模倣子 Alienation and Apathy

Memetic Index - A Medium Article - Earlier Post on This, and Next

deep-seated need for meaning and connection
This is a deeply memetic concept, too. We deploy memes, obviously, when we are (relatively) confident that they will resonate with those around us, and if we have no such memes, we do nothing. However, is "memetic destitution" (like alienation) the only reason why people appear to be apathetic. Maybe. More research required here. A buddy of mine and I were just chatting about "cowardice" and "apathy" in the face of stopping bullying. A bully is done for if even one person stands up to stop her, in the defense of her victim or the criticism of her behavior. Why? Because now everybody else has a template meme for how to do the same.
I don't stop bullies (for instance) because I don't know what to do (is this like apathy?) or I can't be arsed to think of anything or try anything, or I do know what to do (e.g., just say "hey, knock that off!") but I'm afraid it won't work or I won't have the social support (same thing), which looks like anxiety.
So, our social response to bullying seems like it might be a good touchstone for the symmetry between anxiety and apathy, certainly if we look at it through the lens of macromemetics, but still, more study required, and more to come!

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We are overwhelmed by the infinite choices
This I would describe as an overlarge memetic inventory, with murky criteria for choosing which way to go. "Bad marking" and possibly also "bad closure" i.e., unclear how to differentiate a meme, root it out, and unclear whether one's finished it or not. People like to choose things where it's clear which the best choice is, and where it's clear what is a choice and what isn't, and finally know when they're done doing whichever choice they pick. This is all predicated on social conditioning--of others, not so much of oneself--to know what people around you will accept as an appropriate action.
Something like that...
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I think I follow, though would you be able to expand on "overlarge memetic inventory"?
I believe i get the sense of your direction. It follows along the line of if there are too many possibilities, we don't like it. We prefer to know.
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Memetic agents seek to maximize memetic resonance (rewards), ie, the maximum “bang for the buck” with the lowest risk of failure (low response , none, or negative (immunomemetic) response), and also to bring about a transition to a state (of the cohort, and their aggregate disposition to resonate to future memetic deployments by the agent in question) in which the agent has the maximum of high-quality future deployment opportunities. 

A simple example is a stand-up comedian. He wants to tell jokes that will get big laughs (laughing is actually a memetic response in addition to a physiological one, it’s contagious, etc., which is a whole ‘nother, plus “good” jokes may be repeated by the audience later, a further memetic strategy consideration, potentially affording the comic further memetic power (“fame”) down the road and possibly even memetic nexus status (again, a whole ‘nother)), BUT to have a good set, the comic must also set up future jokes , ie, not just tell a bunch of funny jokes willy-nilly, but to carry the audience through a series of jokes, setting up bigger and bigger laughs with possibly more and more abstruse material that is only funny once the context has been established. 

This is “state transition management”. 

To take a page from matrix algebra, a “memetic state” consists of something like all agents in the cohort (for example the comic, the audience, and possibly the venue owner) on one axis and all possible memes on the other axis, and each cell is the “next memetic state” to which the system transitions when each meme is deployed. Probably more complex than this, but in broad strokes. 

Each audience member’s inventory looks something like: keep listening, laugh, get bored, heckle, go to the bathroom, leave, order another drink. 

The comic’s is something like the set of all jokes he knows, finish the set, and respond to hecklers. 

A good comic starts with something everybody knows (from a broad inventory of opening jokes, maybe not super-funny), but which can potentially lead the audience to a much more narrow set of jokes which they start to anticipate. Humor is the subversion of anticipation, it is said, but anticipation may only be subverted if it exists, that is, if the cohort anticipates one thing (or a very small range of things, a tiny memetic inventory) and something else comes at them which is also in the inventory but much less expected. 

Social intercourse is the same, but inverted such that the satisfaction comes from you doing what I EXPECT from my specific action, and if I anticipate this (memetically-speaking since this is all unconscious), then I feel very comfortable taking the action (deploying the meme). 

