模倣子 Marking, Closure, Apathy and Anxiety

Memetic Index 

Original Post & A Medium article: Symmetry of Apathy and Anxiety/Cowardice

 

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!