As the doors of the Secretariat opened for the oath-taking ceremony of the members of the 17th Tamil Nadu Assembly on Monday, social media users finally got the chance to return to their personal and professional lives after two months of relentlessly refreshing their phones for election updates, and controversies. But it seems, even as the political drama moved from campaign stages to the Assembly floor, the Internet isn’t ready to log off yet.
For many, especially young voters and fiercely loyal underage patrons of political leaders, social media became the platform to process politics. Ebinezer Sam Prince A, a social media user, observes, “The impact of TVK’s expansive social media campaign with its virtual warriors has certainly pushed the Dravidian giants off the helm and in its aftermath, forced them to adapt to the current information flow.”
Over the months, the IT wings of several major parties ramped up their online presence to capture the attention of these voters, communicating in a language they understood best: fast, dramatic, funny, brain-rotted, and endlessly forwardable.
However, it came naturally to the hands of the Internet’s online commentators: meme pages and content creators. They transformed every single twist and turn during the season from alliance switch, manifesto promise, campaign speech, and counting-day ups and downs into instantly shareable content. Politics is no longer confined to television debates or newspaper headlines; it is now alive through Instagram posts, WhatsApp forwards, YouTube shorts, political GIF comebacks, Reddit convos, and AI fan-edit pages.
“A single meme or viral video could spread faster than an actual political speech. Sometimes, people who were not even interested in politics started discussing elections because of funny edits, trolls, and relatable content online,” says the admin of @tharkuri.in.thoughts.
Manifestos = Meme Material
Election manifestos may have been carefully drafted — or copied to be better than the ruling government — by political teams, but meme creators showed their creativity in addressing the impracticality and half-baked-ness of them.
One of the currently viral templates jokes that supporters of Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) would have to “invade Iran” to fulfil the promise of six free LPG cylinders per household. Another brought back a dialogue from Siruthai, where the unemployed graduates (Velaiyilla Pattathari) question whether the promised Rs 4,000 monthly allowance would arrive “in cash or cheque”.
Even the newly elected Chief Minister, C Joseph Vijay’s older film Thamizhan, has a comeback for himself. Users revived a scene where his character, Surya, proposes solving India’s debt crisis by asking citizens to contribute Rs 4,000 each, using it to troll ambitious campaign promises and economic claims.
Campaign Content
“Viral moments usually come from speeches, alliance changes, or unexpected reactions that instantly become meme content online,” says the admin of @patchwork._memes.
Though a large number of templates are made out of campaigns every election year, this time, the politicians resorted to establishing their ‘pookie’ version to gain traction among the voters. Starting from the homeground winner, Edappadi K Palaniswami, who made the cameras turn during his campaign at the Mylapore constituency along with Tamilisai Soundararajan with his delightful reactions.
Vijay, who already has a great face value among his nanbas and nanbis, was memed for multiple of his campaign dialogues, such as, “Enaku oru chance kudunga” (Give me a chance), “Thambi keela eranguna pa…eranguna thaan mutham kudupen” (Brother get down…only then I’ll give you a kiss), “What bro? It’s very wrong bro”.
Cine Scenes
Politics and cinema have always been the sensation in the state for many decades now. The 2026 election is not new to these cinema parallels that were drawn. “Tamil audiences understand political situations faster when they are compared with famous film scenes or dialogues. A Vijay, Vadivelu, or Rajini reaction template can communicate emotions better than a long political explanation. Since cinema is emotionally connected to Tamil Nadu politics, pop culture references make memes more shareable and memorable during elections,”says admin of @patchwork._memes. Parallels were drawn from the film Vettaikaran, for announcing Srinath Alnath as TVK’s contender in Thoothukudi constituency.
Unlike Vijay and MGR, not every film faculty who stepped into politics succeeded, and meme pages have never stopped reminding it to the audience. Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan’s long political struggles were contrasted with Vijay’s breakthrough, sparking memes about how the actor had managed to achieve in one election cycle what others could not in years. One of the memes from the Instagram page @iampolitical7 joked with a template from the film Sivaji on how Rajinikanth regrets not contesting during his prime era after witnessing Vijay’s victory.
On the counting day, as the vote count for TVK surpassed AIADMK and DMK, meme pages started trolling Udhayanidhi Stalin, the candidate of Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni constituency, that it will be him who makes the comeback into cinema and not Vijay, who promised that he’d quit cinema once he is into politics. Now, as recently as Monday, memes on the rival party leaders hugging it out at former CM MK Stalin’s home made the rounds with the caption “Boys after abusing each other’s bloodline”.
The cinephile meme creators did not stop with the current politicians, they went on to predict and mock other people in the industry. Multiple memes have surfaced which suggest that Pradeep Ranganathan will be filing his CM nomination in 2036 elections and will make ‘Oorum Blood’ from Dude as national anthem.
Ebinizer notes another meme culture that went viral during this election, “The edited version of Trisha and Vijay in the iconic Sengol poster of MGR and Jayalalithaa — I used that extensively during the campaign period when I saw his fans normalising being in an alleged relationship with an actress while in an institution called marriage.” But most of the memes surrounding Vijay-Trisha were focused on demeaning Trisha’s character and identity while Vijay was sidelined like the coin only has one side.
Victory Virality
While campaigns, manifestos and coalition memes were on the spotlight till the result day, from May 4, the victory of TVK has taken the centre stage — trolling as well as praising. Celebrating the two-year-old party leader, Vijay, a satirical meme paralleling the scene from a Hollywood series Sex Education, where a bunch of high school girls start saying “It’s my Vijay-na” (rephrased from vagina) took over the social media feeds just after the party’s success.
Prabu, the admin of @gammunu_irra page on Instagram, says, “The parties allied with the DMK extended their support to the current ruling party (TVK), thereby helping them demonstrate their legislative majority. Consequently, I posted a piece suggesting that — given this situation — the current administration essentially functions as a government formed with the backing of the DMK and captioned it: ‘You can’t criticize the DMK hereafter; otherwise, they might withdraw their support.’ That particular post has surpassed 5,00,000 views.” Concurring, @patchwork._memes’s admin also adds that mostly debates, fan wars, and opinion sharing happen in comments and sometimes even opposite supporters enjoy the same meme differently.
Memes questioning Vijay’s knowledge have also been gaining attention. For example: a video template from Sura song ‘Naan Nadandhal Adhiradi’ where he is performing a dance routine when asked to perform a floor test and asking him to do a three-month internship before entering politics.
After all, in a state where cinema and politics have always shared screen space, memes were perhaps the inevitable next hero entry.