Mexican lawmaker wants to fine people $1,600 for making offensive memes

A state congresswoman’s lone crusade to punish meme-makers with monstrous fines for mocking life in Mexico has —rather predictably — triggered a snarky meme campaign against the bill’s sponsor.

Congresswoman Selma Guadalupe Gomez recently introduced a bill in state legislature that aims to protect the “moral patrimony” of Sonora through the regulation of Internet memes and other social media content.

The ponderously titled “Law of Civil Responsibility for the Protection of the Right to Private Life, Honor and the Image of the State of Sonora” is more succinctly known as the “anti-meme” law. It calls for fines up to around $1,600, or 350 times the minimum wage in Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, for creating and publishing memes that inflict “unjustified damage to human dignity.”

Gomez did not respond to Fusion’s request for comment.

The bill isn’t expected to find much support in Congress, but Mexicans are already having fun at the congresswoman’s expense with a firestorm of memes hashtagged #NoMemes, a play on the famous Mexican saying “No Mames,” roughly translated as “you gotta be kidding me.”

“Proposes an anti-meme law… They turn her into one.”