It’s just one of those things that I can’t explain myself.”
Not sure what else to say about it honestly. It’s something that’s passed down from parent to child, prequels and sequels alike. “The culture of Star Wars is so widely beloved - from the music to the effects and everything in between. “I’m not really sure why it resonates with so many people,” says the 21-year-old Swine (he declined to give his real name). And Adventurous Swine decided to help because he liked the films, too, as a kid. Adventurous Swine’s friend started the subreddit because he enjoyed the films growing up and thought it would be fun to start a meme community around them. Only one of the moderators (username Adventurous Swine), agreed to speak with me, and his explanations for the subreddit’s popularity were circular.
I asked the r/PrequelMemes moderators why they thought the subreddit has garnered such a large following, but they were equally resistant to serious introspection. If Star Wars geeks wanted to distract themselves from the Trump regime by sharing Jar Jar Binks memes, they could easily do that on r/StarWars, a subreddit for all things Star Wars. Politics alone seems like an insufficient explanation for the popularity of r/PrequelMemes, though. The only popular political posts on the subreddit are requests to upvote a photo of Naboo Senator Sheev Palpatine (nay, Darth Sidious, Darth Vader’s evil mentor) so that it appears as the top image result when people Google “senate.” There’s been a substantial increase in the amount of innocuous, uplifting content shared on Reddit in the wake of the election, as more and more people look for a respite from our country’s contentious political dialogue. The timing seems to suggest r/PrequelMemes became popular in part because of the 2016 presidential election.