Natural Gas Lobbyists Target Millennials With Sweet Fracking Memes
How do we reach the youths? Hire some memelords, obviously.
How in the world can millennials be reached? Instead of asking them, many companies often resort to catchy twitter accounts and creating quick Vines that somehow relate to whatever meme is popular at the time. Over the past year alone, memes have been used by Presidential candidates in a desperate effort to get “the youths” to the polls. The Sonic the Hedgehog twitter account practically thrives off of creating its own memes and in-jokes that are just commercial enough for die-hards to appreciate, and non-die hards to understand.
With that in mind, one of the latest efforts to connect with young people on a major issue comes from the world of fracking, as lobbyists continue to push their efforts toward building support of the controversial practice. Enter FrackFeed, a sort of BuzzFeed for fracking (no, seriously, that’s what it is — right down to most of its otherwise shoddy web design) complete with a gallery specifically for memes about fracking.
The site is celebrating its first year anniversary this week, and while its daily users might appreciate it, several others don’t. The site is run by a lobbying group known as North Texans for Natural Gas.
The controversial method of mining gas has many opponents, due to the fact that it involves drilling into the earth before injecting shale rock with a high-pressure mixture of water, sand, and chemicals to release the gas inside.
Other groups have caught on to the method, though, and even took a shot at Pokemon Go recently:
Others have simply grabbed memes from the now-convenient FrackFeed:
But does it work? Let’s ask my fellow kids:
It’s probably not smart to market to a projected image of Millenials, but FrackFeed is going for it anyway. The site puts a particular focus on cell phones, jewelry, nail polish, and fad-focused material items meant for the self-obsessed idea of today’s youth. It feels a little bit like being teased about Pokemon Go by a drunk, distant uncle who still refuses to use anything but Yahoo mail, but something must be going right, since the site has been fracking memes up for about a year now.
