Dan
Dennett’s TED talk serves as a nice introduction to the concept of memes. Most
significantly for me, as someone who has read some Dawkins and knows at least
of the concept behind memes, was Dennett’s assertion that memes exist and
spread like viruses. Wikipedia defines memes as “a unit for carrying cultural
ideas”. This seems closely in line with Dawkins descriptions of the word and
the influence they have on groups of people. Memes are ideas that replicate and
spread amongst humans because, uniquely, we care about ideas.
Since this
class is centered on the Internet, I went to Google and began searching
different descriptions and phrases surrounding memes. Over and over I was
bombarded with sites featuring “Internet memes”, while little academic or
scholarly work appeared in the first pages of my search results. When going to
Wikipedia to learn more about an Internet meme, I found the definition they
provided interesting: “to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet”.
The Wiki entry goes on to state how much narrower an Internet meme is than
memes in general, as they only describe a single occurrence of memetic (is that
the right word?) transmission. But they are overwhelmingly the most popular
kind of meme when one searches the web.
As it
appears to me, the Internet has become a vast means of proliferating memes,
something that has likely been occurring from the very first moment of the
Internet. That the population at large recently has begun defining memes as
specifically “Internet memes” does little to change that fact that the web is
essentially a breeding ground for, as Dennett might say, “thought viruses”.
I did find
one nice article about memes, from the Smithsonian website: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/What-Defines-a-Meme.html?c=y&page=1 . James
Gleick, in rather blunt and concise language (particularly for him) defines
memes in the contemporary culture. The article looks at a view specific medium
for transmitting memes, such as music and catchphrases, and then focuses in on
the way that information and words have become wedded in our minds. The greater
argument that Gleick seems to be making is that we have become so immersed in a
world of information, a world of memes, that we don’t even see them swirling
around us, influencing our every thought and decision.
I also
spent some time clicking through various Internet meme sites, like
knowyourmeme.com and memegenerator.net. While I guess these sites do promote
singular ideas, centered on repetitious images, they do so in a haphazard,
comic way. It is frightening to consider that we are infected with ideas,
addicted to the infectious nature of ideas, and simultaneously overloaded with
these terrible, degenerate ideas. The Internet, as it has done with so much of
culture, has twisted the concept of memes into ultra-fast jokes, one-liners
that at once define our culture and make light of it.
Memes seem
to be dominating our culture in an overt, almost comic fashion thanks to the
Internet’s vast powers of proliferation. A thought can literally “go viral”
overnight, spreading just like a disease throughout the minds of Internet
users. This is a powerful and potentially dangerous facet of online life that
is just beginning to get the recognition and consideration it deserves. If we,
as information consumers, are not aware of the substance of our information, we
lose a great deal of our ability to wield that information. When a social issue
becomes an online joke it loses its teeth, becoming a mere caged animal for us
to marvel at and move on from. As Postman’s title predicts, we are not engaging
information, we are simply being amused to death.
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