Principia Discordia

Principia Discordia => Think for Yourself, Schmuck! => Topic started by: Cramulus on July 24, 2007, 02:10:42 PM

Title: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on July 24, 2007, 02:10:42 PM
We've been talking a bit about memetics and the properties of memes. So from what I know of memetics, here are some concepts which may make it easier to talk about this stuff. (The terminology I use is from Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin, in which he's talking about memes in terms of marketing. He calls a successful meme an Ideavirus.)

Velocity - a measure of how fast an idea spreads from one party to another

Hive - a network of people who exchange information. Information travels very easily within a hive, especially when regard each other as credible sources. PD.com is a hive. A class of third graders is a hive. Friends who talk about HP Lovecraft are a sort of hive.

Sneeze - a sneeze is a transmission of a meme between two people. If I see a cool commercial, and then I ask my friend if he's seen that commercial, that counts as a sneeze. Basically any time you mention a product, you are sneezing that meme.

Smoothness - how easy it is for someone to sneeze the meme. Sports trivia is very smooth in regards to sports fans. Really boring or complicated topics are not smooth.

Another factor influencing smoothness is whether or not the meme presents a risk or reward to the sneezer. For example, the iPhone is considered cool. You might seem cooler for knowing about the iPhone or mentioning your friend that has one. If you're attending NAMBLA meetings you'd probably want to keep a lid on that. So NAMBLA membership isn't very smooth.

Promiscuity - One's likelihood to spread a meme. Really promiscuous people sneeze a lot. Marketing teams twist their brains in knots trying to figure out how to get the cool guys and the hot girls to start using their products. Trendsetters and people of authority tend to be very promiscuous.



Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on July 24, 2007, 03:12:35 PM
here's some more stuff on memes,
highlights from wikipedia's rather long article.

if this is tl;dr to you, skip it. Personally, this stuff fascinates me.

On the Evolution of Memes
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Memetic_evolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Memetic_evolution)
QuoteA gene's success in a body may stem from its attempt to bypass the normal sexual lottery by making itself present in more than 50% of zygotes in an organism. Some genes find other ways of having themselves transmitted between cells. Hence multiple factors influence the evolution of genes ,Äî not just the success of the species as a whole. Similarly the evolutionary pressures on memes include much more than just truth and economic success. Evolutionary pressures may include the following:

   1. Experience: If a meme does not correlate with an individual's experience, then that individual has a reduced likelihood of remembering that meme.

   2. Pleasure/Pain: If a meme results in more pleasure or less pain for its host then the host will have a greater likelihood of remembering it.

   3. Fear/Bribery: If a meme constitutes a threat then people may become frightened into believing it. Similarly, if a meme promises some future benefit then people may incline to believe it. The memes ¬ªif you do X you will burn in hell¬´ and ¬ªdo Y and you will go to heaven¬´ provide examples. Memes which pass on the fear of a threat, of the likelihood or effectiveness of a threat, that ¬ªsomething will happen if you do such and such a thing¬´, have a high likelihood of success, and may therefore replicate and remain in the meme-pool. They may assist in this way in the survival of a thought, a theme or a philosophy within a community.

   4. Censorship: If an organisation destroys any retention-systems containing a particular meme or otherwise controls the usage of that meme, then that meme may suffer a selective disadvantage.

   5. Economics: If people or organisations with economic influence exhibit a particular meme, then the meme has a greater likelihood of benefiting from a greater audience. If a meme tends to increase the riches of an individual holding it, then that meme may spread because of imitation. Such memes might include ¬ªHard work is good¬´ and ¬ªPut number one first¬´.

   6. Distinction: If the meme enables hearers to recognize and respect tellers (as leaders, intelligent people, insightful, etc.), then the meme has a greater chance of spreading. The erstwhile receivers will want to become themselves tellers of the same meme (or of an evolved/mutated version). Thus ?©lite knowledge can provide a promotion to ?©lite status.

Memes, like genes, do not purposely do or want anything ,Äî they either get replicated or not. Some meme systems have negative effects on the host or on their host society, but humans generally have a symbiotic relationship with these abstract entities.

Memes do not mutate in an exclusively passive way. The brain inhabited by a meme system can carry out a sort of active modification of a meme. One could draw an analogy with a cell's error-correction systems, but they clearly function quite differently. In essence, people create and modify memes almost continuously. One can modify, manipulate, and create meme systems in thought, for instance through internal dialogue. As soon as one opens one's mouth and says something (or does something) that one has not copied (but that others can copy), one has unleashed a novel meme. Thus, one could conclude that we all perform the role of a memetic engineer to some degree (even if not consciously).

on Memetic Virus Exchange
Quote
One controversial application of this ¬ªselfish meme¬´ parallel (compare the selfish gene) results in the idea that certain collections of memes can act as ¬ªmemetic viruses¬´: collections of ideas that behave as independent life-forms which continue to get passed on ,Äî even at the expense of their hosts ,Äî simply because of their success at getting passed on. Some observers have suggested that evangelical religions and cults behave this way; so by including the act of passing on their beliefs as a moral virtue, other beliefs of the religion also get passed along even if they do not provide particular benefits to the believer.

Others maintain that the wide prevalence of human adoption of religious ideas provides evidence to suggest that such ideas offer some ecological, sexual, ethical or moral value; otherwise memetic evolution would long ago have selected against such ideas. For example, some religions urge peace and co-operation among their followers (¬´Thou shalt not kill¬´) which may possibly tend to promote the biological survival of the social groups that carry these memes. However, the idea of group selection stands on shaky ground (to say the least) in the field of genetics. Accordingly, some consider the idea of selection of ideas beneficial to the group exclusively as unlikely

Here's an interesting note that came up recently --  In the Ego Sickness thread, and also in the essay Jailbreaking for Idiots (which either Vex or SillyCybin wrote, but it's in the new BIP), we've talked about how one's identity can be obscured by the memes it collects. At a certain point, one has to wonder whether your (say) taste in music is you. Dawkins sez

QuoteDawkins notes that one can distinguish a biological virus from its host's normal genetic material by the fact that it can propagate alone, without the entire genetic corpus of the host being propagated



cool stuff
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Triple Zero on July 24, 2007, 03:20:16 PM
yes!

these were the wikipedia articles i was talking about.

now, on to the external links, because wikipedia is, well, wikipedia :)
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: faust on July 24, 2007, 03:30:01 PM
This was a topic on SA for a while when lowtax wanted to see could he force a meme. He selected a really crappy Simpson's parody, nothing extraordinary about it compared to the shit memes of 4chan. To be fair it seemed to be working but the video was pulled and no one bothered using a mirror.
I did not feel comfortable with the whole affair.
I wonder, would anyone be up for spamming 4chan with himeobs logos some day?
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on July 24, 2007, 04:14:53 PM
from this summary (http://www.bookreporter.com/features/ideavirus/book3.htm) of Seth Godin's book which I mentioned earlier


QuoteIt's More Than Just Word Of Mouth

Marketers have been pursuing word of mouth for years. There are five important principles that someone unleashing an ideavirus should understand--principles that marketers pursuing old-fashioned word of mouth didn't use:

   1. An idea merchant understands that creating the virus is the single most important part of her job. So she'll spend all her time and money on creating a product and environment that feeds the virus.

   2. An idea merchant understands that by manipulating the key elements of idea propagation--the velocity, the vector, the smoothness, the persistence and the identification of sneezers--she can dramatically alter a virus's success.

      Definition: PERSISTENCE Some ideas stick around a long time with each person, influencing them (and those they sneeze on) for months or years to come. Others have a much shorter half-life before they fade out.

      Definition: VECTOR    As an ideavirus moves through a population, it usually follows a vector. It could be a movement toward a certain geographic or demographic audience, for example. Sometimes an ideavirus starts in a sub-group and then breaks through that niche into the public consciousness. Other times, it works its way through a group and then just stops. Napster vectored straight to college kids. Why? Because they combined the three things necessary for the virus to catch on: fast connection, spare time and an obsession with new music.

   3. The idea merchant remembers that digital word of mouth is a permanent written record online, a legacy that will follow the product, for good or for ill, forever.

  4.
An idea merchant realizes that the primary goal of a product or service is not just to satisfy the needs of one user. It has to deliver so much wow, be so cool, so neat and so productive that the user tells five friends. Products market themselves by creating and reinforcing ideaviruses.

   5. An idea merchant knows that the ideavirus follows a lifecycle and decides at which moment to shift from paying to spread it, to charging the user and profiting from it.




QuoteWhat Does It Take To Build And Spread An Ideavirus?

There are two questions you can ask yourself about your idea before you launch it...questions that will help you determine how likely your idea will become an ideavirus.

Is it worth it?
Nobody spreads an ideavirus as a favor to you. They do it because it's remarkable, thought-provoking, important, profitable, funny, horrible or beautiful. In today's winner-take-all world, there's no room for a me-too offering, or worse, BORING products and services. If it's not compelling, it will never lead to an ideavirus.

Face it. Nobody is going to hand out big rewards ever again for being on time, performing work of good quality, being useful, finishing a project on budget or being good enough. That's expected. That's a given. The rewards (and the ideavirus) belong to the first, the fastest, the coolest, the very best.

If your idea doesn't become a virus, it's most likely because it didn't deserve to become a virus.


Is it smooth?
After someone's been exposed to an ideavirus just once, they're not likely to actually catch it. We've made our brains bulletproof and ideaproof. There's so much clutter, so much noise, so many ideas to choose from that the vast majority of them fail to make a dent.

