Efforts to tag Cal followers and their soccer staff as harmful leftists have been greeted with glee by Bears backers, who within the final week have flooded social media feeds with memes that poke enjoyable at what a few of their rivals assume “woke” tradition is.
Cal followers embraced a “Calgorithm” challenge by taking to social media to help nearly each hot-button subject that’d boil the blood of any conservative tradition warrior.
“Our fan base is so self-aware of how we’re perceived, we don’t at all times assume that that’s appropriate, however it’s simply been simpler for every of us, particularly these days, to not struggle in opposition to these labels,” stated Cal fan Nam Le, a 33-year-old highschool English trainer who’s among the many meme posters on X.
“The fact is Cal soccer has followers which are anarchist, leftist, left leaning, liberal, centrist, proper leaning, in all probability not any MAGA, however it’s a giant tent of individuals right here regardless of these stereotypes that exist.”
Memes posted by Cal followers have included photos of rainbow flags or joked about local weather change, gender identification and pronoun use.
“FSU has introduced a Stripe Out this Saturday vs Cal!” one account on X wrote, sharing a picture of the Florida faculty’s stadium edited so as to add a rainbow throughout the sphere and within the stands.
The submit added: “Test your row quantity:
60s: Marxist Crimson
50s: Orange
40s: They/Them Yellow
30s: Capitalism is a Crime Inexperienced
20s: Atlantic Coast Blue
0-19: Open Border Purple.”
Some customers have additionally joked about immigration, DEI insurance policies and demanding race principle.
Le, the Cal fan, stated he’s hopeful the football-fueled meme tradition battle may lead followers to raised perceive one another.
“It’s essential that the memes are at all times in a spot that’s so exaggerated and absurdist that hopefully it’ll really dispel a few of it [stereotypes] by means of assembly us on the bottom [at games],” Le stated. “They’ll see we’re simply well mannered and regular individuals, and that we are able to work together and symbolize ourselves effectively throughout the nation. This would possibly do some good to shut a few of this political hole.”
Cal will face the Florida State Seminoles on Saturday at 7 p.m. ET.
