If you open TikTok today, you might see a video of Jeffrey Epstein dancing in the snow wearing a navy blue quarter-zip sweater, featured prominently in the newly released Epstein Files. Scroll through and you might see him wearing the same sweater, hands on hips, gyrating to the tune of Sir Mix-A-Lot. Baby Got Back. And then you might see him again, wearing the same sweater, sitting in a big leather chair, telling his audience: “The worst thing she can say is no.”
None of these videos are real. These are AI-generated memes posted on TikTok’s new account “tryunredacted,” which posts daily clips of Epstein dancing. It has about 50,000 followers and is selling a version of Epstein’s sweater for $54.99. In September, a similar sweater sold for $11,000 at an auction in Miami. It creates a drop in the ocean of Epstein memes.
This week, the Epstein files returned to public view and flooded social media with content.
Screenshots of Epstein’s emails have been posted on X, Bluesky and Instagram, complete with punchline. His name is trending next to jokes, reaction GIFs, and sarcastic captions. These responses come from high-profile nonprofits like the Lincoln Project, founded by a group of anti-Trump Republicans; sesame streetStyle video with Kendrick Lamar lyricsdifferent from us is replaced with a reference to Epstein. “Spill the tea on your best friend on the Lolita Express,” the doll sings to a felt version of the playing cards. They also shared a photo of the film’s director, Brett Ratner. melania In the documentary with Epstein, both men hug women. “This guy had two terrible photos released this weekend.”
Conspiracy theorists are using the files to reignite the “Pizzagate” scandal, a fabricated story about big-time politicians involved in large-scale child abuse. “Pizza was mentioned 900 times in Epstein’s dossier,” one tweet read. “There are no coincidences.”
Something horrifying is happening here. Epstein’s grotesque and extensive network of sexual abuse has become a meme on the internet.
This is no coincidence. To be a meme is to be unrealistic. Memes ironically flatten reality and collapse outcomes. When Epstein becomes the punchline, the crimes associated with him and his powerful friends – rape, human trafficking, systematic abuse of girls and young women – become abstracted. The bodies of victims who are abused, exploited, photographed while being abused, and casually discussed in emails by those in power are transformed into something laughable. Irony creates distance from horror.
And distance breeds popularity. AI-generated videos of Epstein dancing are proliferating across TikTok. An AI-generated TikTok video of him circling in a sweater and miming slapping a woman has received more than 100,000 likes. Another video, which shows Epstein walking a red carpet and locking eyes with convicted sex abuser Sean “Diddy” Combs, received 40,000 likes. Epstein’s rave video has 62,000 likes. The “looksmaxxing” account even imagines what Epstein would look like if he “locked in” (incel-coded language for maximizing sexual appeal), revealing the crossover between Epstein’s meme culture and the manosphere.
However, this phenomenon extends far beyond a single subculture. On TikTok alone, #JeffreyEpstein has been linked to over 64,000 videos, many of which are memes. And it’s not just AI. It also cuts through the actual material. One email has become the subject of popular online analysis and comment. In it, Epstein asked the mystery correspondent, “Are you okay?” and continued, “I loved the torture videos.”
The memization of the Epstein files appears to be acting as a pressure release valve, allowing public involvement without moral considerations. You don’t have to sit in fear while laughing. There is no need to ask who enabled him, who protected him, who profited from his silence, who was complicit in his abuse, when the story itself has become a joke.
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This power relationship reflects a broader political logic. This is a classic Trumpian move, perfected by the current meme-governing regime. Overwhelm the masses with volume and performance until the tone of internet culture replaces truth as the primary signal. This change is compounded by the sheer amount of information exposed: thousands of pages, names, emails, and snippets. When everything is a shock, the shock wears off and you can’t do anything. Responsibility dissolves when every revelation arrives wrapped in irony.
Victims are also disbanded. Back in July, Aric Hudari, a lawyer representing several of Epstein’s victims, warned that memes were “undermining” these women. “It’s enough to let the victims rest. At least acknowledge that they are the ones suffering here,” he said. Their actual living bodies are already in circulation among their abusers. Now, they circulate online as Internet fodder, with their faces covered in black and their bodies unprotected, sometimes minimally clothed or even naked.
Emma Connolly, a social media researcher at University College London, said memes about Epstein’s abuse “obscure the seriousness and reality of the crimes and take the focus away from the victims”. According to Connolly, this is a big influence of meme culture, which “rapidly spreads and normalizes harmful topics by presenting them in a humorous and appealing way.”
Some images that have been shared tens of thousands of times are unforgettable: letters carved on a woman’s foot lolita;Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor creepily presses his hand against a young woman’s body. Another image is even more disturbing. A child with tape and handcuffs wrapped around his hands is so frightening that it almost seems unreal. It’s not reality, it’s AI – but memification means that the difference between reality and what is generated becomes fatally blurred. Why shouldn’t we ignore the real thing the same way we ignore the artificial?
The circulation and meme-ification of such images creates a visual obscenity that excludes what remains invisible and unshared. This aesthetic of irony hides an insidious truth. The everyday domestic realities of Epstein’s crimes are obscured by this torrent of images, but their impact resurfaces in haunting fragments. For example, one of Epstein’s many disturbing emails dated 2013 included the line, “I like to buy books for school.”
Epstein’s files document a system in which wealth insulates abuse, children in institutions fail, and those in power rely on expectations that they are untouchable. Don’t fall into the trap. Algorithms are trying to destabilize the truth of this system. While it is true that laughter can help process horrific trauma, in this case it further exploits the victims of Epstein and his friends.
What is needed instead is sustained attention, moral clarity, and an insistence on seeing these crimes as systematic and unsolved. Without it, the noise does exactly what it was always intended to do: protect power, erase victims, and ensure that nothing really changes.
Photo by Neil Rasmus/Patrick McMullan, via Getty Images
