While the feed laughs, someone decides for you

On October 11, an anonymous voter went to the pro-Lula rally on Avenida Paulista with a “Lula/Alckmin 13” flag and a Palestinian flag. A post with four photos of him shirtless, captioned “This is very serious”, topped 51,000 likes and 690,000 views^[4].

What went viral was not the rally, the election or Palestine: it was a man’s body. The meme is not the problem. The problem is that the feed chooses what gets talked about, and it is almost never what matters.

When Daniel Vorcaro, of Banco Master, was arrested, the PF seized more than R$ 2.6 million in cash, a R$ 200 million plane and vehicles worth more than R$ 25 million. Social media laughed at his messages to his girlfriend and at the haircut in his official photo^[5].

An audio of Flávio pressing Vorcaro for installments of the film about Jair Bolsonaro (“Imagine us stiffing a Jim Caviezel”) also became a meme. Flávio is not accused and states: “I did not offer favors in return”^[6]. In the files of Epstein, a financier convicted of sex crimes, what went viral here was a Silvio Santos prank^[7].

A Reuters investigation showed that the US military ran, from 2020 to mid-2021, at least 300 fake accounts on X against the Chinese Sinovac vaccine, starting in the Philippines. A senior Pentagon official confirmed the secret propaganda^[1]. According to Reuters, Trump authorized a covert CIA campaign on Chinese social media in 2019^[8].

Meta found links to the US military in a network of fake profiles^[9]. In 2015, an article in a NATO-linked journal proposed embracing “memetic warfare”^[10]. It was a proposal, not a proven program. But it shows that some see memes as a tool of power.

A confidential ABIN report, revealed by Folha, assigns a “criticality level” to the risk of US interference in the election and points to a “trend of escalating pressure on Brazil”^[11]. This is a risk assessment, not proof. According to Reuters, ABIN members told Europeans of US and Russian interference. ABIN did not comment, and Washington has denied interfering^[12].

In July 2025, on the day Trump announced 50% tariffs on Brazil, Flávio posted: “Thank you President @realDonaldTrump”. In August 2026, he said on Jornal Nacional that his brother “was wrong” to thank him, without mentioning his own post^[13]. In our reading, those who welcome outside pressure will not defend Brazil from it.

Workers who are scattered, each in their own feed, lose. Those who profit keep profiting. In 2012, 16.1% of workers were union members; in 2024, 8.9%. An IBGE analyst links the drop to the 2017 labor reform, which ended the mandatory union contribution^[2].

When there is organization, concrete gains follow: the Chamber approved, 461 to 19, the end of the 6x1 schedule, with a 40-hour week without wage cuts and two days off a week. It was “a struggle that began a long time ago”, said deputy Alice Portugal^[3]. Talk, organize, reach out to your union. And on October 25, vote with workers in mind.