12
0

Why memes are so effective


               
2022 Jul 22, 6:32pm   65,074 views  584 comments

by Patrick   follow (59)  

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-revenge-of-the-shape-rotators

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-revenge-of-the-shape-rotators-735

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-revenge-of-the-shape-rotators-a5e


lying with taut talking points or evocative images is easy. hell, that’s what they’re for.

but memes that lie mostly do not work.

they are not funny or evocative because the analogy fails. it’s code that won’t compile. only that which draws valid comparison sets off the associational informational cascade that leads to the vast enhancements in informational density that make this modality special.

and without that your meme loses its potency.

you can only tell people so much in a brief span.

that’s why they call it an “attention economy.”

the true meme gets you to run code you already have installed.

that’s why it is so powerful and why its effect cumulate.

we are just starting to see the capability of this jump in communication evolution.

it will shake worlds.

and this is a glorious thing.

it skewers everything.

no one is safe.

(not even if they were promised that there would be a monkey to help them)

the speed with which this can pour a spicy glass of “shut the hell up” and provoke real thought by eliciting and evoking analogy is unprecedented as is the sublime, anarchic free market to select and spread the best means of doing so.

once, the powers that be needed fear only a few cartoonists and voices and could easily suppress their spread. now you must fight against the full force of the insight and creativity of the global myriads and the relentless upvote of the informational instantiations which best work to convey meaning as infallibly adjudicated by an audience of billions that play off one another like jazz night at birdland.


« First        Comments 575 - 584 of 584        Search these comments

576   Patrick   2026 Jan 16, 9:01pm  

https://barsoom.substack.com/p/amelia-sans-merci


This memetic pantheon is continuously evolving; we have caught it at a particularly early stage. ... For now it serves as a shared visual language, one that belongs to everyone and no one. There are no central authorities from whom updates emerge, no steering committees, no focus groups. The memetic pantheon cannot be appropriated by the decision of a board of directors; it cannot be redirected by the demands of political activists; it cannot be subordinated to the imperatives of marketing or public relations; it exists outside of the control of any individual or group. It forms the cultural matrix holding together the otherwise fractious tribes of the dissident right.

The regime has its narrative, which it communicates using the pseudo-mythological tools of public relations firms, marketing agencies, movie studios, news corporations, and academia; and we have our counter-narrative, which is communicated using the neomythological prelinguistic glyphic lyric poetry of memes. Whether on Trump, Brexit, immigration, COVID-19, the Russo-Ukrainian war, global warming, MeToo, gender ideology, feminism, nutrition, or almost any other subject of consequence, we have been using memes to weave stories for years, the warp and weft of which comprise a sort of poetic epic, a metanarrative that we are composing together, without funding, without asking permission, indeed in the face of explicit prohibition, waging insurrectionist mindwar with funny jokes for the joy of it.
578   HeadSet   2026 Jan 17, 9:07am  

Patrick says





What are we looking at here?
579   stereotomy   2026 Jan 17, 9:43am  

HeadSet says

Patrick says






What are we looking at here?

Amelia, the savior of Britain:

https://patrick.net/comment?comment_id=2239478
580   HeadSet   2026 Jan 17, 5:50pm  

stereotomy says

Amelia, the savior of Britain:

English flag, though.
581   stereotomy   2026 Jan 17, 9:15pm  

HeadSet says

stereotomy says


Amelia, the savior of Britain:

English flag, though.

Then fuck her. I have sympathy for the Scots and the Welsh, but not the english.
582   Patrick   2026 Jan 17, 9:24pm  

Half Irish myself, so genetically not a fan of England.

But I do have sympathy for the English who want to recover their country from the flood of 3rd worlders overwhelming it.
583   HeadSet   2026 Jan 18, 8:36am  

Patrick says

Half Irish myself, so genetically not a fan of England.

The Irish have, through Sinn Fein, traded the gentle rule of Orange over a small part of their island for being totally displaced by North Africans and Middle Easterners. Native Irish are well on the way to being a minority in Ireland itself.
584   Patrick   2026 Jan 18, 8:56am  

Yes, they fucked up.

« First        Comments 575 - 584 of 584        Search these comments

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   users   suggestions   gaiste