ANN ARBOR, Michigan: In Vietnam, saying “I’ll call the police on you” is a familiar tease, shorthand for the authority everyone instinctively understands. Thus, it was striking when a Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) police unit’s Facebook page recently reinvented itself as a meme hub.
Until October, the official Facebook page run by HCMC’s anti-drug police looked like any other official page feed, with routine updates, arrest photos, and boilerplate warnings. Then, on Oct 5, it abruptly shifted into playful, Gen Z slang, joking with followers, riffing on memes, and drawing a surge of followers who suddenly found a police account relatable.
The unit seems to be testing a new propaganda style: using humour to create a friendlier, more familiar voice. Research on political humour shows that this tone can make audiences more open to later messages they might otherwise resist.
A closer look at the page reveals a simple formula: Take an everyday moment, flip it into a meme and land on an anti-drug punchline. One viral post of a faux wedding proposal photo gained 108,000 reactions, 3,300 comments and 1,300 shares. It showed a groom lifting a laptop whose screen read, “Shall we turn in drug offenders together?”
The same structure is repeated: for instance, a breakup post becomes, “Why be sad and do drugs when prison is a hundred times sadder?”; a night out becomes “a familiar drift from drinks, to karaoke and a drug-fuelled club, to jail”.
By using slang, emojis and the familiar setup-punchline rhythm of online memes, it makes these police guidances feel like friendly banter. Across topics from heartbreak to nightlife, the page uses the same meme-to-moral formula with humour as the hook, but discipline as the landing point.
The page’s comment sections show how well this worked. Instead of scripted praise or coordinated amplification that is common on state-aligned social media pages, the responses are messy and unmistakably organic.
Users riff on jokes, tease the page admin or half-jokingly ask about cash rewards for turning in dealers. That blend of humour, irritation and candid exchange is precisely why the page now operates as a social space that Vietnamese youth are helping to shape.
Source: CNA
