While Douglass Mackey ("Ricky Vaughn") may be a largely unsympathetic character, his trial and conviction raise troubling concerns regarding free speech. Whether or not his memes were satire — a factual question that the jury in Mackey worryingly never seems to have considered — there remains a major First Amendment concern embedded in Mackey’s case, centered around satirical content in the digital spaces that have emerged in the last decade. Memes are a new form of digital communication that nearly always contain unserious elements. Using memes to prove a criminal conspiracy risks chilling a vast amount of speech on social media, especially if this is done without consideration of mens rea. Compounding the concerns over Mackey’s conviction is the fact that the political valence of Mackey’s case is impossible to ignore. The case has become a cause célèbre for right-wing political commentators, and Mackey is widely considered to have been selectively prosecuted for “posting satirical memes” online.