Think about the last time you walked through a bookstore (the home of ideaviruses waiting to happen). How many books did you stop and look at? Pick up? Turn over? And how many of those books ended up in your shopping basket? Got read? Led you to tell ten friends? Precious few, that's for sure.

Compare this to the Harry Potter phenomenon... the bestselling books of the last few years, created just because kids told kids. A classic ideavirus, and one that initially grew with no promotion at all from the publisher.

It's difficult to get from awareness to the "sale" of an idea, to convert a stranger into a friend and a friend into a carrier of your ideavirus. An ideavirus succeeds when it pierces our natural defenses and makes an impact.
It's foolish to expect that one exposure to your message will instantly convert someone from stranger to raving ideavirus-spreading fan. So plan on a process. Plan on a method that takes people from where they are to where you want them to go.

And while you're at it, work on the product. Because a catchier, more compelling, more viral product makes your job 100 times easier.

These are critical decisions because of the attention deficit marketers are facing. In 1986, the year I published my first book, there were about 300 other business books published. In 1998, there were 1,778 business books brought to market.

The supermarket sees about 15,000 new products introduced every year. The Levenger catalog alone features more than 50 different pens and pencils, none of which were available just a couple years ago. There isn't a marketplace out there that isn't more crowded than it was a decade ago.

In a world where products are screaming for attention, the most precious commodity is attention. And attention is harder and harder to achieve.

If you already understand the power of permission, your next question might be, "Fine, but how do we get permission? How do we get the first date... the first interaction where we ask people if we can start an ongoing dialogue about our products and their needs?"

My answer used to be a rather weak mumble about buying ads. The right answer, however, is to create an ideavirus. The right answer is to let the market tell itself about your products and services and give you permission to continue the dialogue without your having to pay for it each time. The right answer is to create products so dynamic and virusworthy that you earn the attention.

 
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on July 24, 2007, 04:40:22 PM
I also highly recommend "The Book of Atem" by Phil Hine. It's a very intersting workbook on memetics (through the 'memetic magic' kind of model). I took a class he taught on the subject and it was a really useful set of metaphors to use when tweaking the meme... meme. Also, memetic entities are cool.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Jasper on July 24, 2007, 05:52:34 PM
As soon as I get to a company machine I'm printing this off and putting it in my mad scientist folder.  just what the Doctor ordered. :)
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: B_M_W on July 24, 2007, 05:56:25 PM
:mittens:

Cram et al. totally bring the goods, ITT
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: faust on July 24, 2007, 07:25:53 PM
Quote from: Professor Cramulus on July 24, 2007, 04:14:53 PM
from this summary (http://www.bookreporter.com/features/ideavirus/book3.htm) of Seth Godin's book which I mentioned earlier


QuoteIt's More Than Just Word Of Mouth

Marketers have been pursuing word of mouth for years. There are five important principles that someone unleashing an ideavirus should understand--principles that marketers pursuing old-fashioned word of mouth didn't use:

   1. An idea merchant understands that creating the virus is the single most important part of her job. So she'll spend all her time and money on creating a product and environment that feeds the virus.

   2. An idea merchant understands that by manipulating the key elements of idea propagation--the velocity, the vector, the smoothness, the persistence and the identification of sneezers--she can dramatically alter a virus's success.

      Definition: PERSISTENCE Some ideas stick around a long time with each person, influencing them (and those they sneeze on) for months or years to come. Others have a much shorter half-life before they fade out.

      Definition: VECTOR    As an ideavirus moves through a population, it usually follows a vector. It could be a movement toward a certain geographic or demographic audience, for example. Sometimes an ideavirus starts in a sub-group and then breaks through that niche into the public consciousness. Other times, it works its way through a group and then just stops. Napster vectored straight to college kids. Why? Because they combined the three things necessary for the virus to catch on: fast connection, spare time and an obsession with new music.

   3. The idea merchant remembers that digital word of mouth is a permanent written record online, a legacy that will follow the product, for good or for ill, forever.

  4.
An idea merchant realizes that the primary goal of a product or service is not just to satisfy the needs of one user. It has to deliver so much wow, be so cool, so neat and so productive that the user tells five friends. Products market themselves by creating and reinforcing ideaviruses.

   5. An idea merchant knows that the ideavirus follows a lifecycle and decides at which moment to shift from paying to spread it, to charging the user and profiting from it.




QuoteWhat Does It Take To Build And Spread An Ideavirus?

There are two questions you can ask yourself about your idea before you launch it...questions that will help you determine how likely your idea will become an ideavirus.

Is it worth it?
Nobody spreads an ideavirus as a favor to you. They do it because it's remarkable, thought-provoking, important, profitable, funny, horrible or beautiful. In today's winner-take-all world, there's no room for a me-too offering, or worse, BORING products and services. If it's not compelling, it will never lead to an ideavirus.

Face it. Nobody is going to hand out big rewards ever again for being on time, performing work of good quality, being useful, finishing a project on budget or being good enough. That's expected. That's a given. The rewards (and the ideavirus) belong to the first, the fastest, the coolest, the very best.

If your idea doesn't become a virus, it's most likely because it didn't deserve to become a virus.


Is it smooth?
After someone's been exposed to an ideavirus just once, they're not likely to actually catch it. We've made our brains bulletproof and ideaproof. There's so much clutter, so much noise, so many ideas to choose from that the vast majority of them fail to make a dent.

Think about the last time you walked through a bookstore (the home of ideaviruses waiting to happen). How many books did you stop and look at? Pick up? Turn over? And how many of those books ended up in your shopping basket? Got read? Led you to tell ten friends? Precious few, that's for sure.

Compare this to the Harry Potter phenomenon... the bestselling books of the last few years, created just because kids told kids. A classic ideavirus, and one that initially grew with no promotion at all from the publisher.

It's difficult to get from awareness to the "sale" of an idea, to convert a stranger into a friend and a friend into a carrier of your ideavirus. An ideavirus succeeds when it pierces our natural defenses and makes an impact.
It's foolish to expect that one exposure to your message will instantly convert someone from stranger to raving ideavirus-spreading fan. So plan on a process. Plan on a method that takes people from where they are to where you want them to go.

And while you're at it, work on the product. Because a catchier, more compelling, more viral product makes your job 100 times easier.

These are critical decisions because of the attention deficit marketers are facing. In 1986, the year I published my first book, there were about 300 other business books published. In 1998, there were 1,778 business books brought to market.

The supermarket sees about 15,000 new products introduced every year. The Levenger catalog alone features more than 50 different pens and pencils, none of which were available just a couple years ago. There isn't a marketplace out there that isn't more crowded than it was a decade ago.

In a world where products are screaming for attention, the most precious commodity is attention. And attention is harder and harder to achieve.

If you already understand the power of permission, your next question might be, "Fine, but how do we get permission? How do we get the first date... the first interaction where we ask people if we can start an ongoing dialogue about our products and their needs?"

My answer used to be a rather weak mumble about buying ads. The right answer, however, is to create an ideavirus. The right answer is to let the market tell itself about your products and services and give you permission to continue the dialogue without your having to pay for it each time. The right answer is to create products so dynamic and virusworthy that you earn the attention.

 
It would be nice seeing someone who is not a sleaze marketing person structuring plans to hit home.
To correctly fill the BIP with the correct virus meme, we have to know the target audience. Here we have a wide spread of gamers, nerds and scenesters.
If we want this to be fully accessible to everyone, the same kinda thing that catches people who come to the site probably wont work on everyone else. However the people who come to the site will probably read the bip regardless.
to market it to the horrid unwashed masses, it will need a lot less gloom. To much cynicism and people will dismiss it as pessimistic and miss pretty much all the best stuff.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Triple Zero on July 24, 2007, 07:28:55 PM
as far as i understand from the texts, it works best if you modify the product so it 'll become virus-worthy.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: B_M_W on July 24, 2007, 09:37:30 PM
Quote from: triple zero on July 24, 2007, 07:28:55 PM
as far as i understand from the texts, it works best if you modify the product so it 'll become virus-worthy.

Yes, but can you do that without changing the message?
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: The Littlest Ubermensch on July 24, 2007, 09:45:16 PM
Quote from: Buddhist_Monk_Wannabe on July 24, 2007, 09:37:30 PM
Quote from: triple zero on July 24, 2007, 07:28:55 PM
as far as i understand from the texts, it works best if you modify the product so it 'll become virus-worthy.

Yes, but can you do that without changing the message?

I feel that the answer is no.

No is the answer in my opinion.

Same message, different linguistic product.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: faust on July 24, 2007, 09:53:55 PM
little bits could be made more uplifting, if one of the messages is come up with your own answers and own way of life, then why are nearly all the messages packaged so bleakly?
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on July 24, 2007, 09:57:35 PM
I did end up taking one of the essays "A touch of the Con" and rewriting it in the first person instead of the second person. Now it's written from the point of view of the con

"that's exactly how we want it! Tired little sheep, running around..."

I think it sounds much better that way. Incites people to rebel and disagree with THAT force rather than feeling judged or attacked

but anyway



look at the BIP within this memetic framework.

Personally, I think the Black Iron Prison metaphor is the product, and the pamphlet is the packaging.

QuoteVelocity - a measure of how fast an idea spreads from one party to another

I'd say it has a slow velocity. It is a somewhat complex idea which relies on metaphor and abstractions. This takes a long time to communicate.

The sound-bite 'you're stuck in a prison made up of your choices and conditioning' doesn't sell it well. To get the full experience, you have to read the essays and be in that mindset. Which takes a bit longer.

