“No, for God’s sake! You’ve got it all backwards! AIDS, the Ebola virus? On an evolutionary scale they are newborns. This virus walked the planet long before the dinosaurs.” – The X Files Movie (‘98)
Greta has made a real difference in electrical usage – every time she’s on the TV, I turn it off.
One of the more interesting ideas that I ran across was when I was first exposed to the idea of a meme. It’s really short for mimeme, which means “imitated thing”. Richard Dawkins described it as the idea that ideas would be faced with the same sort of pressures that biological entities face in the world – they either reproduce, or they die.
Regardless of how I feel about Dawkins’ other ideas, this one has always intrigued me, because it’s about the fundamental relationship between people and information and ideas. It’s the place where ideas propagate and are passed on.
Or not. An idea that’s passed on, lives. One that isn’t passed on, dies.
The doctor said I had Peekaboo virus. He said that sends most people to ICU.
Now, that really may not have any relationship with the truth of an idea. Let’s take a meme that has been artificially boosted to the point where it’s known by virtually everyone:
“Diversity is our strength.”
Well, not so much. It turns out that diversity is our diversity, but probably not our strength in that when you have a bunch of people living together that don’t share a common ethnicity, “social trust” drops. It turns out that if you want to live in a society with high trust, it’s probably more reasonable to say, “Diversity is our weakness”.
What about another great meme, this one from our Founding Fathers, “All men are created equal”.
My hairline would beg to differ.
Now if the meme had been, “All men have the same rights” I would have been right on board, and I think that was the original intent. But people are decidedly unequal. Some are short, some are tall. Some are smart, and some are Leftists. All men may have the same rights, but all men aren’t the same.
Why are all the corporations hiring female Equality Officers? They’re cheaper.
How about this one: “majority rules”?
That’s one I remember having been well drilled into the brains of fourth grade kids when I was one, typically when I lost the vote on the movie to watch in class. Why wouldn’t a bunch of fourth grade kids not want to watch Tommy?
But “majority rules” is a horrible way to run a society. Doubt me? Look around. The idea that has been the most stable (outside of Kim’s Best Korea Solution) has been a constitutional republic, not a democracy. But, hey, who needs a constitution when people might have bad thoughts? Majority rules is mob rule, and that defines the worst of us, a place where the passion of the moment takes over from the rights of all of us.
The ideas here are simple, and the phrases have an amazing lifespan even when they are observably false. There is a place for Truth, and it isn’t in a meme. Just as a virus doesn’t have to be virtuous, neither are ideas that are spread by memes. What they are though, is excellent persuasion material.
Oh, Garfield! And here I thought you just wanted to be Nermal.
But just like all people aren’t created equal, all memes aren’t created equal, either. One could make the argument that Trump’s victorious election in 2016 was partially due to fun memes. I’m sure that you saw some of them. Remember The Deplorables meme?
I’m sure Hillary would like to forget it.
Memes are often effective persuasion material, and effective propaganda, true or not. Advertising, for instance, is entirely made to try to create memes and pump them directly into the heads of consumers. How many ad jingles can you think of in the next sixty seconds? I’m lovin’ it®, and I’d be happy to give you Helping Hands™ to Bring Good Things To Life©.
It’s not a mistake that these are memorable.
The Internet has not made this better. In many ways, the websites (especially social media) are created to be addiction pumps by manipulating your emotions – and brain chemicals.
The good news is that we aren’t simply blank slates for corporations, government, and universities to imprint on, we have free will, and most importantly we get to choose what goes into our heads, what information we watch, and what thoughts we consume.
As Garfield® taught us, we aren’t immune to propaganda.
But realizing it’s there is the first step to understanding it, to taking a step back, and to evaluate what I think.
I asked my librarian if they had a book by Shakespeare. “Yes,” she replied. “Which one?” I asked. “William.”
Is that my thought? Did I put it there? Is it consistent with what I know? Is it consistent with the truth?
Is it consistent with the Truth?
When I think about just what a meme might be imitating, I keep coming around to the same idea: the Truth. And what is propaganda, but an idea imitating the Truth?
https://www.pinterest.com/MissBeautifulMysterious/memes-truth/
Lost track of a website (years ago) that presented this meme, as follows:
“Diversity + Proximity = War”
We’re getting close.
