What fossil fuel has done to the natural environment, memes and other social media behaviors may be doing to our social environment.

Since first becoming aware of the detrimental effect that memes (digital macro images shared across social media) are having on human social and intellectual patterns, I have written a number of critical essays exploring these issues directly and indirectly. You may want to read those as well to get a fuller picture of my critique.

Memes Are the Laugh Track of the Internet & That Is Not A Good Thing

The Meme Analysis Project

Society On the Surface: Distinguishing Between the Explicit and Implicit

What Does the ‘Like’ Button Really Do/Mean?

Welcome to the Idiocracy – The Growing Ignorance of Intelligence

Ronda Rousey, Charlie Sheen & Donald Trump Walk Into the Star Wars Bar

In order to view the destructive nature of memes I have created a new metric, or perceptual filter, from which to examine them. I call it Universal Simultaneous Behaviors (USBs).

A USB is a behavior in which a relatively high number humans across the globe are participating in at any given time.

Throughout most of human history there were only a few of these, and they all were directly related to our survival – eating, drinking, sleeping and sex.

The industrial revolution introduced new ones that were indirectly related to our survival – working a job and driving.

The digital revolution has introduced a few new ones, which are not related to survival in any way, except indirectly to our social needs – being online (social media) and making/sharing memes.

The USBs adopted during industrialism have been at the very heart of the damage humans have inflicted on the natural environment. Not necessarily because they are indirectly related to survival, but because they demanded dependence on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels can be seen as the fuel of the industrial era and of it’s USBs.

The fuel of the digital era which powers most online behavior and the entirety of memes is reductionism. Reductionism cripples our capacity to think critically and replaces complexity with over-simplicity. And just as fossil fuels have been disastrous to the natural environment, reductionism may be doing the very same to our social environment.

Consider the re-emergence of white supremacy and nationalism, both of which are predicated on reductionist ideas about the world. How did all of the progress we made in these regards take such a massive step backwards in such a short time? How did dormant and dying ideas make such a quick comeback?

It is not because they are good ideas, that is certain. And it is not that people are just totally rotten, which would be a cop out. To truly understand how this happened it is important to understand the environmental context in which these ideas re-emerged, which is likely the virus-like reductionism which plagues social media and the memes and tropes it has reduced itself to.

Human beings do have social needs, to varying degrees for each individual. Another issues of memes and rehashing tropes is that it buys social currency with almost no effort. When ones social needs are met too easily, they become less valuable. When social standing is paid for in clicks, those clicks become less meaningful over time, which means that the people dependent on them will need to click more to get the same effect. Eventually their entire social life becomes predicated on getting more low-paying clicks to feed their addiction. And during this time the individual stagnates and perhaps even regresses from the heights of their potential.

And this is what has allowed us to move backwards in time to revisit the authoritarianism and bigotries of our past. The human regression you can see on the nightly news in the developed world is not some accident. It is a direct result of digital era USBs.

I know how incredibly unlikely that seems, but in the words of Marshall McLuhan – “The medium is the message.” And in this case the message is reductionism, delivered by a highly addictive but low grade substance.

One of the great dangers is that, because it seems so unlikely, it is hard to convince people that they are participating in a dangerous behavior. And the more the participate, the less likely they are to understand the complexity needed recognize the danger for themselves.

If you share this article in social media I can almost guarantee that at least one, if not many people, will comment with a meme. And in doing so will have the smirk of satisfaction befitting a bratty toddler, while believing that theirs was an act of defiance and rebellion. However since the meme behavior is so pervasive, there could be nothing less rebellious or status quo than meme-ing.

While the problem is clear, the solution is not. How do we get billions of people to stop engaging in a behavior that provides dopamine hits and gratification of their Id, especially when they are in denial and the behavior itself digs them deeper into the pit?

We are on the precipice of a social and intellectual crisis, that if unchecked, will beget even more serious existential issues for humanity in the coming years.