The PDF has high velocity because it's easy to link someone to something


QuoteHive

Well the PD hive is infected with this ideavirus, and we've tried to spread it to other hives as well. The BIP pamphlet is very much tailored to our hive - it's an interesting thought experiment to visualize how the BIP pamphlet would look if we tailored it to other hives.

How would it look if we re-wrote it for SomethingAwful?
How would it look if we re-wrote it for wicca.com?
How would it look if we re-wrote it for the Prairie Homemaker forum?

QuoteSmoothness - how easy it is for someone to sneeze the meme.

again, it's very easy to link to a PDF

There is a certain type of person who will read the BIP pamphlet and want to tell others about it. It is very smooth to them, but not to others. what factors make it that way?


The BIP metaphor has nothing about it which relies on Discordia. It could theoretically exist without Discordia or this website.

In some ways I think it's spread within us so deeply because it's connected to this idea we all like - that it's a Discordian text and can accomplish the same sort of awakening that some Discordians strive for.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: faust on July 24, 2007, 10:04:06 PM
Sadly the easiest way to catch the attention with this is plug raw, give a brief outline of the old pd, the absurdism etc being changed, the new message and then the pdf link.

It will need to be peddled as discordia revisited, not stand alone on the bip, which seems fine to me.
edit: this is in relation to sa and the wiccan sites, elsewhere would need a different approach.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Triple Zero on July 24, 2007, 10:19:38 PM
Quote from: Buddhist_Monk_Wannabe on July 24, 2007, 09:37:30 PM
Quote from: triple zero on July 24, 2007, 07:28:55 PM
as far as i understand from the texts, it works best if you modify the product so it 'll become virus-worthy.

Yes, but can you do that without changing the message?

in the case of the marketing example, that wouldn't matter. obtaining a meme virus is already the reward in itself, all you need is a little part of it that you "own" in order to make a profit when the virus reaches its top infection point.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: guest7654 on July 24, 2007, 11:01:03 PM
Quote from: faust on July 24, 2007, 10:04:06 PM
Sadly the easiest way to catch the attention with this is plug raw, give a brief outline of the old pd, the absurdism etc being changed, the new message and then the pdf link.

It will need to be peddled as discordia revisited, not stand alone on the bip, which seems fine to me.
edit: this is in relation to sa and the wiccan sites, elsewhere would need a different approach.

Yes, I think for the Prairie Homemaker forum types the hook needs to be set before mentioning PD.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: B_M_W on July 25, 2007, 12:06:41 AM
Quote from: triple zero on July 24, 2007, 10:19:38 PM
Quote from: Buddhist_Monk_Wannabe on July 24, 2007, 09:37:30 PM
Quote from: triple zero on July 24, 2007, 07:28:55 PM
as far as i understand from the texts, it works best if you modify the product so it 'll become virus-worthy.

Yes, but can you do that without changing the message?

in the case of the marketing example, that wouldn't matter. obtaining a meme virus is already the reward in itself, all you need is a little part of it that you "own" in order to make a profit when the virus reaches its top infection point.

But this isn't the marketing example. And I don't want it to be.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Iron Sulfide on July 26, 2007, 06:53:48 PM
[sneeze]

Meme shit

A Memeplex of definitions
http://www.churchofvirus.org/lexicon.html

a web of llinks
http://www.churchofvirus.org/links.html
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: East Coast Hustle on July 29, 2007, 03:42:32 AM
this thread is great.

CoV are a bunch of pricks, but that doesn't mean there's not some good info and ideas on their site.

I tried to nudge them into the fold a couple years ago and they were WAY too stuck on themselves as the be-all and end-all of human advancement to want to work with other groups.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: B_M_W on July 30, 2007, 01:51:29 AM
I'd just like to note that the list of definitions has one for "cult", and under this definition one could call Academia such.

This being the second time today I have found that meme.

Apparently, by these definitions, I am now an active host, sneezing all over ya'all.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Iron Sulfide on July 31, 2007, 06:27:06 PM
Quote from: East Coast Hustle on July 29, 2007, 03:42:32 AM
this thread is great.

CoV are a bunch of pricks, but that doesn't mean there's not some good info and ideas on their site.

I tried to nudge them into the fold a couple years ago and they were WAY too stuck on themselves as the be-all and end-all of human advancement to want to work with other groups.

indeedy.

i used to be on the mailing list before CoV had a BBS.

pricks is being nice. i called myself an intellectual anarchist.
one dude (ironicly) pulled a pidgeon hole, and said that's the same as
a anarchoprimitavist (see: anything by "davesnothere" or "Lamanite").

would you know it? everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. so i just
continued arguing from the (false) perspective of the anarchoprimatives
anyway.

"David Lucifer" may or maynot still be there, i don't care, but he was one of the
few entities there with antipathy for the mindless drivel.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on July 31, 2007, 08:30:53 PM
Has anyone else here read The Book of Atem, by Phil Hine? His concept of memetic entities seems compelling.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on July 31, 2007, 09:01:54 PM
no, but I'm a fan of Hine. Do tell.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on August 01, 2007, 03:16:16 PM
The Book of Atem (which I have a signed pre-publish manuscript of ;-) ) appears to me as a combination between the creation of a "memetic entity" and a dissertation on memetic entities and how to create them. In Phil's system, memetic entities are a collection of memes that have created a self-perpetuating system. So while "Homosexuality is a sin"/"You go to hell, you go to hell and you DIE!" might be memes, Christianity as a whole exists as a memetic entity. "Buy Low, Sell High" is a meme, but Capitalism is a memetic entity.

Atem, the memetic entity intorduced in the book is sort of a meta-memetic entity. Atem was created, designed and released as a memetic entity to help people explore the concepts of memetic entities.

I'm about half-way through the book and I've found it fascinating. In applying it to our BiP concepts, I think it may provide some ideas on how to improve what we're aiming to do. If we consider memetic entities in the vernacular of Discordianism.  Flax, fnords, Mr. Momomoto nose, Hypoc's Bitter Tea, etc etc are all memes that are shared between multiple entities. Discordianism in general appears as a memetic entity, but so does The Principia Discordia and Eris. The difference between a meme and a memetic entity, in Hine's system, (as far as I can figure at this point)the meme is somewhat static and viral, a single idea getting passed around. A memetic entity appears like a collection of memes, existing within the minds of humans, modifying and being modified by each consciousness that it comes in contact with.

Hine lays out several elements necessary to create memetic entities for a specific purpose. I'll have to wait until I get home to lay out further details on the topic... mostly cause that's where the book currently resides.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: The Littlest Ubermensch on August 02, 2007, 10:44:17 PM
I disagree with your premise that Discordianism is a memetic entity. While perhaps a strictly PD interpretation of Discordianism could count as a memetic entity, Discordianism is more like a collection of strategies for thinking about and generating memes. It's a meme which serves the purpose of preventing the creation of memetic entities among those infected with it. Discordianism is basically the "think for yourself, shmuck" meme (and perhaps paired with a meme which instruct to look past duality to see the real truth, like the parable of the gong), and by its very nature won't allow memes that create/preserve memetic entities (like dogma or the threat of hell).
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Iron Sulfide on August 03, 2007, 08:44:27 AM
compelling.

i've been reading nietzsche's "human, all too human" again, and here's this:

[231]

Genesis of the genius.
The prisoner's wits, which he uses to seek means to free himself by employing each little advantage in the most calculated and exhaustive way, can teach us the tools nature sometimes uses to produce a genius (a word that I ask be understood without any mythological or religious nuance). Nature traps the genius into a prison, and piques to the utmost his desire to free himself.
Or, to use another image, someone who has completely lost his way in ,a forest, but strives with uncommon energy to get out of it in whatever direction, sometimes discovers a new, unknown way: this is how geniuses come into being, who are then praised for their originality.
We have already mentioned that mutilation, crippling, or serious lack of an organ often causes another organ to develop unusually well because it has to carry out both its own function and another besides. From this we can divine the origin of many a splendid talent.
One should apply these general comments about the origin of the genius to the special case, the genesis of the perfect free spirit.

__________

in thinking, further, of one of his earlier aphorisms (beyond good and evil, i believe)
i had a thought.

one should think outside the box. before as such, though, one must learn to think inside the box; one must learn to think.

(the latter added by me.)

now, a lot of folks 'round here find to disparaging the Principia as mindless hippy drug drivel.

i'd be the least to detract them from that. (even though i have, seemingly, tried- largely out of personal amusement.)

it seems to me that BIP is being spoken, conceived and perhaps even felt (if that's not too strong a word) in a post-box endeavor. that is awesome, like a thousand hotdogs, sir.

however, you have to (well, should at least grudgingly) consider that the PD was created with more than the dada bullshit in mind. in fact, the predominant theme, imo, was the double entendre of what you read and the principal at play (re: the law of fives, the starbuck's pebbles, the bitter tea, et al...). moreover, it's taken to such an absurd degree, that it's ultimately as benign as the trivial objects used for introductory logic premises. (cats, dogs; moon, cheese...) this is (or could be taken as) another layer of banality masking the basic mechanism.

so, then, the principia discordia has it's shit all retarded and talks like a fag, but it's an implement for understanding some of the basic principals to how thought in the box works. now, perhaps in the natural progression, whatever that is, you come to disdain the box-thoughts knowing them on such intimate terms.