Pretty sure Vox Day coined that. I rip it off in my book, “Worlds Without End.”
I believe the answer is below in the other comments. Yup, the equations hold.
One of your better ones, sir.
Thank you.
I love memes. If they aren’t TOO openly political, they even – sometimes – get LIberals to think.
I did one, myself, when I wanted people to think about the stupidity of changing the Cleveland Indians name to the Cleveland Guardians.
I made a picture of a soda cracker, and wrote – Best New Name for the Cleveland Team. Put it on Facebook.
A few people got it. Many did not, or responded with “Yeah, that would be great! It would show that damned bigots just how it feels to be made fun of.”
That was from a woman old enough to have seen “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Petticoat Junction” and “Hee-Haw”.
We White Bigots mostly ignored it or laughed (usually saying “I have a cousin like that!”).
No marching, screaming, threatening, or burning the city down.
Just – Eh.
To them, it’s religion. Never doubt that. By questioning it, you’re a heretic.
Diversity is so strong the naval flotilla has Russian and Chinese components.
The big boomer Typhoon class subs have a diverse array of ICBM’s for enrichment.
The old meme of the Wizard of Oz roasting the strawman for warmth after voting on it is right on.
My all time fave is still the early 2000’s protomeme of Mulder and Scully assbumping with an FBI LOL at the bottom, it is in black and white even.
Memes make us laugh and think while preparing for the Big Battles that are coming and that’s a good thing.
Diversity means rifles, shotguns, and pistols.
majority rules
When three men take your wallet on the street, you didn’t get robbed, you got outvoted; better luck next election. But most humans “feel” otherwise when the attacking gang contains three thousand men, that’s “legitimate” “taxation”. Let’s try a squeeze argument. Where is the numerical crossover point in headcount between un-legitimate and legitimate organized crime gangs of thieves? Why is that number morally correct? Is the number different for sexual battery, where if the whole society keeps women as chattel then that’s just their culture?
Majority rules is mob rule, and that defines the worst of us, a place where the passion of the moment takes over from the rights of all of us.
US reserve currency status is in the process of being lost in the same hundred-something years, so the level of indirection provided by representatives appears to have made no difference at all to performance.
Yup on both.
When the jackbooted gubmint thugs come for me, they will find a collection of select memes on my computer hard drive that will be all the evidence needed to convict me in a kangaroo court and justify my inevitable execution. With apologies to Lavrentiy (Lite) Beria I say, Show me the meme and I will show you the man.
My defense team of Nuremberg, Nanking and Mai Lai will insist that I was only following lulz, but this will hold no sway with our humorless overlords, who are themselves bitterly jealous because the left simply cannot meme. I volunteer as tribute to freedom of the impressionable, however, and with joy in my black heart proclaim with deepest conviction, Give me Liberty or give me Pez. Or, like, whatever.
But when they see my meme file, I’ll cross examine and have a decade in court going through them. And we’ll all giggle, so they’ll be guilty, too.
This is why I despise memes that lie to get to a punchline.
Comedy requires truth + humor.
No truth = no laugh.
People who laugh at them anyways are idiots, because they haven’t noticed where they’re standing, nor worked out what the real punchline is:
https://i.imgur.com/BwcTU4X.jpg
Ukraine is the punchline
Ukraine is the Roadrunner.
Vlad is Wile E.
The tell there is the fact that we’re on Day 535.
But “Any Day Now…”™ another shipment of the finest Acme Products will surely turn the tide!
Paratroops!
MiGs and Sukhois!
Heavy Cruisers!
A ginormous army!
Hypersonic missiles!
Hand-me-down-drones!
T-90s!
We’re just waiting for putting rocket-powered Russians on roller skates.
If Wile E. had snagged the roadrunner by Day Three, you could make a different argument.
But he didn’t, so you can’t.
Comedy and Reality are both harsh like that.
And that puff of dust every time always tells you who’s getting pwned.
Nice Military Sports ball analysis Aesop.
Thanks for keeping the truth PRAVDA front and center.
Meanwhile while we start a little war in Niger and a few other places we look forward to your blow by blow analysis.
Do you ever read history? Rome had some lessons about debasing currency and useless wars destroying an empire.
Don’t be ridiculous.
