Natalia Mielczarek shows how memes have rhetorical value and can affect people in the real world through a case study of the pepperspraying cop meme (Lt. Pike at UC Davis) in “The ‘Pepper Spraying Cop’ Icon and Its Internet Memes: Social Justice and Public Shaming Through Rhetorical Transformation in Digital Culture.” Mielczarek investigates how memes are “more than frivolous visual jokes or mere social chatter” (p. 68), to conclude that, “memes can be instrumentalized as weapons in successful smear campaigns to shame, agitate, and bully on a mass scale with some off-line consequences that transcend public discourse” (p. 78).

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Natalia Mielczarek 通过对“喷洒胡椒的警察”图标及其互联网模因：社会正义和通过数字文化中的修辞转变进行公开羞辱。” Mielczarek 调查了模因如何“不仅仅是轻浮的视觉笑话或纯粹的社交聊天”（第 68 页），得出的结论是，“模因可以作为成功的诽谤活动的武器，以大规模羞辱、煽动和欺负某些人。超越公共话语的离线后果”（第 78 页）。