[276]

Microcosm and macrocosm of culture. Man makes the best discoveries about culture within himself when he finds two heterogeneous powers governing there. Given that a man loved the plastic arts or music as much as he was moved by the spirit of science, and that he deemed it impossible to end this contradiction by destroying the one and completely unleashing the other power; then, the only thing remaining to him is to make such a large edifice of culture out of himself that both powers can live there, even if at different ends of it; between them are sheltered conciliatory central powers, with the dominating strength to settle, if need be, any quarrels that break out. Such a cultural edifice in the single individual will have the greatest similarity to the cultural architecture of whole eras and, by analogy, provide continuous instruction about them. For wherever the great architecture of culture developed, it was its task to force opposing forces into harmony through an overwhelming aggregation of the remaining, less incompatible27 powers, yet without suppressing or shackling them.
27. unvertr?§glich, not unertr?§glich (unbearable) as in the Zimmern text.


it's most definitely bullshit.
but maybe it's not just bullshit.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on August 03, 2007, 09:19:23 PM
Quote from: The Littlest Ubermensch on August 02, 2007, 10:44:17 PM
I disagree with your premise that Discordianism is a memetic entity. While perhaps a strictly PD interpretation of Discordianism could count as a memetic entity, Discordianism is more like a collection of strategies for thinking about and generating memes. It's a meme which serves the purpose of preventing the creation of memetic entities among those infected with it. Discordianism is basically the "think for yourself, shmuck" meme (and perhaps paired with a meme which instruct to look past duality to see the real truth, like the parable of the gong), and by its very nature won't allow memes that create/preserve memetic entities (like dogma or the threat of hell).

Maybe we have different ideas in mind when we say memetic entity. In Hine's book, the memetic entity exists as a set (or sets) of memes which have gone beyond the mind and control of a single human or group and exist within many consciousnesses modifying and being modified by the other existant things in that consciousness. I think maybe he sees them as new creations which can be spread through human consciousness so that they become part of Jung's collective unconscious. Memetic entites in the sense Hine uses them are neither good nor bad, they are creations with purpose... as they grow (by invading more heads) they grow by incorporating new concepts and getting rid of old ones. There's no single consistency to his Memetic entities, other than the similarity among its most basic memes/concepts.

Christianity, for example has a few very basic memes that make up the most simple for of the memetic entity. Belief in Jesus as the Messiah, belief in a Creator, belief in some sort of continuity of life. However, the entity has changed greatly since the most basic inception and now includes all sorts of memes from all sorts of other consciousnesses; A burning firey hell, an eternal soul, heaven with the wings and halo and hosannas, Everlasting life on Earth (JW addition), becoming God of your own planet (Mormon addition), Transubstantiation (Catholic addition), then there are all of the old gnostic additions etc.

The memetic entity of discordianism, seems to focus on "Think for yourself, schmuck", "perception is not reality" and maybe something like "It's better to laugh at the absurdity of it all, than try to be serious about it".

Memetic entities aren't particularly static, nor are they an All Encompassing inhabitant of one's mind. Many memetic entities may exist at the same time in one person's head, memetic entities that concern themselves with politics, with religion, with philosophy, or simply memetic entities that help you understand memetic entities (which is the purpose of The Book of Atem, Atem being the 'gateway memetic entity').

It's a pretty good book so far... and the exercises are rather intriguing.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: The Littlest Ubermensch on August 03, 2007, 10:02:51 PM
Oh, okay. In that sense then, one could consider Discordianism a memetic entity, albeit a very fluid one.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on August 03, 2007, 10:30:05 PM
Quote from: The Littlest Ubermensch on August 03, 2007, 10:02:51 PM
Oh, okay. In that sense then, one could consider Discordianism a memetic entity, albeit a very fluid one.

Precisely. In Phil's system, memetic entities must be fluid, otherwise they're not entities.

If I create a memetic entity called Finbop and define as having a set of properties, then I have really created a 'potential' entity. When Finbop is given attention by your consciousness (C^tlu) then it becomes (Finbop*C^tlu), if instead it contact with TGGR then it would be (Finbop*C^tggr). If you communicate the entity to Prater Festwo then it would become ((Finbop*C^tlu)*C^pf).

If Festwo then talks to TGGR about it, it becomes (((Finbop*C^tlu)*(Finbop*C^tggr))*C^pf) in Festwo's head... in TGGR's head it might look like: ((Finbop*C^tgger)*((Finbop*C^tlu)*C^pf))

and on and on and on, each consciousness modifies and is modified by the entity.

Of course, I think this is all metaphorical and no Really Real entity exists... rather I see it as a useful way to discuss complex meme sets, specifically meme sets which are designed to exist within the noosphere rather than a meme designed to exist in a brain.

Or I could have done way too many drugs?
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Triple Zero on August 04, 2007, 12:11:46 AM
hm apply to those formulas some relational group/set mathematical thing, i forgot what it's called and you might actually get a working model from that :)

though i suppose it would probably become infeasibly complex really fast :)
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cain on August 04, 2007, 02:11:22 AM
So, is this mental masturbation ever going to climax into something useful, or are you all just going to continue throw cultural jargon at each other to look clever?

Cain,
not seeing anything practical arising from this.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: The Littlest Ubermensch on August 04, 2007, 06:04:06 AM
Because the rest of this forum isn't basically an intellectual circle jerk?
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cain on August 04, 2007, 01:39:32 PM
Well, I tried to make my stuff as practical as possible.  But obviously that doesn't count or something.... :roll:

Look, you have a ton of information here.  Why isn't it being put to use in the Meme-bomb thread?  You know, that one stickied in O:MF which has produced some pretty good shit, it must be said.  Because this knowledge could be used to refine that process, or indeed try and figure out forms of mental defence.

But application of knowledge is pretty passe, it seems...
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Triple Zero on August 04, 2007, 03:55:25 PM
Quote from: Cain on August 04, 2007, 01:39:32 PM
Well, I tried to make my stuff as practical as possible.  But obviously that doesn't count or something.... :roll:

while very interesting to read, your stuff isn't quite practical to me.

that's okay, because your modus operandi is different from mine.

QuoteLook, you have a ton of information here.  Why isn't it being put to use in the Meme-bomb thread? 

cause it's all pretty theoretical?

even with all the rules and properties of memes listed in this thread so far, it's a whole different story to just sit down and say "oh i'm gonna make up a meme with these and these properties".

QuoteYou know, that one stickied in O:MF which has produced some pretty good shit, it must be said.  Because this knowledge could be used to refine that process, or indeed try and figure out forms of mental defence.

we have a process in the meme bomb thread?

because all i see is people shooting out one-liners, as catchy as possible, some work, some don't.

that's a different process, granted, it's one which brings results quickly, because there's enough people here willing to participate.

QuoteBut application of knowledge is pretty passe, it seems...

not passe, but in the future. i'm still looking for the info about memes that make it "click", some thing that can act as a framework to put it all in. some of the earlier posts in this thread came pretty close to that, though.

it's a similar process, actually, but on a different level, shooting out theories, in the hope we find one that works.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cain on August 04, 2007, 04:22:20 PM
Practice should follow implicitly from theory.  Otherwise the theory is crap and should be discarded.

So, you know what goes into making a meme.  Now, try and apply that.  Create a meme, get some of the WOMP goons to photoshop it to a picture of something funny and spam /b/ with it for a few days.  See if it catches on.  If it doesn't, try to figure out why not then have another go.  Once you get some working, consider different target groups and attempt different results.  The first should be lulzy/neutral, the latter moving towards creating certain reactions.  Obviously, you cannot measure the response to the latter ones as well, but if it starts appearing without your doing, you are onto something.

You have the world's largest social sciences lab at your fingertips.  I would suggest using it.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Bu🤠ns on August 04, 2007, 10:34:35 PM
Quote from: Cain on August 04, 2007, 04:22:20 PM
Practice should follow implicitly from theory.  Otherwise the theory is crap and should be discarded.

So, you know what goes into making a meme.  Now, try and apply that.  Create a meme, get some of the WOMP goons to photoshop it to a picture of something funny and spam /b/ with it for a few days.  See if it catches on.  If it doesn't, try to figure out why not then have another go.  Once you get some working, consider different target groups and attempt different results.  The first should be lulzy/neutral, the latter moving towards creating certain reactions.  Obviously, you cannot measure the response to the latter ones as well, but if it starts appearing without your doing, you are onto something.

You have the world's largest social sciences lab at your fingertips.  I would suggest using it.

why not just highlight some of the memes that work in the memebomb thread and go from there. have the selection based on the criteria described in this thread.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cain on August 04, 2007, 10:42:29 PM
Because I seriously doubt my connection would hold long enough, let alone stand up to being on a site like /b/ (or gaia etc)
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Triple Zero on August 05, 2007, 07:14:54 PM
Quote from: Cain on August 04, 2007, 04:22:20 PM
Practice should follow implicitly from theory.  Otherwise the theory is crap and should be discarded.

if it had been up to you, you just discarded the set of complex numbers.

which was purely theoretical mathematical goobledygook when they were "discovered". it was only much later until it was found they have a practical application in electronics engineering, that they became the invaluable tool and addition to mathematics they are now.

there are numerous other examples where theories have been formed, before any practical application was even in sight.

QuoteSo, you know what goes into making a meme. 

actually i don't. we were just exploring what goes into making a meme, in this thread.

i could try and have some semi-blind stabs at it, like in the memebomb thread, but i'd rather continue exploring the territory a bit further, myself.