We’ve far eclipsed anything paltry Rome ever did.
And unlike Poopypants, at least Nero could play a fiddle.
Find me a story from antiquity of a Roman emperor who farted in his toga while Rome burned, and you’ll be onto something.
Aesop, I don’t understand your rambling today?
Are you saying it doesn’t matter or just rambling about farts in a toga for reasons unknown?
And about your efforts to secure the Mexico-Cali boarder in yesterday’s comments was your Afghanistan armed and dressed weekend 6-man squad efforts OR the videos and POLITCAL efforts more effective in getting that 10 mile wall and security for that valley secured?
My bet it was the political arm-twisting. Something me and my not Afghanistan armed friends continue to do every week around my area. Local politics but sometimes we win in our rear-guard efforts.
The daily reports of “interesting” situations in California continue to point out the successes of their voted in Government. I shudder at Gabbling Nuisance being a likely replacement for the Meat Puppet currently rotting in behind the Resolute Desk.
1) It doesn’t matter.
2) If we hadn’t been on the border for days on end, loaded for bear, we wouldn’t have gotten the video we got. That video was what delivered. And the cartel wasn’t playing games. During the time we were in operation, a CBP agent got shot a couple of hundred yards from our base of operations on a night we weren’t out and about. His was a closed casket funeral. Which is what happens when they do double mag dumps of AK into somebody’s face from 3′.
3) The political arm-twisting was the biggest waste of time I’ve ever seen. We’d have been better off threatening to shoot the Republican’t congressweasels, for all the good they were. Wastes of skin and oxygen, the entire lot, bar none.
Anybody who gives them more than a wet fart is an idiot, and they’re only overpaid by about $173,998/yr.
[Congressmen should be required to pick up trash in D.C. 40 hrs a week to get room and board at a skid row flophouse. Any other salary should require them to get a paying job at minimum wage.
Any congressweasel whose net worth climbs higher than their salary minus their living expenses for any part of their term in office should be imprisoned for de facto corruption for 1 year per dollar over, served consecutively.]
4) California hasn’t had a voted-in government in decades. Or did you think ballot harvesting only started in 2020?
5) Gabbin’ Nuisance couldn’t even win the primary in Califrutopia if he ran unopposed. The Deep State Selectee will be who it will be. It won’t be him. The best thing about his career is that eventually, he’ll be termed out of office, and his aunt will be drooling in her oatmeal at the Alzheimer’s rest home.
Agreed, Truth is what makes a great meme.
Diversity is death.
All men are created equal, but then they are born.
Diversity + proximity = war. (origin: Vox Day)
Africans don’t suddenly become Europeans be stepping on the magic dirt.
The individualists failed to organize.
None of us is as important as all of us.
Embrace the healing power of AND.
The Left is evil AND insane.
It’s nature AND nurture.
Humans are collections of genes and memes.
The Germans pacification made them unable to surmise that the Afros did not and do not want to be good Germans
We are. And we get to choose where our genes go, and what memes we let in.
@John, the founders were right: All men are created equal.
They didn’t say anything about how long they’d retain their hair, or their athletic physique, or how happy, healthy, wealthy, wise, or mentally stable that they’d turn out.
The problem is that our political opponents would have us believe that all women remain equal to men (at least, in physical capabilities) after birth, or that men can do everything the women can. Clearly, they missed out on the ‘Birds and Bees’ lessons…
Indeed.
Memes work because they convey a simple truth with a dose of humor and irony. That is also why the left can’t meme, they don’t know the truth and have no sense of humor.
Memes, as tools, should be simple, and relate your message within just a couple seconds to be most effective to the broadest audience. The more time you take, the deeper the message, and the narrower the prospective audience.
Some leftists do have great humor, IMO. But they tend to be neurotic, at best. I appreciate them, cautiously, because I can relate. In the depths where the dark humor lies is where some of us go and determine how close our ties are with those who commune with demons daily. That’s where people like Stephen King and Quinton Tarantino seem to reside; a place that’s interesting to visit on occasion, but you wouldn’t want to live there.
Yeah, when you have to have a paragraph explaining the worldview, it’s not gonna be funny.
Jesus Christ is Truth
Yup, Truth.
“Truth is not a some-thing. He is a some-body.”