‘The Greems’: how the Greens harnessed online chaos to power a digital campaign

Late last year the official Facebook page of Australian Greens Leader Adam Bandt turned up in a group called “Auspol shitposting”. The Facebook group comprising 3000 very online Australians is dedicated to discussing Australian politics (“auspol”) through the creation and sharing of ironically low-quality memes and posts (“shitposting”). 

It’s not a type of online space where politicians usually hang out — inauthentic, cringe-making social media posts from politicians are often the subject of lampooning by group members — which is why Bandt’s arrival attracted some attention in the group. Members waited for him to post something, posting memes about his silent presence. (Unbeknown to them, Bandt’s participation was an accident. A Greens staffer had accidentally joined with the official account rather than their own.)

Then the Bandt account finally spoke.

In response to a question about changing the group’s name for the election, Bandt responded: “how about “greems” :)”. Since then, Easter eggs referencing the post have been sprinkled throughout the Greens’ social media presence, like posting captions on photos with “the Greems” before editing it to the “The Greens”. The official Greens website even has an official link — greens.org.au/greems — that goes to the Facebook group.

The Greems meme encapsulates the Australian Greens’ improvisational approach to digital campaigning during this election.

Rather than a top-down strategy that sees every meme and shitpost run through layers of party bureaucracy, its digital team has been given the green light to create content that informs its audiences and drives conversation based around a few key messages. For instance, the Australian Young Greens runs a Discord chat server where ideas for TikTok posts are brainstormed and study what’s made other videos successful. 

The tone of the posts is different from the two major parties’ online presence. If the Liberal Party has perfected the “boomer meme”, the Greens have adopted the online posting vernacular and tenor of a younger generation: the Instagram feed looks more like the presence of a political influencer or community page, complete with online explainers and reposted popular content, mixed with what you’d expect from a political party. 

Important to the strategy has been the organic collaboration with other online creators and communities. The official Greens Facebook and Instagram pages have frequently been reposted with attribution content from pages like Australian Greens Memes for Actually Progressive Teens (which is, according to the page’s bio, not run by Greens staff) and the Simpsons against the Liberals. These pages are treated almost like online constituencies, like an MP visiting a local club. This two-way involvement creates a feedback loop: the party boosts the pages’ reach, and the pages will often in return share their content or ideas. 

An example of this in practice is the “if you recognise [X] then you will not be affected by the Greens plans to tax billionaires and corporations” meme format. Created by Australian Memes for Actually Progressive Teens, the format allowed people to remix and play with it — sharing nostalgic items that represent a middle- or lower-class upbringing in Australia — while also effectively communicating a major Greens policy.

One thing that’s helped is having Bandt as leader. In 2019 Richard Di Natale didn’t even have a personal social media presence. Bandt on the other hand seems more of a natural on social media. He’s just as comfortable speaking to camera about climate change as he is appearing alongside a CGI dancing giant Shrek looming over Parliament House (which is the format of a popular TikTok meme). 

Other candidates have been allowed to shine too. Stephen Bates earned plenty of media and social media attention for his campaign to take the seat of Brisbane by running ads on LGBT dating platform Grindr, featuring double entendres such as “You always come first with the Greens”. Meanwhile, a video of Bates posted to the Australian Greens TikTok account criticising the two major parties’ positions on JobSeeker payments to the tune of Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody” also went viral.

Greens’ digital content is all over the place. That’s by design. It reflects the unstructured nature of online political discourse spread across different platforms, mediums and formats. They’re trusting they can harness the power of shitposting into results at the ballot box.