QuoteNow, try and apply that.  Create a meme, get some of the WOMP goons to photoshop it to a picture of something funny and spam /b/ with it for a few days.  See if it catches on.  If it doesn't, try to figure out why not then have another go.  Once you get some working, consider different target groups and attempt different results.  The first should be lulzy/neutral, the latter moving towards creating certain reactions.  Obviously, you cannot measure the response to the latter ones as well, but if it starts appearing without your doing, you are onto something.

You have the world's largest social sciences lab at your fingertips.  I would suggest using it.

i like this idea.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cain on August 05, 2007, 07:51:12 PM
1. However, their existence presupposed a practical application.  Sometimes technology has to catch up with the theory, however, then the theory is STILL explaining the mechanisms once they are in place.  Therefore, the theory goes to the practical.  If a theory has no application to the practical, then it is useless.

2.  Then continue.

3.  Then do it.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Triple Zero on August 05, 2007, 08:02:58 PM
Quote from: Cain on August 05, 2007, 07:51:12 PM
1. However, their existence presupposed a practical application.  Sometimes technology has to catch up with the theory, however, then the theory is STILL explaining the mechanisms once they are in place. 

no the theory was just developed for theory's sake.

they found a certain pattern in mathematics that suggested taking the square root of minus one wouldn't be a completely absurd idea, then developed a bunch of rules around it to accomodate for it, then found that even though they were now working with self-admitted "imaginary numbers", on the whole it fitted rather well with the rest of mathematics and seemed to complete it in a certain way, so they kept it.

practical application came only much later.

(note: i'm not a mathematics history expert, this is what i heard was the general story)

there are currently still a lot of mathematical proofs, theorems and other constructions that have no practical application whatsoever, just seemed "nice" or "interesting" to find a proof for or to explore. from time to time, some of these theorems are plucked out of their dusty cabinets and come in useful for research that actually has practical application.
maybe some others never will see any practical use. but the point is, you can't tell beforehand.

Quote
2.  Then continue.

we were, until you started heckling.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cain on August 05, 2007, 08:27:25 PM
They are built on the back of theories that have practical use, are they not?

And you may have been, but there seemed to be several people who wanted to race to the top of Mount Cleverest rather than bring in any real information.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on August 06, 2007, 06:18:58 PM
Practical use?

I make use of these ideas all the time. I'm currently studying the concepts surrounding memes and memetic entities, in an effort to create memes and memetic entities for my own use. Some of them might be interesting to post here, some may not. However, I would not, in any situation suppose that something discussed in a Discordian forum would have practical application. For me, the applications are multifaceted, I use this forum to throw out and read about ideas/concepts related to memes. The ideas are then used in experiements to see if they work in creating memes or not. However, I can't say that any of its practical.

In fact, other than the 40 hours I spend each week at the office, I don't particularly care about what's considered practical. If anyone here considers anything on this site as more than idle chat, discordant ramblings and Chaotic circle jerks, then I think they may be smoking something a bit stronger than the stuff I usually do.

Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on August 06, 2007, 06:50:22 PM
Cain, do you have anything "practical" to contribute? Or are you just here to tell others that they're doing it wrong?
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Iron Sulfide on August 11, 2007, 07:19:16 PM
do any of you practice/use/experiment with these memebombs, other ideas we've had here IRL- to people you know, work with, encounter at the coffee shoppe (whatever)?

because that's wher i'm getting my practical information from. which is why i haven't substantive amounts to post yet.

yet. this is a small town. lots of responses are the same: brickwall.

i'm accumuilating good subjects,. though. trying to get a good cross sectin of people that i can sling my 'ideas' at, and then be able to follow the timespan afterwards to see if it keeps popping up.

as i said, i don't have much in it that's substantive, but it's getting interesting.

we shold also look into Advertising Digest (not a real name): the marketing industry, really, has already laid down a lot of the tracks we need. initially, at least. what would it be to develop a system more effective than marketing?

and then use it to convince people to think?
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Discord on August 12, 2007, 11:56:14 AM
Would be great to convince the coca cola company to print one of our memes on the cans. Fex.
But i guess that won't work unless someone here has very good connections.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on August 12, 2007, 08:12:27 PM
Quote from: Prater Festwo on August 11, 2007, 07:19:16 PM
do any of you practice/use/experiment with these memebombs, other ideas we've had here IRL- to people you know, work with, encounter at the coffee shoppe (whatever)?


I have made use of several memes and mindfucks at work, with friends and whenever possible. Growing up as a JW led to the useful ability of striking up conversations and speaking with conviction. I have a few personal friends that I've led through multiple meme programs and one, in particular, now plays around with his own head. A few others have grasped some of the concepts, but so far, Pope William XXIII has been the most interesting conversion. When I met him he as a confused half-goth/ex-Mormon/Arby's Assistant Manager/Republican. He's now a Discordian, complete with writing his own programs, arguing for conservative, liberal and libretarian ideas (based on who's spouting the politics),  he realized that he should be manager of the Arby's and his Mormon past he now sees as a really useful experience in a very odd reality tunnel. Now, it may be that his past experiences were very close to mine and I was better able to poke memes where I had found they worked for me... I don't really know.

With Pope William, I dropped the 23 meme on him and let him chew on it for about 6 months. He and his wife had pagan leanings and I was taking a course on Chaos Magic (Peter Carroll) and they figured I had learned it there. I got him to try the Quarter experiement under the guise of magic rituals. After about three months of that, I laid out the whole concept of meme programs, meta-programming, Attention and pattern matching. By then I had also converted him to Discordianism, with his own pope card and copy of the PD.

I've started a ritual which gets used surprisingly often among many stoners (surprised sometimes when I see it happen). It's basically a rip off of a sect of Hindu (the Saddhus). When they smoke, they call out "Bhangi Bhangi Bhangi" as an invocation to Shiva (The God of Bhang). This also alerts anyone who would like to join the ritual of communing with Shiva, using a Chillum of bhang. Afterward, they anoint their third eye with ash from the bowl and intone a call to Shiva. I mutated this slightly and when meeting a new dealer was surprised to see him do the same ritual. I asked about it feigning ignorance and he said "Someone showed me that the other day, its from some ancient ritual for pot and supposed to bring good luck" Maybe the instances are unrelated, I can't say. However, I have many hippie friends and quite a number of them have adopted my little rituals. Have they spread beyond my circle of friends... well I'd like to think so.

My department Director was being asked about some concerns from the business. In response he told them that from our perspective thet might be "finding quarters"... he's not a Discordian, but he's caught a  meme which I loosed at the office.

I think those are my favorite and probably most obvious successes in memeing non-discordians. I have no illusion that this was do to my awseomeness, or Bob's or Eris... I think that they were exceptional incidents where some of therse ideas have worked,

Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on August 13, 2007, 05:46:59 PM
Quote from: Ratatosk on August 12, 2007, 08:12:27 PM
I've started a ritual which gets used surprisingly often among many stoners (surprised sometimes when I see it happen). It's basically a rip off of a sect of Hindu (the Saddhus). When they smoke, they call out "Bhangi Bhangi Bhangi" as an invocation to Shiva (The God of Bhang). This also alerts anyone who would like to join the ritual of communing with Shiva, using a Chillum of bhang. Afterward, they anoint their third eye with ash from the bowl and intone a call to Shiva. I mutated this slightly and when meeting a new dealer was surprised to see him do the same ritual. I asked about it feigning ignorance and he said "Someone showed me that the other day, its from some ancient ritual for pot and supposed to bring good luck" Maybe the instances are unrelated, I can't say. However, I have many hippie friends and quite a number of them have adopted my little rituals. Have they spread beyond my circle of friends... well I'd like to think so.

That's really cool. I think stoners are really susceptible to these sorts of ritualized behavior memes.

Back in high school, before I knew what a meme was, I tried to get a fad started that when a fire alarm went off, everyone would immediately stand up and dance ridiculously to the rhythm. All it took was cueing the two coolest kids in the class and the rest of the class would follow. I was tickled pink to later see fire-alarm dances break out when I didn't start them.

The anatomy of that meme:
-reward for participation: dancing to fire alarms is fun
-it's so simple you don't even need to explain it
-if the cool kids do it, you're cool for doing it
-participating in the meme advertises the meme to others
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Iron Sulfide on August 20, 2007, 06:45:52 PM
Quote from: Discord on August 12, 2007, 11:56:14 AM
Would be great to convince the coca cola company to print one of our memes on the cans. Fex.
But i guess that won't work unless someone here has very good connections.

actually, with some of the craftier meme-bombs we have, we could probably get on the bottles of Jones Soda.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: AFK on August 20, 2007, 07:02:08 PM
Aren't they the ones that make that Bug Juice soda?  Seems like an apporpriate one for our memes. 
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Iron Sulfide on August 22, 2007, 04:37:09 AM
they also make a thanksgiving day set. it's awful.

but by and large, they make a lot of good sodas, they're independent, and they actively look for neat shit to put on the bottles.

pictures
sentences
that have you

to boot, they have a sizable market as it is. we could marginally tap that.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: PeregrineBF on August 23, 2007, 01:49:41 AM
They make any flavor they can think of on occasion. But their normal stuff is good, largely because they use actual sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.

http://www.jonessoda.com/files/yrlab.php (http://www.jonessoda.com/files/yrlab.php) <- For submitting label photos.

We should do a propaganda dump periodically into their gallery.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Iron Sulfide on August 24, 2007, 08:58:42 PM
thay also have to "okay" it before it gets on a bottle..

so decency makes the sell this time, i'm afraid. unless you're that crafty.

tangteel notes:

what the fuck is it with image manip progs?

i seem to have an invisible hand stopping me from aquiring one.
i got gimp, it was missing critical files.
i pirated PS9, and the burner i used to put it to disc fucked me and didn't write the information.

