“Remaking the world memetically”: interrogating white nationalist subject formation through the circulation of the “Wagecuck” meme

ABSTRACT This essay examines the wagecuck, a 4chan meme portraying wage workers and NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) counterparts, as an artifact of white nationalist desire. Through a rhetorical materialist analysis focused on exchange, I argue that wagecuck memes encourage viewers to pursue white recognition to offset anxieties of race, class, and sexuality. The meme circulates cuckold and wage-slave tropes to construct the white working-class man as a human agent in pursuit of antiblack jouissance. This research identifies the fantasy of racial agency as the meme’s operative logic, encouraging scholars to move beyond its humanist underpinnings.