But what do memes have to do with the future, technology, or the Internet? Memes existed long before the Internet, to most people’s astonishment. Memes are simply ideas that are spread through cultural osmosis. Again, how does this relate to the modern technology? Well, I’ll tell you how. Today’s memes are a bit different than the memes of yesteryear. This is due to modern technology. More specifically, it is due to the Internet. The Internet was once called an “information superhighway” for obvious reasons. With the Internet, Information, like never before, gained the ability to be transported at supersonic speeds across great expanses, only to be delivered to the Average Joe’s monitor. Modern technology allows ideas to be spread at such great speeds that it, necessarily, influences the ideas themselves. All that information slamming together at incredible speeds tends to produce a lot of crap, but, still, it’s an interesting process.
But what did I mean when I called meme’s “insightful”? How could some crap some idiot threw together, and other idiots supported, possibly be called insightful?* I like to think of memes as a cultural barometer that anyone could use to measure what’s popular in society or in a subculture. Most memes capture perfectly what is important and valued by a subculture (humor, usually, but there is often more to it). Think about it. I’m sure you’ve visited some part of the Internet where certain phrases or image macros were commonly used by many users, with most users understanding what was meant by the phrase or image. You may not have immediately known what these phrases or images meant, but, after spending some time within that subculture, you began to see just how those memes related to the culture. The culture generated the memes and the memes generated the culture. A perfect feedback cycle (there tend to be a lot of those in our collective futures).
Meme’s also act as a sort of social-cohesion device. People who frequent certain websites understand the memes being used and will feel a bond to either that site or to the people who use those memes on the site. It’s that shared knowledge of the meme that creates a very real bond between people. The person who understands a meme will feel more like a member of the community than the person who doesn’t get the meme. Additionally, since memes are created within those subcultures, the collective contribution to the memes only adds a person’s sense of community and social-cohesion.
Memes aid in one of my favorite features of the Internet: the distribution of information. Of course, most of the information spread by most memes in meaningless crap. But, as I mentioned above, memes do spread other, more valuable, information about Internet subcultures, values, and ideas. So, I guess memes can be tentatively forgiven for being incorrigibly obnoxious.
In the end, the modern meme owes its existence to the Internet. The meme of the moment is a perfect representation of popular Internet culture and I believe memes should be respected for that reason alone. But if you want to disparage memes regardless of any other considerations, I won’t hold it against you. If you ever want some idea as to what is currently popular on the Internet, take some time and visit knowyourmeme.com. But don’t stare into the abyss for too long. It will drive you mad.
Whether memes are annoying trivialities or cultural delights or both is something that will be debatable for the next 10,000 years, one thing is certain. Much like the Internet and because of the Internet, memes are here to stay.
*Please note, I’m using the word “idiot” in the least offensive way possible, we’re all idiots in some way or another.
No comments:
Post a Comment