FUCK.

/vent
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on August 24, 2007, 09:20:27 PM
Quote from: Prater Festwo on August 24, 2007, 08:58:42 PM
thay also have to "okay" it before it gets on a bottle..

so decency makes the sell this time, i'm afraid. unless you're that crafty.

tangteel notes:

what the fuck is it with image manip progs?

i seem to have an invisible hand stopping me from aquiring one.
i got gimp, it was missing critical files.
i pirated PS9, and the burner i used to put it to disc fucked me and didn't write the information.

FUCK.

/vent

obligatory:
(http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x279/BlessedBesse/paint.jpg)
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Triple Zero on December 04, 2007, 02:20:55 PM
bump.

posting about Sziget in the lyrics thread made me remember.

next time i'm going to a big festival you guys are going to help me come up with rumours to spread.

(this is also partly notes to self, plus illustration on plans for brainstorming about practical memeology)

only on the last day, my dutch camping neighbours told me about their mindfuck idea, some famous rock/metal band (i forgot which) had cancelled because the singer was sick or something, and they were trying to spread the rumour the organization flew over the Smashing Pumpkins to perform instead.

( and then the discussion drifted off in what kind of famous bands we would like to see, we agreed on Aphex Twin, they mentioned he was gonna perform in the Netherlands soon, and .. etc our rumourmill never went anywhere :-P )

anyway, something slightly more believable + having more funny consequences could be enormously successfull because:

- a festival like sziget with nearly 400k people on a small island is a terribly dense highly active hive.

- provision of official information during the festival is, to put it lightly, not particularly effective. the english booklet is quite thin, contains only a short and incomplete summary of the larger bands performing. the hungarian booklet is a lot more complete, but hungarian is such a weird (finno-ugric) language, if you're not hungarian you can't read it (even if you, like me, brought a tourists phrases dictionary). apart from that there's an intercom system that just broadcasts the same message every hour (in four languages hu/fr/de/en) or so.
in other words, if there's anything happened that's not according to plan, nobody is going to know.

- the hungarian and non-hungarian groups (usually 50/50%) on the island do not mix too much, so focus should be on the western-european group, who do communicate with eachother a lot (in english, so the french population may also be somewhat of an outlier, even though most young french have a reasonably understanding of english these days)

- information about news of happenings on the festival will be very popular to spread (smooooth) because nobody has a fucking clue what's going on outside the english booklet, and everybody can see there is everywhere so much more going on than that :)

this reminds me btw of the Dutch Lowlands festival, which lasts 3-4 days (a long weekend), they print and spread a free daily "lowlands newspaper", filled partly with pre-written articles and interviews with the artists performing that day, reviews of the performances yesterday, and most importantly, news of current actual events and information about the things going on at the festival. so it's be much harder to spread false rumours there.
but, if you compare Lowlands to Sziget, you see a huge gap in professionalism of organisation (which, TBH, gives Sziget a much better atmosphere, since the enthousiasm and friendlyness of the volunteers generously makes up for the organisational flaws)

um, anyway, you get the point. any thoughts on the subject? would this sort of thing work for festivals on your side of the ocean?

also, i think rumours about "this famous artist is going to perform instead of XXXX" are not really that interesting, can you guys think of something that has a more funny effect?

Quote from: Professor Cramulus on July 24, 2007, 02:10:42 PM
We've been talking a bit about memetics and the properties of memes. So from what I know of memetics, here are some concepts which may make it easier to talk about this stuff. (The terminology I use is from Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin, in which he's talking about memes in terms of marketing. He calls a successful meme an Ideavirus.)

Velocity - a measure of how fast an idea spreads from one party to another

Hive - a network of people who exchange information. Information travels very easily within a hive, especially when regard each other as credible sources. PD.com is a hive. A class of third graders is a hive. Friends who talk about HP Lovecraft are a sort of hive.

Sneeze - a sneeze is a transmission of a meme between two people. If I see a cool commercial, and then I ask my friend if he's seen that commercial, that counts as a sneeze. Basically any time you mention a product, you are sneezing that meme.

Smoothness - how easy it is for someone to sneeze the meme. Sports trivia is very smooth in regards to sports fans. Really boring or complicated topics are not smooth.

Another factor influencing smoothness is whether or not the meme presents a risk or reward to the sneezer. For example, the iPhone is considered cool. You might seem cooler for knowing about the iPhone or mentioning your friend that has one. If you're attending NAMBLA meetings you'd probably want to keep a lid on that. So NAMBLA membership isn't very smooth.

Promiscuity - One's likelihood to spread a meme. Really promiscuous people sneeze a lot. Marketing teams twist their brains in knots trying to figure out how to get the cool guys and the hot girls to start using their products. Trendsetters and people of authority tend to be very promiscuous.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on December 04, 2007, 03:37:54 PM
The famous band which nobody knows about has good potential to spread well.

Dangerous warnings are good too, for two reasons:
you get a benefit from knowing that it's dangerous to do X or go to Y or eat Z
and you get to feel important by warning other people, who will no doubt thank you.

Example: The portapotty on the end has hepatitis all over it. Don't go in there, you'll get an STD.

Tell people while they're waiting in line for that specific toilet. If they're an altruistic sort of person, they will spread the meme when they see others waiting in line.

The biggest trick to spreading memes like this is to target the promiscuous. That is, the people who will rapidly communicate the info to the whole hive. With the above meme, if you happen to hit someone who is really health-oriented, altruistic, and is comfortable talking to strangers, you win. He feels like a hero, and does your dirty work for you.

Quoteonly on the last day, my dutch camping neighbours told me about their mindfuck idea, some famous rock/metal band (i forgot which) had cancelled because the singer was sick or something, and they were trying to spread the rumour the organization flew over the Smashing Pumpkins to perform instead.

My college had a group of pranksters that basically did just this. Every year, they started a rumor that Frankie Munez or Ashley Olsen was coming to our college. This sort of thing is hard to verify, exciting, and spreads really quickly. One of my friends who still goes to school there recently told me that Frankie Munez actually does go to school there - which is hogwash because i know the guys who started that rumor. Also, I'm amazed that it's still going on, three years after they started it.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on December 17, 2007, 09:54:44 PM
This paper: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Conf/MemePap/Marshall.html "The Internet and Memetics" had some very interesting points about how memes are used on the internet to create a sense of culture -- and how that culture, over time, gets narrower and narrower.

The interesting part of this paper is section 4 - Memetics at the user level. Which I will quote for you here. Bold emphasis added by me to mark the parts and phrases I found most interesting.




QuoteThe Internet, as mentioned earlier, supports the rapid and accurate world-wide transmission of the memes of its users. This is a supplement to, and not a replacement for, the traditional means of spreading memes. It is also, clearly, a means which makes use of a different medium. To the extent that the characteristics of the medium differ from those of the traditional medium, so the result of dispersing memes is, in turn, different.

It has been argued that the Internet's capability to spread memes across the world both accurately and instantaneously supports a tendency towards homogeneity in world culture (Heylighen, 1996). Memes can appear at much the same time in different parts of the world regardless of geographical and cultural boundaries to exert their effects. It has also been argued that the speed of transmission, and the resulting rapid cascade of memes across the Internet, makes it more difficult to distinguish between the more and less valuable memes (Taylor, 1996). There is a premium on short, catchy memes as opposed to more complex memes such as lengthy stories. Infectiousness assumes an importance far greater than that of attributes that may well have greater long-term value such as utility and authority.

With these insights, it is possible to sketch the essential differences between virtual and real-world communities. Virtual communities are not structured in the same way as real-world communities. Constraints of geography and status do not come into play: what matters is a common interest. But a diverse collection of people, perhaps drawn from all parts of the world and united by only a common interest, needs to construct its own culture. The network facilitates this with communication and the spread of memes. But, by comparison with the real world, memes are spread rapidly and accurately. This causes virtual communities to develop cultures that are narrow, often extreme and, in consequence, rather precarious (Marshall, 1998). Their precarious nature is re-inforced by the favouring of infectious memes over memes that might bring greater benefits in the long term, in that their adoption can result in a gap between the conceptions of the virtual world and those of the real world that is so great as to become unsustainable (Umpleby, 1996).

The increased use of agents brings another aspect to the situation in that they can be used to control the memes to which their dispatchers are exposed. Agents are a key element in the so-called 'push' technology with which users can specify the sort of information they want to receive, after which the network will 'push' that, and only that, information to them. As with any form of 'narrowcasting' this leads to the reinforcement of existing beliefs and the avoidance of the uncertainty associated with opposing, conflicting or even just different ideas (Salem and Gratz, 1997). This kind of selective attention produces individuals who are unaware of, or even afraid of, other views and of groups holding these views. In turn, this leads to social fragmentation and the production of incompatible social segments. (I think the local trolls know exactly what they're talking about here! --Cram)

As a final point, the gulf between those with access to the network and those who do not is amplified by the fact that these groups exchange different memes in different ways. As Internet culture develops and moves farther from real-world culture, it becomes harder, not necessarily to gain access, but to join in effectively once access is gained. Besides this, there is the very real possibility of those with access to the network becoming cut off from their real-world history. They may have no interest in it: those who do may not share the technical and cultural interests of those with access. The consequence can be a separation of those who spend most of their time on the network from their own history, which can only serve to widen further the gulf between those with access and those without.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cain on December 17, 2007, 10:02:54 PM
Quote from: Professor Cramulus on August 06, 2007, 06:50:22 PM
Cain, do you have anything "practical" to contribute? Or are you just here to tell others that they're doing it wrong?

