Memes

Thoughts on Modernity

Memes

Been away for awhile again haven't I, finding subjects to discuss on here isn't always easy especially as there are others talking about the same things in a much more valuable way than I can. With that said, I wanted today to talk about memes and how they affect our world. 

We look at memes everyday on twitter, facebook etc… Sometimes they take the form of a simple satirical snipe at what is trending in our news feeds or sometimes a hard hitting belief penetrating statement of society. We laugh, repost or nod our heads in a new found agreement and press that thumbs up button, but is that where our interaction ends, is that our lone expression of liberty and freedom?

So what is a meme, is it cultural, is it social, is it historiography in visual form, an observation of the stratification of society. Well it is all of these things as described by Dawkins in The Selfish Gene¹. The simple visual meme you shared this morning or even just look at is an influencer of societal trends both on the macroscale and micro scale. Go back and look at it again and see the influence it has over not just you, but the other people sharing it. It evokes not just thoughts but emotional reactions like laughter, disgust, fear, joy and emotions create actions. 

So I’m going to use an example of a meme from America, any American readers this is in no way meant to be patronising. This meme is a simple word, a structure of language, ‘Liberty’. A word that fashioned the early idea of a revolutionary war against a foreign crown and would end that war by taking precendence in a new country's constitution. However what did liberty mean within the concept of that war, it meant at its most simplest, the necessity of a need for trade to be conducted freely without tithe to be paid under duress to far off land, a free-market. Sounds like a fantastic idea, however what if you now learnt that after the revolutionary war America increased its cotton production by 400% by using slaves, is that so much of a free-market now? But where I really wanted to go with this is to more modern times, so again the most dominant culture has to be used again that of America. 

The 90s saw the end of the cold war and the beginning of what we now call the culture war, left vs right, political correctness vs non-political correctness and so on. In the middle of this the internet was born to become public access. What should have heralded a golden age of liberty and truth, but did it? The first silo thrown in this new age came from a little known early journalistic website ‘The Drudge Report’, the story in question; the leader of the free world having an affair with his intern. Why is this significant in a discussion about memes, well this story was vehemently denied as truth, however in the burgeoning age of information those in the corridors of power underestimated how an meme could penetrate straight through to peoples minds we all remember the famous ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman’ line, played endlessly on loop eberywhere you went. A meme of language, only this time with a face and voice attached. Why did this change things though, well the powers that be realised that truth couldn't be stopped through a mechanism like the web, it would proliferate and grow like a virus and if you can't stop something your only other option is to diminish it, make it subjective to the observer. The reds stand for your prosperity, the blues stand for the American dream, the same concept repackaged with words, subjective to the observer. 

So began the millennium, the fabled golden age of information and unfiltered truth. That within three years led to two major conflicts, the death of a weapons inspector and the blackmailing of a UN secretary general. How did this happen, well when truth is diminished because it no longer serves those in power, it creates a vacuum of culture, a space for new ideas thrusting society forward to ferment. In this vacuum truth becomes ‘my truth’ which isn't your truth and so the culture war changed shape and merged with the information age. Visual memes became the traded commodity of information, symbols of information that projected core ideas of ‘my truth’. So where did all this lead us?

We can fast forward to 2016 and a little known internet symbol changes the scope of an election for president, that of Pepe the frog (1). The little green frog assisted in getting someone who was considered an underdog into the highest office of the western world, this was the culmination of an experiment to see how much influence can be passed through a visual symbol and careful language construction. Make no mistake this happened as it was meant to happen, now that they have a better understanding of how meme influence works, they will use it going forward. 

So remember two things next time you see a meme that catches your attention, did I see this by accident and should I therefore share it thereby propagating the message within the meme; and in the core of all beliefs is a lie!

Also one last thing, I've always been a protractor of a kind act no matter how small can lead to a massive change not only in someone's life, but more importantly their outlook on life in general. With that said I've been asked to share this here on behalf of a friend, I wouldn't assume to ask for a donation to it, but sometimes just sharing it on your profiles on social media is worth more

https://www.gofundme.com/f/for-a-good-man-and-great-friend?utm_medium=email&utm_source=product&utm_campaign=p_email%2B4803-donation-alert-v5

1. Dawkins, Richard (1989), "11. Memes: the new replicators", The Selfish Gene (2nd ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 368