Memetic Index
Young white men with long guns at George Floyd protests likely affiliated with far-right group Boogaloo
Jay - What's your take on "growing up on ... the meme culture."
" ... Boogaloo adherents grew up on social media and the meme culture, according to Burghart and Alex Newhouse, digital research lead at the Middlebury Institute's Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism. ..."
Thanks for sharing!
The internet web is just the next extension of Memes’ efforts to copy themselves. It’s like Tinder for memes. there’s a more accurate description, like “networked meme culture” or “electronic networked MIAO culture” or even “accelerated meme culture.”
Cat videos are just passing MIAOs around (pun intended), while "what did I eat for lunch today" or "The Ice Bucket Challenge" posts are examples of transmission of memetic enactments over the electronic network medium, making the memes much more contagious. What is memetic enactment associated with the aforementioned cat video? Just hitting SEND and deciding whom to put on the list (and for some people that decision is always "everybody").
Why do you think we go to church? It’s the same thing.
Even the “machine-human meme culture.” Woody Allen and George Lucas idea of the electronic / vending machine church / religion à la Sleeper or an early Lucas film THX 1138 (easter egg in the first Star Wars movie, Episode IV: A New Hope -- they told the guards in the detention section that Chewbacca was a "prisoner transfer from sector 1138" an homage to Lucas' earlier film. By the way I use this reference my main character, Louise Emmanuelle Terrence (LET as in LET God), breaks some friends out of jail in the City of Porcadis). In both the main character "prays" to what is effectively a vending machine confessional to receive in one case a light flashing "ABSOLUTION" and giving out a cross-shaped trinket through a slot.
This morning's meeting was good. I'm listening to my cry music now. I also had an inspiration for a pandemic-related short story last night and wrote a few pages on it this morning, and I think I'll try to complete a first draft today. Hopefully I can also put a bow on my Chapter 6 ("That Girl's Stable" actually becoming chapter seven now) -- it's been going well, which means the first third of the book will be in good shape before the holiday weekend is out.
I guess I'm a bit manic,and now a bit unfocused, which is part and parcel, I suppose. I've been feeling "up" for the past couple of days, and it's been a long time. I'm taking a super long time to put this message together, editing other documents and pulling in sundry details.
In any case, happy fourth of july, maybe the last one in which we shall have any choice in how we observe it (yikes!)
Jay
Happy 4th back atcha my friend.
I imagine such thoughts occurred to people in the 1860s....
Hey, funny you should allude to it, but the connections between our 18th President and MIAOs run deeper than you might think, and people in the 1860s almost certainly thinking about it.
A practical difference between MIAO duplication (1) and actual memetic enactment is the possibility of memetic mutation. If I just push SEND on cat videos that come through my inbox, there is no chance that the content will mutate. However, I can adjust the way I dump a bucket of ice water on my head, the kind of bucket, what I wear, etc., or how I photograph my lunch, and these are recognized as still being within the norms for the given meme, and then those that see my lunch pix enact the meme for themselves, and any given part of what I did could then become "the important part" that everybody afterwards makes sure to include in their own enaction (2).
And of course our 18th President was born Hiram Ulysses Grant, and his name became "Ulysses S. Grant" due to a transcription error, presumably with an extra "S" and an imagined space got introduced when he was being admitted to West Point. It came to be that his initials, "U.S." were said to stand for "Unconditional Surrender" and since his second initial didn't stand for anything at all, that second mutation was not unacceptable.
And that is the practical difference between MIAO duplication and memetic enactment, i.e.., when you forward a cat video or make the one-millionth coffee cup or toilet from a ceramic mold, there's no chance of mutation (3), while actually trying to enact what you see in a video or photo at once tries to conform to the original idea (so others will recognize it as the same or kindred meme), but when you take your own lunch photo, or dump your own ice bucket on yourself, you control all the variables, trying to capture enough of the essence of what you saw, likewise, you try to copy down the name of the new cadet, or the family at Ellis Island, in the way that makes sense to you, and there is the chance for all sorts of copy errors.
Thanks for your idea! I've hitherto had something of a problem explaining why there is such an important difference between MIAO-copying and memetic enactment -- one leads to mutation, the other does not (4). And that's really the distinction between a MIAO and a meme -- one can be imitated, one is based upon technique, and the other is a thing, regardless as to how it is actually produced.
Anyway, cool! Talk to you later!
Jay
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(1) And in a digital and/or mechanical factory production culture this can be high-fidelity, of course.
(2) This is similar to how sexual selection works, btw.
(3) since there is no such thing as Lamarckian mutation, selection, or evolution, i.e., if you somehow make one of the cups wrong from the mold (not hand-throwing it on the wheel -- big difference!), that "different" mug will not go back and produce more mugs like it, and it will not go back and influence the mold that continues to make more of the same ones. That's one reason why hand-thrown pottery is so interesting -- you try to do the same thing, but you also try to improve on it and try new things, and imitate the work of others.
(4) And there are actually another couple of important differences between MIAO copying and memetic propagation. Example, if you make a perfect Santa Claus outfit, but you make it green, then people might not get it, might not associate any memes to it, or think you were a "tall, fat, elf" and if you made it purple, orange, or yellow, or black or grey, they might not get it at all, i.e., there might be no memetic associations.
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