I considered replying to this thread, but I saw the above reply and decided not to bother.

And yes, I did notice the date.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on December 18, 2007, 09:33:23 PM
Quote from: Cain on December 17, 2007, 10:02:54 PM
Quote from: Professor Cramulus on August 06, 2007, 06:50:22 PM
Cain, do you have anything "practical" to contribute? Or are you just here to tell others that they're doing it wrong?

I considered replying to this thread, but I saw the above reply and decided not to bother.

And yes, I did notice the date.

Oh you should have posted anyway.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Shinigami715 on December 29, 2007, 08:57:48 PM
Quote from: Professor Cramulus on December 17, 2007, 09:54:44 PM
This paper: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Conf/MemePap/Marshall.html "The Internet and Memetics" had some very interesting points about how memes are used on the internet to create a sense of culture -- and how that culture, over time, gets narrower and narrower.

The interesting part of this paper is section 4 - Memetics at the user level. Which I will quote for you here. Bold emphasis added by me to mark the parts and phrases I found most interesting.




QuoteThe Internet...


Solid Gold Hyper Mittens. Such fucking good points! Where do you get all these gems?
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Captain Utopia on August 03, 2009, 06:00:19 AM
Quote from: Cramulus on July 24, 2007, 02:10:42 PM
We've been talking a bit about memetics and the properties of memes. So from what I know of memetics, here are some concepts which may make it easier to talk about this stuff. (The terminology I use is from Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin, in which he's talking about memes in terms of marketing. He calls a successful meme an Ideavirus.)

Velocity - a measure of how fast an idea spreads from one party to another

Hive - a network of people who exchange information. Information travels very easily within a hive, especially when regard each other as credible sources. PD.com is a hive. A class of third graders is a hive. Friends who talk about HP Lovecraft are a sort of hive.

Sneeze - a sneeze is a transmission of a meme between two people. If I see a cool commercial, and then I ask my friend if he's seen that commercial, that counts as a sneeze. Basically any time you mention a product, you are sneezing that meme.

Smoothness - how easy it is for someone to sneeze the meme. Sports trivia is very smooth in regards to sports fans. Really boring or complicated topics are not smooth.

Another factor influencing smoothness is whether or not the meme presents a risk or reward to the sneezer. For example, the iPhone is considered cool. You might seem cooler for knowing about the iPhone or mentioning your friend that has one. If you're attending NAMBLA meetings you'd probably want to keep a lid on that. So NAMBLA membership isn't very smooth.

Promiscuity - One's likelihood to spread a meme. Really promiscuous people sneeze a lot. Marketing teams twist their brains in knots trying to figure out how to get the cool guys and the hot girls to start using their products. Trendsetters and people of authority tend to be very promiscuous.
Ooh - this thread started off so well! It makes perfect sense that people in marketing would be the ones with the greatest motivation to refine this into an applied science, I just never thought about it. Fuckers. Gobbling up every last electron to feed their flashing neon, cutting down every last tree for their billboards, targeting every last mind for the mindless will of the machine - if memetics could not be used to destroy this industry and the soulless fuckers that suck from its crackwhore teat, then I'd just give in and pucker up too.

Maybe I've been reading too many rants in the last few weeks, but I'm starting to feel actual... anger.. for the first time in years.

I will seriously consider kicking a motherfucker in the shins.

Quote from: Ratatosk on August 01, 2007, 03:16:16 PM
The Book of Atem (which I have a signed pre-publish manuscript of ;-) ) appears to me as a combination between the creation of a "memetic entity" and a dissertation on memetic entities and how to create them. In Phil's system, memetic entities are a collection of memes that have created a self-perpetuating system. So while "Homosexuality is a sin"/"You go to hell, you go to hell and you DIE!" might be memes, Christianity as a whole exists as a memetic entity. "Buy Low, Sell High" is a meme, but Capitalism is a memetic entity.

Atem, the memetic entity intorduced in the book is sort of a meta-memetic entity. Atem was created, designed and released as a memetic entity to help people explore the concepts of memetic entities.
From your description of that book, I don't see a two-layer system of memes and memetic-entities as being that useful. Isn't it just switching the definition of the "host" from the individual to the community? And what then of the set which contains both Discordians and Pagans? If we can reliably predict some of the outcomes and arguments as the memetic-entities collide, then why are we elevating those memes to a higher level of conceptual existence?

I tend to conceptualise memes as two or more 'ideas' which when 'attention' is given to them within a certain period of time, reliably stimulate the recollection of one or more subsequent 'ideas', at a neurological/interpersonal/cultural level. Where an 'idea' can be anything in scope from an orange, to all things orange, to anything related to furniture, to a particular religion, to an entire planet of different religions or any meme you choose. A stream of consciousness may contain rocks, pebbles and sand - our power of abstraction has no need to differentiate at a low level.

Quote from: Ratatosk on August 03, 2007, 10:30:05 PM
Precisely. In Phil's system, memetic entities must be fluid, otherwise they're not entities.

If I create a memetic entity called Finbop and define as having a set of properties, then I have really created a 'potential' entity. When Finbop is given attention by your consciousness (C^tlu) then it becomes (Finbop*C^tlu), if instead it contact with TGGR then it would be (Finbop*C^tggr). If you communicate the entity to Prater Festwo then it would become ((Finbop*C^tlu)*C^pf).

If Festwo then talks to TGGR about it, it becomes (((Finbop*C^tlu)*(Finbop*C^tggr))*C^pf) in Festwo's head... in TGGR's head it might look like: ((Finbop*C^tgger)*((Finbop*C^tlu)*C^pf))
Urgh. Did there end up being any way to translate this back into something tangible? It seems like needless torture.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on August 03, 2009, 02:49:26 PM
Quote from: fictionpuss on August 03, 2009, 06:00:19 AM
Ooh - this thread started off so well! It makes perfect sense that people in marketing would be the ones with the greatest motivation to refine this into an applied science, I just never thought about it. Fuckers. Gobbling up every last electron to feed their flashing neon, cutting down every last tree for their billboards, targeting every last mind for the mindless will of the machine - if memetics could not be used to destroy this industry and the soulless fuckers that suck from its crackwhore teat, then I'd just give in and pucker up too.

Maybe I've been reading too many rants in the last few weeks, but I'm starting to feel actual... anger.. for the first time in years.

I will seriously consider kicking a motherfucker in the shins.

the thing to remember about those evil marketing people
is that they are us
in a way - applied memetics is a way to effectively use ideas

the market forces which make marketing work
arise from human choice - it's not like marketing and commercialism live in this illuminatti realm above culture, like evil puppeteers. They're an organic part of us.  The process works because people like what they do.

<Edit to add: if effectively crafting and positioning ideas is manipulative or evil, so is every publication we've ever created.>

So I feel that fighting against commercialism is, in some ways, a lost cause. It's presumptuous to assume that you know what the people should have any better than they know. Sadly, they chose commercialism.

The study of memetics allows us to see these things for what they are. It makes us sensitive to the fact that microsoft is trying to make their search engine Bing popular by inserting it into language as a cool sounding verb. (tangent - Personally I think this is a good cause if only because the word "to google" meaning "to search" is fucking weak. If it means "to search using google", that's fine, but sometimes people say dumb things like, "google it on ebay", and that represents corporate language creep, like saying Kleenex instead of Tissue)
________________________________________________________________________

I've been pondering this for the last few weeks:

Okay, we can study memetics. We can get better at creating ideas which will "survive" in the memetic ecosystem...

But to what end? Our motivation for doing so exists within a tangled memetic network. What memes have made "study memetics" a meme? What's the ultimate thing that I want to do with these idea-powers? Is it a prank? A good cause? A profit engine? A mindfuck?


The art of memetics says that you need to go into the long dark teatime of the soul and contemplate this. But before you do that, you need to learn how to separate all the other memes in your brain, so that when you arrive at a conclusion about what you should be doing with your miserable life, you don't end up saying "Making Money". Because yo, making money is great, but money is a means, not an end.

I've been reading crowley like crazy because I suspect this process is what he's talking about when he refers to True Will (http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/will.htm).
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Telarus on August 03, 2009, 03:13:50 PM
Ooh, good insight there at the end, Cram.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Captain Utopia on August 03, 2009, 04:22:31 PM
It's not the crafting and positioning of ideas which I consider an evil, but the mindless consumption of all available resources. Like the memes which uphold the principle that a glossy magazine should be at least 50% adverts, or that it's fine that cheap electricity should be wasted on such low-return non-targeted adverts such as tampax for men. This is a much bigger topic than I want to get into right now - but briefly consider how Google Adwords targets particular demographics, is less obtrusive than the old-style web adverts, and gets a higher return for its clients. I've been idly planting memes on slashdot for a few years now showing that the same concepts (less obstrusive, more targetted) could be done for tv shows, movies, music, and virtually all media which requires funding. Effectiveness does not seem to be an issue, but the vested interests of the old media players is - e.g. digital advertising rates are stupendously undervalued - when that changes the old business models of print and network conglomerates will rapidly become obsolete/novelties. I have a few projects on the boil which may speed this process up, but I think it's largely inevitable - I might just be one out of countless ants nibbling on the branch, but this motherfucker is coming down.

