Two days back, Anchorage mayor Dave Bronson visited homeless camps in the city as he vowed to “Take immediate action to clean up the illegal structures” amongst other ideas. As ever, the politician also stopped for a photo opportunity which quickly got turned into a meme, aptly dubbed “Brother Theresa” – here, he was seen walking through a homeless camp looking serious while in a shiny blue suit.

This got a big reaction on social media, whereby one Anchorage resident had this to say, “It’s ridiculous watching the usual posers put on their clown show of pretending to actually care about the homelessness situation in this town. They still think there was an abatement at 3rd and Ingra today despite all facts to the contrary.”

Elsewhere, others called him “The biggest poser ever”, and “What a do gooder! absolute puke. I came here just to see if anyone posted this nonsense after seeing it on ADN.” Perhaps the funniest comment was this one though, which saw straight through his clean-cut image: “Wow. What a saint! More should strive to care as much about thy neighbor as the praiseworthy Bronson does. Truly our modern day Messiah.”

It seems like Bronson’s token gestures are beginning to wear thin with certain areas of the Anchorage public. Having said this, there’s only so much that a meme can do politically, and it’s up to the residents to vote for change if they really want something different. Until then, we’ll just have to settle for Bronson and his cliched gestures.