If you think that my warning is mere hyperbole, test it. Step back from memes for a week, a month or a year. Do not create, share or ‘like’ them. See if after doing so my warning doesn’t make more sense. If you are unable to take a break from that behavior to test my hypothesis, then you will have evidenced the truth of what I am saying.

Memes are both the fossil fuel and the opiates of the digital world. Can you quit?

No politics allowed

Okay, politics allowed, but only if it really is funny and more than a joke at the expense of something you dislike.

The more time goes on, the more that I really come to hate internet memes. It would be enough to hate them for just how stupid they are on their own merits, but when we consider that they may also be dumbing us down, they go from to idiotic to problematic.

The first issue applies mostly to memes under the category of ‘humor’ or ‘funny’. The problem is that most of them are not funny. In fact, most of them do not even seem to be very authentic attempts at humor. In many cases some generic image and statement are slapped together and rely merely on contextual premises. This is especially true of images that get meme’d over and over again. Take, for instance, Conspiracy Keanu. The subtext that the meme is funny precedes the actual memes that are made from it. From this presumption all sorts of terribly stupid, innate or boring bits of texts can be pasted over it and it still has a supposed underlying funniness because the image is a symbol that is meant to suggest or imply humor.

This is much the same way that laugh tracks work. A mediocre or terrible sitcom relies on laugh tracks to make the unfunny seem funny. It provides a contextual funniness that exists only in symbol, but not in substance. It is an attempt to subvert your reasoning and taste in order to draw a desired response. It is manipulation. And so are memes. And while almost nobody intends to manipulate others with memes in the symbolic way I have discussed, it happens nonetheless. And it is happening on such a wide scale that its total effect on our culture and consciousness should not be so easily discounted.

Next worse are the memes that use shock or snark in their content. The shock memes are really the most juvenile form of internet humor there is. That is not to say that there is not some value in shocking media, but at the same time that memes are intended to be shocking, the nature of its medium makes it a highly conformist activity, which negates any meaningful shock value. When memes are the norm, there can be little shocking about them. So it largely becomes a masturbatory circle of jaded fools trying to outdo one another in order to seek attention. And its okay to desire attention, but to do it in such a cliched and pedestrian way is pretty disgusting.

Snark is similar. Yet the thing that is extra gross about meme snark is that there is an underlying assumption that meme snark equates to truth. Many people will use one of these memes in comments sections to dismiss entire complex ideas. Meanwhile the irritating self-satisfaction of the sharer is obvious, while at the same time unearned. The subtext beneath memes becomes a form of automatic thinking. The medium gives weight to something via unspoken contextual clues while being devoid of any meaningful content.

The usage of memes as responses to larger ideas or dialogues is infuriating. It is intellectually lazy. It replaces opportunities to have meaningful discussions with the automated behavior of simply pasting in a meme. And there are no logical responses to memes, so they rob logic and reason and intellect from the entire situation and replace it with visual cliche. Despite the potential of the social media to awaken minds and provide a forum for information exchange and valuable discussions that lead to growth and evolution, it has become a wasteland for seeking attention and validation for completing the merely symbolic function of meme distribution.

This problem, the problem of symbol over substance, permeates our culture both online and off. We reinforce our own ignorance and automatic thought and behavior by replacing things of merit or substance with things that have nothing more than a symbolic function. This kind of problematic thinking and acting permeates every subject and issue we face. Politicians and advertisers have long understood how to manipulate us using our automated responses to certain symbolic stimuli. The subliminal. The unspoken but implied. These tricks are used to disrupt our reason and free will. So why in the hell would we be using similar tricks to entertain one another? The result of meme activity will be to further degrade free thinking and reason. Not as part of some grand conspiracy, but as a side effect of an activity we saw only as harmless fun, rather than as a contribution to the reinforcement of our own worst mindless habits. It does not matter what is intended. The effect transcends your motivation.

So for Eris’ sake, stop with the memes already! If for no other reason than to return some value to them by removing all of the mediocrity and repetition. And if you ever reply to me in an online conversation with a meme, prepare to get this article in response!