This isn't about presuming to know what people want, it's about the application of algorithms to enable them to connect to _whatever_ it is they want more efficiently, with fewer worthless parasites in the way.


Quote from: Cramulus on August 03, 2009, 02:49:26 PM
I've been pondering this for the last few weeks:

Okay, we can study memetics. We can get better at creating ideas which will "survive" in the memetic ecosystem...

But to what end? Our motivation for doing so exists within a tangled memetic network. What memes have made "study memetics" a meme? What's the ultimate thing that I want to do with these idea-powers? Is it a prank? A good cause? A profit engine? A mindfuck?


The art of memetics says that you need to go into the long dark teatime of the soul and contemplate this. But before you do that, you need to learn how to separate all the other memes in your brain, so that when you arrive at a conclusion about what you should be doing with your miserable life, you don't end up saying "Making Money". Because yo, making money is great, but money is a means, not an end.

I've been reading crowley like crazy because I suspect this process is what he's talking about when he refers to True Will (http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/will.htm).
I know this makes certain people angry, because hey, if we were not so biologically attached to the concept of self and free will then we wouldn't have got this far, but my personal interpretation of True Will is that it's an illusion. Aligning your concept of Will to the skillset your current memeset has granted you is likely to make you more happy and effective at what you do, whether that's being a painter or an asshole or an asshole painter or anything.

Modifying your memeset to generate new skills allows you to re-examine your concept of True Will as a meta-meme once those changes start taking root. There are choices at every step - do I change my memes, or refine my Will? But subscribing to the idea that you can live a (fill in blank) life by discovering True Will and making that your God, seems likely only to turn you into a caricature.

Untangling and separating memes is vital, because otherwise you can't recognise deceptions, circular reasoning and a meme attack coming your way. But personally I try to keep it simple - emergence rewards survival intelligence. On one hand, our species will not survive very long unless the concept of memetics hits critical mass in popular culture. On the other hand, I could not give a damn about that, and I study memetics so that I can grasp my right to Slack in the here and now. On the third hand, the more people who just goof off on The Joy of Slack (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Joy+of+Slack%22), the more likely we are to wonder exactly why it is that we continue to choose to be part of a civilisation endlessly, detrimentally, grinding to the 9-5 commute.

In the end, it's about choosing to be on the winning team.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Telarus on August 03, 2009, 04:51:21 PM
Just a point on Crowley's term, True Will. He was pointing directly to the fact that to really excel at something you need to do it every day. Boiling down the essence of your life's obsession into a statement of intent is good and all. All his staging and theatrical language was to get the candidate to give that up to him so he could sell it back to them. Anything above that is neo-Thelemite fappery.

It's a great cult-building meme (good replication method attached to good jargon), and when Aleister cam up with the technique and seeded it to himself he built that into it (his obsession was the Tarot Major Arcana Guru process, i.e. he identified a key memetic social focus point in society), so he did things like pranayama, invocation, gematria, kaballah, etc every day (along with what we would now call NLP and con-man magickwhaterver number that was).
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on August 04, 2009, 04:42:18 AM
oh Dread Shinobi Ninjabob, how I adore your brain.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Telarus on August 04, 2009, 07:02:53 AM
 :horrormirth::1fap:
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Triple Zero on August 04, 2009, 10:04:33 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on August 03, 2009, 02:49:26 PMI've been pondering this for the last few weeks:

Okay, we can study memetics. We can get better at creating ideas which will "survive" in the memetic ecosystem...

But to what end? Our motivation for doing so exists within a tangled memetic network. What memes have made "study memetics" a meme? What's the ultimate thing that I want to do with these idea-powers? Is it a prank? A good cause? A profit engine? A mindfuck?


The art of memetics says that you need to go into the long dark teatime of the soul and contemplate this. But before you do that, you need to learn how to separate all the other memes in your brain, so that when you arrive at a conclusion about what you should be doing with your miserable life, you don't end up saying "Making Money". Because yo, making money is great, but money is a means, not an end.

cram, relax :)

you remember what you posted before in the thread, about people copying your fire drill without you starting it? how it tickled you pink?

not all memetics is about making money.

IMO, with discordianism,

discordian memetics is other things. it's about having fun, about being tickled pink because your RIP LOLCAT pic is all over the net these days. did we make any money of it? hell no! is it awesome? HELL YES!
second thing, which is more important depending on what kind of discordian you are, is memetics to spread certain ideas, ideals and to make people think.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on August 04, 2009, 10:26:38 PM
heh, speaking of that lolcat, I was telling that story to a bunch of people at a convention this weekend and they busted a nut laughing. They were familliar with the image but had no idea it was disinformation experiment. Not that they got all weepy over the Cheeseburger Cat kicking the bucket or anything, but at least they noticed.


but anyway - I know I'm always talking about how "Pranks don't need a good cause" and "you can't lose when you prank for fun", but if we limit ourselves to only pure-fun projects, it seems like we're wasting our studies.

What makes me bring it up is that I've been sniffing around for a new career. To make a decision on that level, I need to figure out exactly what I want. And that's turning out to be quite confusing and contradictory.

Like writing or graphic design, the study of memetics is just a tool. It's a means to an end. But the end we're individually reaching for exists within a memetic framework too! I think it's an important part of the study. That's why the AoM takes the reader into the chapel perilous. Ed and Wes didn't want to arm their readers with memetic weapons and then turn them loose on the world - they'd just end up serving someone else's memes.

Like how this Discordia meme seems to have taken control over a significant portion of my waking life. It's not a bad thing, I think. But it's important to be able to recognize it and hold it at arms length if necessary. And that means even treating the "fun" meme with a degree of reserve.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Captain Utopia on August 04, 2009, 10:38:36 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on August 04, 2009, 10:26:38 PM
but anyway - I know I'm always talking about how "Pranks don't need a good cause" and "you can't lose when you prank for fun", but if we limit ourselves to only pure-fun projects, it seems like we're wasting our studies.
THIS.

I'm dimly aware of my Aneristic Delusion, but I'm still optimistic enough to believe that it's not _all_ folly.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Bu🤠ns on August 11, 2009, 12:42:06 AM
Then why don't we make a top 5 list of discordian ideals, give them a modern package and send them out.

Top 5 discordian memes:
1. Think for yourself, Schmuck.
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
5. ???

Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Triple Zero on August 11, 2009, 12:50:02 AM
top 100 memebombs by vote? http://www.principiadiscordia.com/memebombs/?action=list&o=rating&m=100
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Bu🤠ns on August 11, 2009, 12:53:00 AM
I was thinking more about figuring out the current top 5 discordian ideals or values first and then packaging them in memetic form second.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Triple Zero on August 11, 2009, 12:56:34 AM
And I was pimping the memebomb voting tool.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Bu🤠ns on August 11, 2009, 01:03:51 AM
Quote from: Triple Zero on August 11, 2009, 12:56:34 AM
And I was pimping the memebomb voting tool.

Kick ass! :D
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Triple Zero on September 30, 2009, 03:57:01 PM
http://danzarrella.com/designing-for-contagiousness.html

relevant. this guy researches how memes become viral, and does it using statistics and numbers he gets from analyzing (amongst other things) huge amounts of twitter-data, what gets retweeted etc.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Caliginos Gnosticos on October 05, 2009, 04:17:40 PM
This is some excellent info. I've definitely got plans* to put this all to good use**...

*plans being defined as vague ideas that I will probably do something with at some point
**good use being defined as amusing and/or socially beneficial in my opinion
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Triple Zero on October 14, 2009, 05:10:52 PM
Another really good post by this Dan Zarella guy:

How to Make and Spread Rumors (http://danzarrella.com/rumors.html)
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Cramulus on October 16, 2009, 12:34:51 AM
zip, both of those articles are  :memnoch:



and that's good

in particular, I think the first one suggests we should turn the default forum skin to MEATSCAPES
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Rococo Modem Basilisk on November 18, 2009, 05:19:54 PM
Second one indicates that probably most of our good memebombs aren't contagious -- we might benefit from having better capsids (so that people will pass them along before they 'get' them). It seems to indicate that stuff will generally be spread between two groups who are in agreement in a memeplex, and since memebombs break memeplexes they won't be catchy with their intended audience.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Reginald Ret on November 25, 2009, 01:48:11 PM
that is a fascinating idea enki.
maybe a memebomb that is very infectuous when not understood in a certain way and memeplex breaking when understood in that way.
that way it will propagate untill everyone receiving it gets 'it'
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Telarus on November 25, 2009, 09:06:40 PM
"Some say the Apple marked 'Kallisti' was made of Gold. Some say it was made of Acapulco Gold."

There's an example direct from the Principia.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Rococo Modem Basilisk on November 26, 2009, 01:55:10 AM
The best I could do in terms of trying to adapt the memebomb idea to something that will memebomb and *still* be catchy is subversive limericks. I haven't come up with any yet, for the record.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Sir Bearington on July 27, 2012, 04:12:49 PM
My personal checklist for making the anatomy of a meme is

- Stupidity/Obscurity

- Catchy Name

- Abundant retards with Reddit
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Rococo Modem Basilisk on July 29, 2012, 08:56:37 PM
Quote from: Sir Bearington on July 27, 2012, 04:12:49 PM
My personal checklist for making the anatomy of a meme is

- Stupidity/Obscurity

- Catchy Name

- Abundant retards with Reddit

Not all memes are image macros.
Title: Re: Anatomy of a Meme
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on July 29, 2012, 09:21:28 PM
The idiot is banned. But quite right. Zombie apocalypse is a meme for example.