Going back to the aforementioned memetic state transition matrix, if an agent is faced with a plethora of possible actions, each cell contains not only the “next state” of the system, but also the “desirability” of the deployment, a weight, that is how likely the comic is to try a given joke, how likely he thinks that joke is to land. How “accurate” these weights are is a measure of how skilled the comic is (or how “successful” a given memetic agent is, generally speaking, eg, socially). This is the memetic inventory for the comic for that state. 

As an aside, if the comic starts to bomb, then his inventory shrinks precipitously to a set of “flop saves” to get the audience back. I always carried my set of juggling clubs up to the mic, by the way (thankfully I never had to use them!). 

Back to murky overlarge inventories. Let’s say our comic has 25 opening jokes and for argument’s sake all but one are garbage, say a 1% chance of landing in the comic’s view, so even still the “good” joke, the cold opener, only has 75% favorability. We can begin to see a threshold phenomenon appearing here. Now, if three jokes are 25% and the rest around 1%, we can see our comic being nervous, and if his opener bombs we can see him saying things like “Crap! I KNEW I should’ve opened with the chicken joke!” In fact, he didn’t know it, and that’s the problem. 

By the way, that’s one reason why doing new material, especially OPENING with new material, is a nail-biter, that is, because the memetic weights have not been established, nor have the state transition dynamics. 

I hope this answers your question.
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Another issue related to memetic inventory is the "quality" of the memes involved. This could be described as the "dexterity" with which the memetic agent (here, the comic) is able to enact the various memes in his inventory, which brings up "marking" and "closure," which among other factors determine how well the agent is able to achieve resonance with the cohort (here, the audience).
The audience has to be familiar with what the comic is talking about, and obviously they need to speak the same language (also a memeplex, or system of memes, and "rules" for their interaction and deployment).
A simple example is doing a voice impression of something a well-known person would or has said, e.g., Jack Nicholson, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or Christopher Walken (all of those are challenging, by the way). For example, a bit like "So, I like what you're doing, Peter Pan, with your Lost Boys, and your pirates, and your mermaids, but I've got a fever, and the prescription is...more Tinkerbell." This bit will land if the audience is familiar with Christopher Walken, his iconic SNL sketch about Blue Oyster Cult, the Peter Pan story, mainly the original Disney film, and the crossover between "Cow bell" and "Tinkerbell" (which may be too much of a reach) and the comic must get the voice impression right. Jokes have punch lines, or payoffs, and this "closes" the memetic deployment, the audience realizes "ah, it's done" and knows that that's all they're going to get and it's time to laugh. Marking is where the meme is clear or unclear as to what the joke references, how is it going where it's going, and is the voice impression immediately recognizable, i.e., iconic.
This relates to apathy and anxiety since poorly marked and/or closed memes leave the recipient in a situation where they don't know which memes to deploy in response (do I mutter in disbelieve or mild indignation? do I laugh? do I get up and leave? what is everybody else doing and should I go along? and so on). Does the comic know which parts of the joke to punch, which parts must be practiced to perfection, what intonation works for a good flow and transition, and what the audience is even likely to know about (jokes about Japanese Soapland, Scottish stinginess stereotypes, etc., are unlikely to land in Utah or Wyoming for instance).
The comic may (or should) feel anxiety if all of his jokes are ill-marked, ill-closed, and he may be apathetic about which ones to put into his act, and the audience may feel apathy (which I try to define rigorously as a state of no response seeming likely to work, achieve resonance, and none meeting a "threshold value" of worthiness to deploy), plus nobody likes to watch somebody else bomb, which perhaps produces more anxiety in the audience than the comic who is actually bombing, since there's practically nothing one can do about it, i.e., a kind of apathy (memetic destitution, including even laughing).
I am still working on a cohesive theory of apathy (and anxiety) in macromemetics, so this is good stuff to think about. Thanks again for the article. I need to start publishing the stuff I have on Medium instead of taking up space on yours! I beg your indulgence!